#scenebreak
I woke up to the sound of someone gently rapping on my bedroom door. “Foxtrot?” Farmer-C stood in the doorway, knuckles touching the frame. He wore a sweaty t-shirt and shorts. He was so polite, I wanted to chuckle.
“Hey, Farmer-C. Come on in.”
“Awesome.” Grinning, he dropped onto the bed beside me. “Your dad’s awesome.”
I sat up and crossed my legs, wiping my hands across my face to wake up. “Yeah, he is.” I scratched my head. “You were working out with him?”
“He’s an awesome coach.”
Apparently, today’s program was brought to you by the word “awesome.”
“You ready for sparring yet?” I asked.
“Dude!” He punched my shoulder. “Utterly.” He examined me. “Are you?”
Things still hurt all over. “Maybe in a couple of days.”
He nodded a lot. “Awesome.” He glanced at my bathroom. “Look, I really need a shower before school, and. . .” He gave me his sheepish face. “Some of the guys work out before school.” More sheepish. “I really don’t want to see them right now.”
I waved at the bathroom. “Towels are in the cupboard just inside the door. Don’t use all the hot water.”
“Awesome.” He jumped up, kicked off his shoes and shucked his shirt. “Are you ever going to go to school?”
“Someday.” I leaned against the pillows. “No today.” He didn’t quite get the online high school program. But it was a thought. Maybe I should go to real school, after all.
“You doing all right?” he asked.
“What?” I looked up.
He was testing the water with one hand, a foot on the edge of tub. The question seemed sincere, not just polite conversation, so I gave it some thought.
“Yeah, I am,” I told him. “All things considered.”
He grinned. “You were awesome last night.” Once behind the curtain, he raised his voice more than necessary. “I never figured a ballroom guy could throw down like that.”
“I guess I had a lot of demons to work out.”
“Amen to that, bro.”
Tango likely had more demons to work out than me.
I grabbed my cell and switched to the comfy chair that sat, once again, in its corner.
U up? I texted.
After a minute, my cell vibrated: Yup
How u doin?
She sent a :-/
I sent her a ;-)
:-D
Can u talk? I typed.
State trooper
Oh.
The shower stopped.
Call me after? I typed.
:-D
“How’s she doing?” Farmer-C asked, drying off in the doorway.
“Still breathing,” I said, looking up. “She’s with the state troopers right now.”
Farmer-C froze. “What?”
“Giving a statement. Not arrested.”
Relief covered his face. “Oh. . . yeah. Duh.” He went back to work with the towel.
I looked around for a gym bag. Saw none. “You have clean clothes?”
He sucked in a quick breath. “Bag’s in the garage.”
I tossed him a pair of sweatpants. “Wear these. We don’t have much of a dress code around here, but I don’t want you giving Auntie Mac a heart attack.” His grin made me hold up a hand. “She’s my aunt, dude. No jokes.”
He laughed, climbed into the sweats and ran out the door.
My cell rang. “Tango. How was it?”
She sighed. “They were nice about everything. They’re on their way to your place, now.”
“Crap. I need a shower.”
“I figured. Your boyfriend there?”
I laughed. “Yeah, he was working out with Dad.”
“Foxtrot?”
“Yeah?”
There was a long pause before she spoke. “Thanks.” I could tell she wasn’t done. “I never really said thanks last night, and not just for rescuing me. . . but for helping me. . . with the other stuff, too.” She meant with the felony of destroying evidence.
“I’d say ‘any time,’ but I really hope there’s never another time for something like that.”
“Amen to that. Now go take a shower before the troopers get there.” She chuckled. “And close the bathroom door if you don’t want your boyfriend standing there talking to you the whole time.”
I laughed. “I’ll call you as soon as they’re gone. You going to school?”
“Not today.”
“Wanna get together?”
“Absolutely.”
My shower lasted three minutes at most. As I was pulling on my shirt, Farmer-C poked his head around the corner. “Troopers are here, bro. You want I should stay or go?”
My first impulse was to tell him to go, because that’s what I would’ve done most of my life. “Stay.”
He smiled.
The meeting with the troopers was pretty standard. We sat around the living room while they asked a bunch of questions. Saundra was in attendance, and the cops were obviously worried about massive unending lawsuits since the entire acting police force of the town, both of them, had gone rogue and committed dozens of felonies against me. Saundra made sure I stayed vague while I considered my options. I wasn’t inclined to sue. It wasn’t the city’s fault. Saundra saw dollar signs.
My cell vibrated with a text from a blocked number: I wud have gttn away w/it if it wsn’t fr u meddling kids
My breath caught in my throat. It could only be one person, and he had to know the cops were there. Saundra was hassling the troopers, so I typed back: Twst?
U still o me a date w/tango
What the hell? I looked around. Everyone was staring at me.
