– I'd say no.
– I'd like a more conclusive test.
The blade darts down and I hear the faint sound of steel entering flesh and feel the slightest tug in my cheek. No pain, but the taste of my own dead blood runs down the back of my tongue.
– He's not home.
– Very good.
The stiletto reappears, blade now lacquered with crimson. A handkerchief flutters and wipes away the blood. Then handkerchief, blade, hand, and two of the faces exit from sight. Horde remains above me, gazing down, inspecting me. He purses his lips and pokes a finger at my cheek. It comes back into view with a smear of blood on its tip. He looks at the precious drop, rubs it between his thumb and finger, sniffs at it.
– To think.
Then he shrugs, wipes his fingers on me and he, too, disappears.
I would like to have felt the blade pierce my cheek. It might have assured me that I am still alive, that the exterior world can still affect me. But I have no such evidence. Just a body that feels shot full of novocaine, immobilized and without sensation. On the outside, anyway. The inside is another matter. The inside is a cauldron of something bubbling and viscous, something that I think may be now burrowing into my bones, seeking out some last refuge of blood.
Someone tugs at my arm and my head rolls slightly to the left. I can't make my eyes focus beyond a foot or two, but I see the two men. One of them has his knee planted on my wrist, pinning it to the floor. The other kneels across from him, crouched over a blurred range of small hills on the horizon of the carpet. The girl. His picks something up from the floor, applies it to the girl's arm. Metal rasps on metal again as he hacksaws the cuffs from her wrist.
Horde stands over them, observing.
– Don't cut her.
– Like I said, be easier if we went through his wrist.
– No.
– He's not long for the world. Far gone as he is, he won't be coming back.
– No. He has a role to play, and a severed appendage will not suit.
– OK.
– I'll kill you if they hurt her, Dale.
Horde turns toward the other end of the room, where his wife was sitting when we came in.
– Something, dear?
– I'll kill you.
– I think it's safe to say that these gentlemen won't be harming our daughter in the least.
– Kill you.
Her words badly slurred.
– Have another drink, wife.
I watch the man with the hacksaw, the same one who had the stiletto. His movements are sharp and strong and he works the saw with an unnatural swiftness. My sense of smell has been dulled to near uselessness. I can't smell the man with the saw, but his movements give him away. He has the Vyrus. He could be a Rogue that Horde has somehow dug up, but he has a look I know. The expensive black suit, the conservative haircut, the carefully knotted tie, all say Coalition. One of Predo's enforcers on loan to Horde. The other has the beefy look of a stock bodyguard. One of Horde's own company men.
There's a little ping as the hacksaw parts the steel of the cuffs. The enforcer puts the saw aside, frees Amanda's wrist and starts to lift her from the floor. Horde puts a hand on his shoulder.
– I'll do that.
The enforcer and the goon stand and step out of the way, out of my view, as Horde kneels and tucks his arms under his daughter's back and legs and lifts her from the floor. Only his lower body is in focus for me now, but I can see the obscure shade of his head as he cradles the girl and puts his face close to hers.
– Home again, home again, my dear.
A glass shatters over by the couch. The smudge of Horde turns.
– Be careful, wife, you'll hurt yourself.
– What did you do to her?
– Gave her something to make her sleep, love. She was hysterical. She needs sleep after her ordeal. Imagine the trauma of being abducted by this filth.
– She wasn't.
He rocks the girl from side to side.
– Yes, love, she was. She was plucked from the streets by this man. This man who you then hired to find her.
– I?
– Strange coincidence that. Except that it was no coincidence.
Was it, love?
– Dale, what are you?
– Very clever of you. Hire the same man you paid to abduct your daughter to then find her.
– No.
He's putting on a show for her now, rehearsing a story for more official recitations at later dates. I'm happy for the distraction. Anything is better than the thing with teeth inside me.
– Yes, I assure you that is exactly how it happened. How naive of me not to have seen it when I met with him to discuss the case.
– Kill you.
Something crashes.
– Gentlemen, if you would please keep my wife from hurting herself.
There is a rush of movement and the slightest of scuffles.
– Don't harm her, please.
– Fuck you, Dale, fucking fuck you!
– If one of you could simply inject her with a half cc from the vial I used to calm my daughter? You'll find a clean syringe in the case there. Intramuscular will suffice.
– No! Fucking no!
She shrieks. Horde passes the time cooing at his daughter. I pass the time dying in horrible agony. Then Marilee is quiet.
– Better, yes? In any case, the humorous part of the whole tale is that I simply suspected you of cuckolding me with your hired hand. It was only when the men I had following you witnessed your visit to Chester Dobbs's office that I suspected the truth. I can only assume that you originally paid him off the case to make room for your own man. But as to what happened next? Did Dobbs threaten blackmail or some such?
A slight moan from the couch.
– No, do not answer, just relax. I will assume blackmail. Why else would you feel so compelled to kill him?
I'm listening to the frame Horde is building around us, around his wife and me, trying to stay a step ahead of it, trying to figure out what picture the frame will surround. His wife and I in cahoots in the kidnapping of the girl, his wife as Dobbs's murderer. I'm trying to imagine the picture such a frame would suit. It's a good problem, complex and detailed. It distracts me. But not enough.
Pain is becoming.
– The tragedy. The real tragedy of it all is that I couldn't save you from yourself. The tragedy is that, despite what you had done, trying to take my daughter from me, I still loved you and wished to save you from your own weakness. But I was too late. Too late to save you from a brutal murder at the hands of your hired thug turned lover.
Pain is eclipsing.
– How fortunate that I should remember Amanda's little hiding place from last summer. And how clever of your partner to have used the site of a recent massacre as his hideaway. Who would ever have thought to look there? Too bad, though.
Pain is not what I thought it was.
– Too bad we were not in time to spare you from your fate. But thank God.
I have never before felt pain.
– Thank God we were in time to save Amanda. Save her before he could abuse her, more than he already had. Was that it?
Pain is a new thing.
– Was that why you quarreled? Because you saw how he had misused her? I like to think so. I like to think that at the very end, your mother's instincts took over and you tried desperately to save our little girl. How brave you were to fight him. How awful it must have been when he slid the needle into your skin and left you helpless. Pain lives.
– Helpless to do anything for your daughter as he touched her again, right in front of your eyes. Helpless as he turned his attentions to you. What a terrible end you had. If only we had arrived a few moments earlier, we might have been able to do more than to simply avenge your demise.
Pain breathes.
– But it's all over now. All over. Perhaps you'll have peace knowing that your daughter is safe now. Safe at home in her father's loving arms.
Pain has a home inside my body.