TWENTY
Amber heard footsteps rumbling down the hallway, approaching her room. A moment later, Shane appeared in the doorway. The gun was in his hand.
“Wh-what did you do?” she asked. “To Ross?”
“He ain’t dead, if that’s what you’re asking. Not yet, at least.”
The pain made it difficult to concentrate, but she’d heard enough of the commotion in the other room to know that something bad had happened to Ross. She’d heard some talking, followed by assorted bumps and crashes. Then came a single scream from Ross, brief and bloodcurdling, accompanied by a loud thud.
Shane walked over to her bed and stared down at her, his eyes hard as pebbles.
“Bet you didn’t know Ross could scream like that, did ya?” he said. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants and sat down on the edge of her bed. “Now, let’s see if you can beat him.”
Shane reached out so his massive hand was a few inches above her stomach, right over the wound. He slowly balled his fingers into a fist.
Amber’s entire body tensed up.
“You’re the one to blame for this whole mess, aren’t you?” Shane said. “It was you who came up with the plan to screw me over, right?”
Amber was silent. She stared at that fist, suspended over her stomach like a guillotine blade.
“Fine, don’t answer,” Shane said. “I know it was you. Ross is too damn stupid to come up with something like that. Three weeks I spent, planning out that bank robbery. Had every last detail covered. And then you backstabbing, cocksucking, shit-for-brains bastards screw me.”
Amber was barely listening. She couldn’t look away from his hovering fist.
“Please . . . don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t . . . don’t hit me.”
“Don’t hit you? You mean, like this?”
Shane smashed his fist down onto her stomach, tearing open the cut, ripping away the dried blood clotted over the wound. The pain was instant and agonizing. The fall at the hospital had been bad; this was a hundred times worse, unlike anything she’d ever felt.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, a primal yell, all of the air leaving her body in a rush.
Shane smashed his fist down on her stomach again, the impact like that of a sledgehammer. Fresh blood splotched onto his fist.
Amber screamed again. Her vision started to cloud. She felt light-headed. Through her haze, she saw Shane raise his fist again. Before he lowered it, she passed out.
Blackness.
There was no money.
Over and over, the phrase repeated in Karen’s head. Earlier, she’d held on to a faint bit of hope that they could end this without anyone getting injured or worse. Now that hope had been shattered. It felt like they had nothing. No plan. No next steps. No idea what would happen.
“What are you going to do, Teddy?”
“I don’t know,” he said, slumped in his chair, lips curled into a frown, eyes empty. “Like I said, I was just trying to buy more time. Trying to stop him from killing us all.”
“There has to be something.”
“If he’s not here, he can’t harm Joshua. Can’t harm you, either. That’s the main thing. If I can get him away from here, once we’re on the other side of town, maybe I can escape or—”
The screaming started.
Even from a room away, Amber’s screams were so loud that they made Karen cringe. There was pure pain, pure agony, behind the screams. She didn’t even want to imagine what could make someone scream like that.
The screams didn’t last long—not even a minute—before they abruptly stopped. There was only silence from the other room. Somehow, the sudden silence was worse than the screams.
Karen looked down at the scalpel. Still in her sock. Still out of reach. She pulled her arms and feet against the zip ties, tried to twist and contort her body in the chair. But with her arms secured to the armrests, it was impossible to reach the scalpel. She wasn’t even close.
“What are you doing?” Teddy asked.
“There’s a scalpel in my sock,” she said. “I took it from the hospital earlier. Hid it. It’s still there.”
“After I leave, keep trying to grab it,” Teddy said. “You have to get it and cut yourself free. Do the same for Joshua. And get out of here. Go straight to the police.”
“But what about you?” Joshua said.
“I’ll try to stall on the way to the dealership. Take up as much time as I can. Maybe one of you can get free before we arrive. Call the police and send them to the dealership.”
“But what if we can’t get free?” Joshua asked. “What if the police don’t make it in time?”
“I don’t know,” Teddy said. “I wish I had an answer. Let’s just hope things work out. Hope and pray.”
Shane’s heavy footsteps rumbled down the hallway. He entered the room a moment later and looked at them. One of his hands was covered in blood. He slowly ran the hand along the front of his hooded sweatshirt, wiping the blood onto it.
“Did y’all hear those screams?” he asked.
Karen nodded.
“Pretty loud, right?”
She nodded again.
“You remember those screams,” Shane said. He looked at Teddy. “If I don’t get my money, if this doesn’t work out like you say it will, the person screaming is gonna be you.”
Shane looked at Karen.
“And you.”
He looked at Joshua.
“And you. Think I can make you scream like that, slugger? Trust me, I can.”
He looked at Ross, still slumped in the corner, unconscious. Amber’s screams hadn’t woken him.
“See, that’s the difference between me and Ross,” Shane said. “He’ll run his mouth, act like he’s bad and all, but when it comes to it, he’s all talk. Not me. I’ll get nasty if I got to. Believe me when I say this: if I don’t get my money, I will kill everyone in this room. And I will make it hurt.”
He wiped his hand on his sweatshirt a final time.
“We leave in an hour,” he said to Teddy. “We go into the dealership. You get me the money. And I leave. I don’t want no surprises or—”
Shane stopped. Outside, there was a low, crunching noise. Distant, barely audible.
“The hell was that?” he asked.
Karen shook her head. Shane walked over to the only window in the room and glanced outside.
“Shit,” he said, spitting out the word. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He ran out of the room and thundered down the hallway.
“What’s going on?” Joshua said.
“I don’t know,” Karen said.
But she had an idea. That low sound she’d heard from outside was a familiar one. It sounded like a set of tires driving over the gravel driveway.
A moment later, Shane stormed back into the room. He had a different look on his face, wide-eyed and frantic.
“What is it?” Karen said.
“The cops are here,” Shane said.