The cell vibrated again. Tell them its me n someone dies
Fuck.
“I’m really sorry, but I need to take this.” I pointed at Farmer-C. “Can you ask him questions for a minute?” When a trooper opened his mouth to speak, I lied. “It’s Tango. . . she’s really upset. I’m afraid to put her off.”
Nods and reassurances let me escape down the hall to the kitchen.
Wht th hell? I typed, standing at the kitchen sink.
U said u’d get me a date w/her
Tried my best
“Try harder.” That wasn’t on the cell. Someone said it out loud behind me.
I froze. The reflection in the window above the sink showed me a skinny, acne-scarred face with an arm extended in my direction. “Hey there, Foxtrot,” Twist said. “I’d turn around slowly and I wouldn’t try to get anyone to help because, unlike Officer Friendly, I know how to aim.”
“What are you doing here?” How’d he know my nickname for Warren?
“I still want my date with Tango,” he said as if I was simple. “And you’re going to help me get it.” When I didn’t respond, he smiled. “You’re going to walk out the back door right now, or I shoot you in the head.”
Would he? Hard to say. He was a Sick Little Twist. I’d seen enough of his shrine to figure that out. In theory, he could shoot me, go out the door and disappear by the time the troopers got up and moving.
He waved the gun toward the door. “Okay, you’ve done the math. Move.”
I moved.
“Leave the phone on the counter.”
Shit. No GPS for me.
We walked out past the pool and through the gate that led to the alley where his car waited, rear door open and engine running. All the neighbors had privacy fences, so no one could possibly see us. He shoved me against the car and quickly cuffed me before tossing me into the back seat. As soon as I was down, he cuffed my ankles as well. It happened so fast, I couldn’t do anything to stop him.
In moments, the car roared to life and carried me away.
My mind raced.
“Stay down,” he warned me.
“Or what?”
“Or I shoot you in the head and drive out of town, change cars at a truck stop an
d cross the border into Mexico.”
I stayed down.
We rode in silence for a few minutes.
“So you use me to force Tango to meet you,” I said. “Then what?”
He didn’t reply, which told me he was smart as well as twisted, which was even scarier. Damn it, the whole Barney Fife thing must’ve been an act.
Deep breath.
I rolled onto my side so I could at least see out the tops of the windows. Maybe signs or trees would tell me where we were headed.
“We’re going to Farmer-C’s farm,” he told me. “So feel free to relax and enjoy the ride.”
“Farmer-C’s farm?”
“That’s where Warren was going to take Katy,” he said. “I like the symmetry.”
“And it’s out in the middle of nowhere.”
He scoffed. “Everywhere’s the middle of nowhere out here.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. Twenty minutes later, he parked in Farmer-C’s horse barn. He opened the door nearest me. “Get out.”
“I’m kinda handcuffed hand and foot.”
“You’re the fucking dance champ, douchebag. You should have good balance.”
So I wriggled out of the car and carefully rose to my feet. I leaned against the car. “Now what?”
He grinned. “Now we make things interesting.”
The gun moved so fast it was a nightmare.
Bang! It felt like a baseball bat hit my thigh.
I stumbled and fell onto my face on the straw-covered floor.
He shot me!
He fucking shot me!
A cell hit the ground near my head. A moment later, I felt him messing with my wrists and the handcuffs fell away.
Gunshots really fucking hurt. “What the shit?” It was hard to think.
“Call Katy and tell her to come here to meet me,” he said calmly. “If she isn’t quick, you bleed to death. If she brings help, I shoot you in the head while they’re a half mile away. Feel free to play hero and offer to bleed out, which might be fun to watch. I can videotape your death, desecrate your body in ways that would’ve made Dahmer sick and then make sure she knows I’ll do the same thing to the next person I kidnap. Juicy? K-pop? Her Mom?”
I lay on the ground, breathing straw and bleeding, wracking my brain to find some way this didn’t end in utter tragedy for all of us. Nothing.
“Make the call.”
I made the call.
“Hello?” Tango asked.
“It’s me.”
“What the hell? Your dad just called—”
“Tango, listen to me.”
“Oh, now all of a sudden—”
“Twist just shot me.”
Silence.
“I can tell her where I am?” I asked Twist.
He was silent for moment.
“Not much chance of her coming here if I don’t.”
He crouched beside me. “Make sure she’s alone.”
“Tango? You alone?”
Silence.
“You still there?” I asked, wondering how bad off she was.
“I’m here. I’m alone.”
It was a lie.
I didn’t care. “He wants a date with you.”
“I have chicken parmesan and merlot,” Twist threw in. “And put it on speaker.”
I obeyed. I almost told him you can’t do red wine with chicken, but that was probably the least important faux pas he would commit that day. “He has chicken parmesan and wine.”
“With whole grain pasta.”
