“I need my heart medication. I have heart disease, and if I don’t get my glycerin, I’ll have a heart attack.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Wait, don’t leave. Please. Look, give me a pen and paper, and I’ll write down my address and the medications I need. Maybe you could give it to someone to get for me.” The guardsman didn’t move. “I will die in here. How do you think your superiors will feel when my family files a lawsuit against you and the army for refusing to give me my medication? And there’s money at my house. In a drawer in the kitchen. Cash. It’s yours if you get my medication.”
The guard watched him a moment and then walked closer. He took out his phone and opened his text messages. “I’ll send a text to someone that can maybe go pick it up. Where do you-”
Howie reached through the fence, tearing up his hand and wrist as it scraped through, and grabbed the man’s shirt, pulling him to the fence. The man behind him, without even a hint from Howie, jumped up, took the guardsman’s fingers, and pulled his arm through up to the elbow, gluing him in place. The guardsman went for the pistol in his waistband, and Howie grabbed his wrist.
The barrel was pointed toward Howie’s stomach. He pushed with everything he had until the man with the tattoos bent down and bit into the guardsman’s hand bad enough to draw blood. The guardsman screamed, and Howie ripped the pistol away from him and stuck it into his ribs.
“Where’s the keys?” the man with the tattoos yelled.
“In my pocket. On my shirt. In the fucking shirt.”
The man reached through the fence, into the guard’s shirt, and pulled out the keys. He whistled and tossed them to another man by the door. The other man reached through the gate to the lock and inserted several keys before finding the right one. Then the lock clicked open.
“Kill him,” the man with the tattoos said.
Howie glared at him. “I’m not going to kill him.”
“Let me do it then.”
“No, he’s an American soldier.”
The man laughed. “In case you ain’t noticed, we at war now, man. Gimme the gun.”
Howie twisted the gun so that he could pull the grip in first and then angled it to pull it through.
“Give it to me.”
Howie felt the weight of the gun in his hands. He had never owned or even shot a gun before.
“No, we’re not killing him. He’s just doing his job.”
“Ain’t that the truth. And his job is lockin’ us in cages, man. Gimme the fuckin’ gun.”
“No.”
The man smiled. Before Howie could even blink, the other man struck him in the face with an elbow, making him see sparkling lights, before kicking Howie in the chest, throwing him back into the fence. The man grabbed him and proceeded to bash his fist into his face several times before flinging him to the ground and kicking him so hard in the face that Howie thought he’d shattered his cheekbones. He tasted blood that dribbled out of his mouth and onto his neck.
The man pointed the pistol at the guard, who tried to scream but was cut off by the round that entered his mouth and blew out the back of his head. He collapsed backward, and the man turned and placed the muzzle of the gun against Howie’s temple.
“Please,” Howie slurred through the blood, “Please. I have a daughter.”
The man smiled, tucking the gun away into his waistband. “She ain’t your daughter no more, man. She government property now.”
The men fled the cage, leaving Howie bleeding and in pain on the soft ground, the corpse of the guardsman next to him like a bad dream.
19
Ian glanced at her as she drove. She had calmed down a little, and he didn’t get the impression she was constantly searching for an escape, although that should have been her only thought. She had seen his face. She couldn’t expect to survive. Then again, for some reason, he kind of liked her.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“My name?”
“Yeah. You asked me my name. What’s your name?”
“Ian.”
“If I looked at your driver license, is that the name I’d see?” she said.
He grinned. “No. It’s not. But it might as well be.”
“So what happens now?” she asked.
“You drive me around, and you drive me around some more. Then I let you go.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He looked out the window at the commercial area they were in. Some of the office buildings bordered on being qualified as skyscrapers. “You see that building there? The tall one with the blue lighting?”
“Yeah.”
“Stop there.”
As the car pulled to a stop in front, he got out first and then waited for her by the hood of the car. She paused a moment in front of the open door. This is it, he thought. She was going to make a run for it. He slipped his hand into his suit coat. Her eyes went wide, then she shut the door and came to him.
He took her arm and led her into the building. The glass building was fifteen stories and had a nice atrium with a security guard. Gardenias and petunias in fanciful vases sat on glass and wood tables. He smiled at the security guard and squeezed Katherine’s arm, prompting her to smile and say hello. Smart girl, he thought.
He pushed the button on the elevator, and the security guard rose from his table and started over.
“Oh,” she said, “My uncle’s working late. We’re trying to convince him to come eat with us.”
“Who’s your uncle?” the guard said.
“Robert with Gem Mortgage. They’re on the seventh floor.”
The guard studied them. He rolled his eyes and returned to his desk, to whatever website he’d been looking at. When the elevator opened, they stepped in and didn’t speak until it closed again.
“How did you know that man worked here?” Ian said.
“I looked at the directory when we walked past it.”
“Hmm,” he said, impressed. “You saved that security guard’s life.”
“Rather than take five seconds and spare his life, you just wanted to kill him? Why would you do that? Don’t you care if he has a family? What if he has kids?”
“They might be better off growing up without a father.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“No.” He checked the magazine in his firearm before holstering it again. “My father was a raging alcoholic that lived to a ripe old age. Until I was sixteen years old, he would beat me and my mother a few times a week so badly we’d have to go to the emergency room. We couldn’t keep going to the same one because the cops would get involved, so eventually, we were driving two and a half hours to go to a hospital or clinic that hadn’t seen us before.” He glanced at her. “So like I said, they might be better off.”
She stared at him, holding his gaze. “You’re lying.”
He chuckled. “My parents live in Iowa and couldn’t be a nicer couple.”
“Do they know what…”
“What I do for a living? They think I’m some mid-level bureaucrat.”
She kept her eyes forward, on the doors, as the numbers on the dial above them slowly increased. She didn’t say anything until the elevator had stopped and the doors opened. When they stepped off, she said, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Only if you don’t do as I say.”
“No, you’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you don’t have a soul.”
He stopped and looked at her. Taking up her arm again, he marched her forward.
The law firm’s name was emblazoned across double doors with frosted glass. The secretary had already gone home for the night, but a few people still remained, grinding away the nighttime hours. He opened the door and pulled Katherine through with him.
They walked past two people talking near the front desk. Ian tried checking the names on the doors but found there weren’t any, which was symptomatic of somewhere with high turnover. One man was sitting at his desk, drafting a document.
“Excuse me,” Ian said. “Where’s Mandy Hatcher’s office?”