Spoiled Boots
As soon as Hope left with Jin and the young scoundrel, Permelia began testing the door, hoping the guy might have forgotten to lock it. There didn’t seem to be any easy way out of the room; the walls were cement, and the door was thick metal. If only she had a blowtorch.
It wasn’t long before the man returned with Hope, opening the door and gesturing her inside as if he were a doorman at a hotel.
“There you go, ma’am. Let me know if you need anything: any special food requests, toiletries, or toys for the baby. I apologize that there’s no connected bathroom. Just holler when you need to use the facilities. I’ll hear you.”
The young man was obviously trying to impress Hope, trying to get on her good side. Just listening to him made Permelia want to throw up. Good. It was time to start acting. She held her stomach and started groaning loudly.
“I don’t think I can wait much longer,” she said. “I really need to get to a bathroom.”
“Sorry about that.” The man smiled and shrugged at Hope. “I almost forgot about her.” He gestured toward Permelia. “This way, ma’am. The restrooms are across the building.”
Permelia shuffled toward the door, still holding her stomach. She thought about kicking the man again as she went out, but he made sure to keep his body turned so he was out of range of her feet. He locked the door behind them, and the smile immediately left his face.
“Let’s get a move on, old lady.” He pushed her roughly out into the room. “I ought to break both of your ankles for what you did to me earlier.”
“You ought to turn in your man card for what I did to you earlier,” Permelia said, making sure to speak as if she were in pain. “You know Hope’s going to see through your schoolboy act, right?”
The man grinned but not the innocent grin he’d used with Hope. This grin was malicious. Evil. “We’ll see about that,” he said. “I’ve found that most women like a nice schoolboy. And I’ve never met a filly I couldn’t tame.”
“Hope’s not a filly,” Permelia said, wishing she had a baseball bat. “And more than that, she’s a married woman.”
“I’ve never been one to let a piece of paper get in the way of a good time,” Buck said. “Now git a move on. We haven’t got all day.” He pushed her again.
Permelia looked around as she stumbled across the room, trying to assess where they might be. If she was going to get them out of there, she needed to understand the lay of the land. The room was large, really large—almost stadium large—and mostly empty. She could see a table at the other end where the other man—the one who seemed to be the boss—sat on a chair, talking on a cell phone. There were no other people or furniture anywhere to be seen, just a large room big enough to hold a thousand people . . . or an airplane.
That was it. This is an airplane hangar. Permelia wondered if they were at the Salt Lake City airport. But the only way to find out would be to get outside. She could see the restrooms now, and they weren’t far from the front door. If she could create a distraction, maybe she could make a break for it. She wouldn’t get very far, but if she could get out of the building, she might be able to get a better idea of their position.
Permelia didn’t think she could outrun the young man. But she had to try something. She wasn’t about to take it easy on these yahoos. If they wanted a compliant prisoner, they had chosen the wrong senior citizen.
She staggered and fell forward. At first she didn’t think he was going to catch her, but he finally reached out.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “I’m not going to carry you, and if you try to kick me again, I’ll break your foot.”
“Sorry,” Permelia replied, grabbing onto his jacket to pull herself back to her feet. She quickly slipped her hand inside his pocket and was gratified to find what she was hoping for. “I’m just a little bit light-headed.”
As she pushed away, she noticed a distinct scent coming from the man’s collar. The smell made her stomach turn. “Are you wearing cologne?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I thought this was a kidnapping. What kind of idiot wears perfume to a kidnapping?”
“It’s not perfume. It’s cologne. And I like to do things with style.”
“I don’t know if I’d call slapping on some Old Spice while you abuse innocent women and children doing things with style.”
The man’s face reddened. Permelia could tell she’d struck a nerve.
“This is not Old Spice,” he said. “It’s Clive Christian #1. It costs over $2,300 a bottle, and it’s about as far away from Old Spice as you are from your reproductive years.”
“That makes me sick,” Permelia said.
“What? You don’t believe in spending on the finer things in life?”
“No, I mean the smell. It really makes me sick.” Permelia took a step back and then threw up on his boots.
Buck swore and jumped away. “Ahhh. You couldn’t wait? We were almost to the bathroom.” He pushed her toward the door that said Women and opened the adjacent door to the men’s room. “Get in there, and don’t move until I come get you out. I’ve got to get cleaned up.”