My face must have informed him just how much his comment made me want to kill him.
He waved the gun. “Whole grains are important to her.”
Her voice, when she spoke, sounded much stronger than I’d expected. “I have dinner with him, we get to leave and he goes away forever. Like Mexico forever?”
I’d sort of hoped she’d play him more, but what the hell. I looked up at Twist.
The gun dangled between his knees and his fingers tapped it in distraction. “I want her to go with me.”
“To Mexico?”
He nodded.
“Dude, I promised you one date.”
“I don’t care. I want her to promise she’ll go to Mexico with me.”
Okay, this conversation was going from Tarantino to Fellini.
A gunshot echoed throughout the barn. My breath caught in my throat, but there was no pain. Twist’s eyes went really big and the gun fell from his hands.
Instinctively, I grabbed it and threw it as far away as I could.
“Foxtrot!” Tango’s voice screamed from the cell. “Foxtrot!”
Twist fell to the ground beside me, and I scrambled away as best I could with hands and no feet.
I looked up.
A woman ran toward me, holding a shotgun. The sound of that gun chambering imbedded itself in my memory forever. The woman standing above me, with the business end of an enormous shotgun in my face, was Farmer-C’s mom. “Foxtrot? What on Earth. . . Oh, my God, you’ve been shot!” She raised the shotgun’s muzzle to the ceiling.
Tango shouted hysterically over the cell. “Ethan!”
I snatched up the phone, keeping my eyes on Twist, who had curled up in a ball, whimpering.
“Tango, I’m fine. I’m fine.”
She sobbed. “You son of a bitch, why didn’t you say so?”
“Shot in the leg, sweetie? Gun in my face?”
Mrs. Farmer-C’s-Mom helped me move far away from Twist. “Is that Pal?” she asked. “He shot you?”
Tango was still talking, but I’m not sure what she said. To be honest, the world seemed a bit fuzzy.
Mrs. Farmer-C’s-Mom took the cell. “Katy? Is that you?” She nabbed the keys from Twist’s belt and freed my ankles. “Mmhm, well, I think that can be left to the past for now. I should probably get Foxtrot to stop bleeding so he doesn’t die. Can you call the paramedics and the police. . .?” She regarded Twist’s curled up form. “Oh, well, don’t bother calling the police, I guess. Paramedics, though? And why not just bring everyone you know to the farm. Since the police seem to be worse than the criminals these days, we’ll just handle this on our own.” She was about to hang up, but had a thought. “I have pies and ice cream. Just made the pies today.”
She ended the call and dropped the cell. “You look like hell, boy.”
I could not disagree.
“You really haven’t seen our town at its best.” She cinched her apron tight around my leg. “It’s not all violent sociopaths and redneck beat downs.”
She was awesome.
“I was inside cooking,” she said, “when I heard a car crunching gravel up the drive. I came out to see who it was and heard the gunshot. Well, you know my first reaction was to load a handy shotgun so I could protect my own.” Two things to notice there, right? “Handy shotgun” and she saw me as one of her own.
She looked around. “Now where’d that piece of shit get to?”
Twist was gone.
“What the hell?” She rushed to the rear door. “I shot him square.”
A trail of blood led out of the barn.
He was nowhere to be found.
“Well, he won’t be much to worry about tonight after the hole I put in him,” she said. “Let’s get you inside.”
She helped me hobble to Farmer-C’s room and onto the bed. “Now you just hold still while I get those jeans off you.” She held up an enormous pair of sewing shears.
My hands came up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa there.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Ethan Fox, I saw your father naked at more pool parties than I care to remember. I can handle seeing your boxers.”
Not something I’d needed to know.
Also, not the issue. The jeans were DKNY and had cost almost two hundred bucks. A bullet hole would’ve just added to the badass quotient.
Maybe she’d sew them up for me?
&nb
sp;
twenty-one
Twist stared at beams of dusty sunlight filtered through holes in the roof. He hadn’t left the bed since a family of illegals found him and took him in. “La migra,” he muttered from time to time to keep up the pretense he’d been shot by the border patrol while helping immigrants cross into Texas. “La migra.” The mama kept him fed, and the daughter bathed him. The only thing they hadn’t removed was the charm around his wrist meant to ensure that girls found him irresistible, fat lot of good it’d done him.
“You need to stay clean,” the daughter told him with a mischievous smile, “or you will become infected.” She drew up a bowl of hot water with a washcloth and tugged the sheets away. “Eres mi héroe.”
Twist closed his eyes and saw Katy. The girl attending to his needs was lovely, but she wasn’t Katy, could never be Katy. If only Katy would touch him that way, so tender, so sensuous. When he opened his eyes, she was Katy. Or maybe it was shock and blood loss. He’d lost a lot of blood. Too much?
He didn’t know.