26

i was barely two minutes from home, but it was the longest drive of my life. I stomped hard on the gas pedal of the Beetle, screeched around two corners and through two stop signs, and drove right up onto our front lawn, jumping out of the car without turning it off or bothering to close the door. Sarah's Camry was in the drive, blocked in by Rick, who had parked his car behind it.

The front door was locked, so I fumbled in my pocket for my own set of keys, got the right one into the lock after a couple of tries, my hands were shaking so badly, and burst into the house.

“Sarah!”

The house was eerily quiet. I paused, just for a moment, wondering where Rick and Sarah were. Blood pounded in my temples.

“Hey, Zack!” Rick called out casually. “We're in the kitchen!” Like he was saying “Come in for a beer.”

I moved through the house slowly, wondering how I should be handling this. The truth was, I had no idea how to handle this. I was already thinking I'd made a terrible mistake, that before I got here I should have dialed 911, or grabbed Earl again, or banged on Trixie's door and gotten the ledger, but I wasn't thinking all that straight. Sarah was in trouble, and all I could think to do was get to her as quickly as possible.

And now I was here, and there she was, sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, duct tape wound about her waist several times to secure her. Her hands were bound behind her, and there was more tape around each of her ankles, securing her legs to the chair. Rick stood by the sink, wielding the switchblade I'd seen him use to pick out loose pieces of caulking in our shower.

“Hi, honey,” I said weakly.

She looked too frightened to speak. Tears had streaked her mascara, and there were a couple of dark trails leading down across her cheeks. But she managed to say one word, a question.

“Kids?”

I nodded. “They're fine. They went to stay with friends overnight.”

“Isn't that keen,” said Rick, looking at me. “I used to love sleepovers when I was a kid. This could have been such a great night for the two of you, kids out of the house, chance to get it on, right?”

I said nothing. Rick waved the knife about, swung it into the corner of the countertop, chipping it. He whacked at it again, taking out a chink. He was going to whittle away our kitchen.

“So, Zack, good to finally catch up with you,” Rick said. “I feel like I've been running around all night looking for you.”

“It's all over,” I said. “Your boss Greenway, and Carpington, the police are going to be on to them in no time. Just get out of here and make a run for it. It's not going to take any time for them to figure out you killed Spender, and Stefanie.”

“Whoa, you got that all wrong, fella.”

“Just go. Don't hurt us. We won't call the cops for an hour. That'll give you time to get away.”

Rick looked hurt. “But Sarah here and I were hoping to get to know one another. I feel that you and I have had a chance to get acquainted, but Sarah and me, we don't hardly know a thing about each other.” To her, he said, “You know I didn't even realize, until the second time I was here, that your husband wrote one of my favorite books.”

“Really,” Sarah whispered.

“That's a fact. And I'm not a big reader, so you can imagine my surprise when I found out.”

“Of course,” Sarah said.

Could I rush him? There was the matter of the knife. At least it wasn't a gun. He couldn't get me from where I was standing. Suppose I ran? Just bolted, went for help? Outran the son of a bitch? And while it seemed like at least a possibility, I had some trouble with the optics of it all, of fleeing the house, leaving Sarah behind with this guy. At least now, if he went after her with the knife, I could try to do something about it. Try to be some kind of hero.

“In fact, I was wondering if you've got a copy of that book,” he said to me, “and if you could autograph it for me.”

“Of course,” I said, my eyes moving back and forth between the knife and Sarah. “I'd be happy to do that for you. And anything else you want, I'll give it to you, if you'll go, and leave us alone.”

Rick considered my request. “Well, when I was here last time, I was really only looking for one thing. This big book, with payments and everything listed inside. It was very important to Mr. Greenway that I get that back. And I still want that, no question about it. And maybe those negatives that asshole Carpington says you've got, although I don't really give a fuck about them one way or another.”

Sarah, in addition to looking frightened beyond her worst nightmare, had this look of total bewilderment. Big book? Negatives?

“But what I was wondering was, you said you'd nearly finished the sequel to that book.”

“Yes.”

“Is it, like, printed out on pages and everything?”

“Uh, yes, it is.”

“Terrific. I want that, too.”

“The manuscript.”

“The what?”

“The manuscript. That's what the book is called.”

“Manuscript,” he said, as though he was picturing the word in the air. “That's the title? Like, not Missionary Part Two?”

I shook my head. “No, a manuscript is what you call the printed-out pages of the book.”

Rick eyed me suspiciously, as though I was trying to make him look stupid. “You fucking with me?”

“No, listen, sorry. Yes, you can have it.”

“The problem is, didn't you say you hadn't quite finished it?”

“That's right. There's a chapter left.”

Rick nodded, thought. “Well, let's deal with the most important matter first. I want that ledger.”

“I don't have it,” I said. “Not anymore.”

“Where is it?”

I couldn't put Trixie at risk. I couldn't send him next door. So I said, “I dropped it off on the doorstep at the police station. They'll find it, and start figuring out what it all means.”

Rick shook his head slowly. “I think you're shittin' me there, Zack. I don't believe you did anything like that at all. But I think I'll be able to get the truth out of you eventually. Sit down in that chair.”

He indicated the one across from Sarah. When I didn't move right away, he took a step forward, waved the knife. “Chair! Now!”

I sat down. Rick tossed a roll of duct tape that he'd left sitting by the phone in my direction. “Gimme your cell phone. Wrap that around yourself so you're tied into the chair,” he said.