Permelia turned on the sink in the bathroom and washed the taste out of her mouth. That wasn’t exactly the distraction she’d had in mind, but it would have to do. The air was surprisingly fresh for a bathroom. The surfaces were shiny and clean, as if it had been serviced recently. There were eight stalls along the wall. Why so many? Permelia thought.
She left the water on and peeked out the restroom door. She could hear the guy cursing in the room next door, but she didn’t see any sign of the man who had been sitting at the table. The door to the outside was less than thirty yards away. She ran for it.
As she flew out the door, the sun blinded her, and she held up her hands to shield her eyes. The air was dry and hot, and the wind blew dust into her face. She’d been right—this was an airport. Or at least there was a landing strip in front of her. The building she had been in was a large, mushroom-shaped hangar capable of opening its doors to allow a fairly large plane inside. This was not the Salt Lake City International Airport. There were no planes flying in or out, and the buildings that spanned the flight line seemed decrepit and deserted. Except for the wind, everything was eerily silent.
She was struck with the strong sense that she had been in this place before or at least seen it. From the outside, the hangar looked familiar. She raced through her memories, trying to put the pieces together, but she came up empty.
She looked around the corner of the building and saw an old, dusty motorcycle leaning against one of the walls. “Hallelujah,” she said. “I’ve found the way out.”
She moved toward the motorcycle and suddenly remembered where she had seen the building. It had been in the newspaper just a few years ago. She smiled. She knew where she was. Now she just needed to get this information to Matt so he could locate them, and then she needed to get to the police. She pulled out the cell phone she had lifted from the young man’s jacket when she had fallen into him, pressed the icon to text, and put in Matt’s number. She typed in “P here. R-way. Looking at Enola G,” hit send, and then looked for the camera app so she could take a picture to accompany her words. She raised the phone in front of her, and then everything went black.
* * *
“Can’t I just shoot her?” Buck asked.
“No.”
“Why not? You clocked her pretty hard, and we don’t really need her for anything.”
“I wouldn’t have had to clock her if you’d been doing your job. How hard can it be to keep an old lady in your sight for five minutes? And not only that, but she had your phone too.” Dempsey was searching through the phone to see who the old woman might have contacted. A 911 call would be a major inconvenience, but they would be able to deal with it. There were no outgoing calls, only a single text message. Dempsey chuckled when he saw what she had sent.
“What’s so funny?” Buck asked.
“That is one smart old bird,” Dempsey said. “But you’re lucky. She sent a text to Knight, but it’s harmless. Not only is there no cell coverage where he is, but he will be giving himself up soon. And even if he did somehow get this message, I don’t think he would figure it out.”
He nodded to Permelia, who was lying on the pavement. A dark knot was starting to form on the side of her head.
“It looks like we’re going to have to watch this one. There’s more to her than meets the eye.”
“Just let me kill her.”
Dempsey turned and met Buck’s eyes. “Let me say this one more time: if anything happens to the old woman, the little girl, or the wife, I will hold you responsible. Now carry her back to the room. We’ve been out in the open for too long.”
* * *
Permelia was dreaming of aliens and spaceships when she began to regain consciousness. She was being carried over someone’s shoulder. An alien? No, the shoulder was human, and whomever it was was speaking as they laid her down on the bed. But the voice wasn’t talking to her.
“Sorry about this, ma’am. It was my fault. I let her out of my sight, and the boss cold-cocked her. I would’ve been more gentle had I been the one who found her, but the boss man, he doesn’t know how to treat ladies.”
Permelia felt someone take her hand. “Permelia, are you okay?”
A fuzzy alien with large tentacles coming out of its head looked down at her. But then her vision cleared, and she could see that it was just Hope, with all her hair. Permelia wondered if they had remembered to bring a brush.
“I’m fine,” she said, using Hope’s arm to help her sit up. “Just a little woozy. The hit on the head was bad, but I think the cologne was the worst of it.” She looked past Hope to the man, who winked at her and put his hand on Hope’s shoulder.
“Ma’am, if there is anything you need, you just let me know,” he said.
Hope didn’t turn around. She was busy examining Permelia’s forehead. “Thank you, Buck,” she said and patted his hand.
Buck smiled directly at Permelia, took his hand from Hope’s shoulder, sniffed it deeply as if taking in her scent, and then turned to leave the room. “I’ll see you ladies later.”