No one could have been more surprised than I was to find myself awake and alive. Bound and gagged, bleeding from a dozen places, in tremendous pain, but alive. A blessing, or a curse? Coin toss.
Jerry had hogtied me and thrown me in the back of the van with the goodies. Including Isabella, the stupid fool. We’d brought a lot of rope, anticipating that we might run into trouble. I should’ve known the primary source of trouble would be Jerry. I was tied so tightly the ropes burned my flesh through my clothing whenever I wiggled. Blood mingled with hemp to create a nauseating, frightening smell that permeated the truck. I don’t know why he didn’t finish me off—probably just didn’t want to leave a telltale body at the scene of the crime. He’d get around to murdering me soon enough. He’d make me so much roadkill on the side of the Boston Turnpike.
I was lying on my side, unable to move my hands or legs. With extreme effort, and despite the protest of every muscle in my body, I managed to push myself upright. But how did that help? I couldn’t possibly get free. There was no slack in the ropes at all.
Unless…I created some.
It was a class I’d taken in American history—under protest. Required reading included a series of short biographies. One of them was about Erich Weiss, better known as Harry Houdini. An American icon. Scholars still didn’t know how he managed to accomplish many of his escapes. But they knew the secret to one of them: they knew how he managed to escape from all those straitjackets. Seemed he was able to dislocate his shoulder. Hurt like hell, but the suddenly limp and lowered limb created enough slack to allow him to wriggle out of the jacket.
Hell, I was a philosophy major, not a damned magician. No way I could do anything like that. Right?
Then I thought of Jerry, his hot fetid breath in my face, his hand clutched around my throat, using me and then disposing of me, like so many men before him. So many.
Catherine…
I clenched my eyes tightly closed. I could taste blood on my lips. I didn’t know where it had come from. Didn’t matter—there was likely a lot more forthcoming. I concentrated on my left shoulder—it was the more flexible. I remembered the diagrams of the ball-and-socket joint we had studied in Zoology 101. And then I strained, twisted, feeling as if I were pulling my muscles against themselves, forcing the shoulder bone out of its natural home…
It hurt—dear God in heaven it hurt so much—as lightning flashes of pain raced down my entire body. I’d never felt anything like that before. Before I started, I thought I couldn’t possibly hurt more than I already did, but I was wrong, so pathetically wrong. I was sure I would lose consciousness again, for the second time in an hour…
It took three attempts and I don’t know how long—too long—till I heard the snapping noise, followed by a momentary sensation of release, followed by a wave of agony so intense I threw up all over the floor of the truck. I hoped I didn’t damage any of the goods, but at the moment, that wasn’t my primary concern. I fell forward, my head hitting the floor, vomit followed by drool and blood, overwhelmed by the mind-numbing aching in my left shoulder. I babbled and spit and breathed in short, quick gulps, as if spastic respiration might somehow fix my shattered body. The pain was so intense—if I had been cut open with a knife, it couldn’t possibly hurt any more…
Know thyself, Socrates said. Well, I knew myself well enough now.
If I could do that, I could do anything.
Maybe twenty minutes later, Jerry exited the turnpike and pulled the truck over to the side of the road. I was ready. He was grinning when he opened the back doors—probably planning to play with me awhile, violate me a few more ways before he killed me. But he never got the chance. My left arm was useless, even after I’d popped it back into the socket, and my right wasn’t much better, so I made do with my feet. My foot clipped him under the chin the moment he pulled the rear doors open and sent him reeling backward. I jumped out of the truck and kicked him in the face ten more times, sending blood and flesh flying. I followed with several clenched fists to the solar plexus. I never gave him a chance to fight back, never even gave him a moment to figure out what was happening. I just punished him, over and over again, making him hurt like he’d hurt me, only a thousand unbearably intense times worse. I dragged his face back and forth over the gravel till he was totally disfigured, then I kicked him some more until at last I heard several ribs break. Then I kept on going, kept on going, long past the point where he had any chance of recovering. I wasn’t just killing him. I was killing him, and my father, and everyone else who ever hurt me or used me or pretended to love me. They all deserved to die.
When it was over, I pushed Jerry’s body down a hill into the bramble and rolled the truck onto a side road. I knew he would be found. So what? By that time, Renny would have recovered the loot and I’d be gone. He couldn’t care less who got paid, just so he got the goods. I didn’t know what he would do about Isabella. Not my problem. I had no problems, not anymore.
At least that was what I kept telling myself. There was one difficulty I tried to pretend wasn’t there: the inevitable conflict arising from Rousseau’s postulation of the noble savage theory—that is, the idea that to have civilization, we give up freedom, because civilization must have rules. And I had broken damn near every one of them.
I wasn’t stupid enough to pretend I could get away with all this without suffering a few repercussions. I’d had the temerity to short-circuit that indifferent universe and win a big one for the home team. But the other shoe would drop. I knew it would. I had quite literally escaped death. I had gone too far, taken too much. There would be a reckoning.
Damn karma, anyway. Even as I stuck out my thumb to hitch a ride, I felt a hollowness, an inability to feel pleasure, a certainty that it would all come to an end before I had a chance to enjoy it. Funny how sometimes you just know these things. I was as certain about this as I was that when I licked my lips I was tasting my own blood. And not for the last time.
Judge Rupert Haskins folded his wife’s hand into his own and squeezed. “Heck of a way to be spending our twenty-seventh anniversary, isn’t it, Angel?”
His wife, Margaret, smiled, causing crow’s feet to form around her eyes. “I don’t mind.”
“Damned bother, all this Inns of Court rigmarole. But it would be awkward if I didn’t attend, since I founded the chapter.”
“I understand.”
“It’s important work, mentoring the next generation of lawyers. Trying to instill in them the ethics and values lawyers had—hell, everyone had—when we were young.”
This time it was her turn to give his hand a squeeze. “Rupert…we’re still young.”
“I’m sixty-two, Angel.”
“And you’ve never looked better.”
“I’ve lost the hair on my head and gained it in my ears.”
She laughed. “You’ve never looked better.”
The Inns of Court was a fraternal organization within the Denver Bar Association. A select number of the local, state, and federal judiciary with the city’s most prominent lawyers met once a month for dinner and discussion of legal issues, mostly relating to maintaining the high standards of the bar. Every year a new class of young lawyers was chosen for one-on-one guidance from the permanent members of the Inn. It was a highly sought position, not only for the educational experience, but for the chance to become acquainted with judges the lawyers might well be appearing before one day. There were three different Inns in Denver, but the one Judge Haskins had founded was the first and was generally considered the most prestigious, since he was the senior judge on the Tenth Circuit. And this year, to his dismay, the premiere session for the new class of acolytes at the downtown Hilton ballroom had fallen on his and Margaret’s wedding anniversary.