“I'm telling you the truth,” I said, handing the phone over. “The ledger is with the police and—”

Rick suddenly waved his knife around Sarah. She tried to pull back into herself as he sliced through the air near her neck.

“Start taping yourself up,” he said to me.

I found the end of the roll, gave a tug, heard the familiar rip of duct tape separating from itself. I slapped one end onto my shirt, then pulled the roll around me, handing it off from one hand to the other behind my back, then again in front of me. I went around a couple of times and stopped.

“No, a little more,” Rick said.

“There's no way I can get out,” I protested.

“Just do it.”

I did one more loop around myself, tore off the tape from the roll, and set the roll on the kitchen table.

“Now your ankles,” Rick said.

“I can't do my ankles. I can't bend over because I've got all this tape around my stomach.”

“Shit,” Rick said. Talk about a master plan falling apart. He set the knife down on the counter and approached me from behind.

Now or never, I figured.

I stood up and rushed backward. Sarah screamed. The chair came up at a forty-five-degree angle, my butt still attached to it, my body hunched over. The legs of the chair tangled with Rick's, and the weight of my coming after him propelled him into the vertical blinds that hung over the sliding glass doors to the deck. Rick's arms flailed, grabbing slats, ripping them from their moorings as I squeezed him against the door.

I took a step away, bound to the chair but my arms still free, and spun around. I threw myself into him, punching randomly. Except for Rick, a few hours earlier, I'd never hit anyone in my adult life. And the last time I'd hit him, I'd used a robot. This time, I was connecting with my hands, and the pain traveled straight up my arms and into my shoulders, which still hurt from dangling from that roof peak.

“You fucker!” Rick screamed, and shoved back. It was only reasonable to expect that a guy who'd spent several years working in construction, when he wasn't in jail probably lifting weights, was going to have stronger arms than a guy who daydreams at a computer all day. When he shoved, his arms were like pistons, driving me back across the kitchen and into a set of floor-to-ceiling cupboards. The chair hit them first, and inside I could hear stacked cans rattle and fall over.

Sarah kept screaming.

Rick ducked down, rushed me, grabbed me around my taped waist, and dragged me and the chair down to the floor. Then the pummeling began. This was very serious pummeling. I felt his fist connect with my chin, then my right cheek, bounce off my forehead, crush my lip. Blood filled my mouth where my tooth had gone through it. Some time around then, I started blacking out.

This was not good. This was not good at all.

 

i was vaguely aware of the sound of more duct tape being ripped from the roll, and of Sarah's voice.

“Zack? Can you hear me? Zack? Zack, say something.”

It was like coming out of a deep sleep, except this time, while snoozing, someone had rearranged my body parts. My head, hanging down on my chest, was throbbing, and I could hardly see anything out of my left eye, or focus very well with the other.

“Zack, you there? He's in the other room. Zack, what's happening?”

I went to stretch, like I normally do when coming out of a deep sleep, but very little of me moved. My legs were held in place, and my left hand was trapped at my left side. Only my right arm was free.

My right eye was starting to focus, and I saw that I was pushed up to the kitchen table. I found the strength to lift my head up slightly, and confirmed that all that had happened before wasn't some bad dream. I was still in my kitchen, Sarah was still tied up in a chair across from me. And I was tied into a chair, too.

I was in a great deal of pain.

I looked over at Sarah and tried to smile, but using those muscles made me wince.

“Zack,” she said. “Zack, can you understand me? Can you hear me?”

I nodded. God, it hurt.

“Who is that man? Why does he want to kill us? What's this ledger he's talking about? What on earth is going on?”

“Fucked up,” I mumbled. “Big time.”

“What? What did you do?”

“The purse. I took that woman's purse, at the grocery store. I thought it was yours.” I paused. “Big mistake.”

Sarah took it in. “My God,” she said. “But I was wearing my fanny pack. You were trying to teach me a lesson and . . .”

“If it had been anybody else's purse,” I whispered. “Any purse but that one . . .”

“Zack, stay awake. We've got to get out of here. This guy's crazy. I think he's going to kill us, even if you give him this ledger he's asking about. Do the police really have it? Because if they don't, just give it to him. Give him whatever he wants.”

I nodded weakly. “I've got some more bad news,” I said.

“What?” she said, holding her breath.

“I don't have anything for your birthday. I know you thought I was up to something, you know, about a gift. But I haven't gotten to it yet.”

Sarah's eyes glistened, and she sighed. “That's okay,” she said. “It's not actually until tomorrow.”

I attempted another nod. “We'll pick something out later today. Something nice.”

“Sure,” she said, fighting to keep it together.

“And maybe after that, we'll go out for dinner, come home and celebrate. I'm okay, you know.”

“You're not okay. You need to get to a doctor.”

“No no, I mean, you know. My plumbing. It's perfectly operational. I just had a lot on my mind, earlier.”

“Hey,” said Rick, strolling back into the kitchen. “This it?” he asked, and dumped a stack of white paper, several hundred pages' worth, on the kitchen table. I struggled to look at it.

“Is this what?” I asked.

“The book. I was looking around in there, found this, it's lots of typed pages, so I figured that was it.”

I knew that was it. “Yeah,” I said. “It's yours. Go somewhere and read it.”

“Naw, I'll just take it with me. But just tell me, since the last chapter's missing, how does it end?”

I blinked to get some blood out of my eye. “It turns out there is no God after all,” I said.

Rick nodded. “Fuck, is that supposed to be some sort of surprise ending? I could have told you that.”