“Nobody got hurt,” he snapped. “He was just doing a little R&D for a B&E job.”
“Says you.” Amos grabbed him and hauled him to the cruiser. Amos looked back at Kurt. “Where’s the other guy?”
“In the house still with Laurie Ann,” he said.
He studied him for a long moment. “Are you sure about that?”
“I left him tied up and unconscious, and she was sitting there with a baseball bat, standing guard, so I’m pretty sure, yeah,” he said, “but you can follow me.”
With that, the detective put one of the other officers on the kid that he had in the back of his car, and then he followed Kurt into the house giving the dog a wide berth.
Kurt called out, “Laurie Ann, you up there?”
“I’m here. He’s still out cold,” she said. “Too damn bad because I’d like to pop him one myself.”
He brought the detective upstairs. She glared at him. “You let the kids out, didn’t you? And look what they did.” The detective rolled the kid over, took one look at his face, and swore. Amos asked, “How badly hurt is he?”
At that, the kid moaned. He opened his eyes and tried to straighten up but fell back because of the ties on his hands and ankles. He glared up at Kurt. “What the hell? What are you doing to me?”
“Well, you broke into this lady’s house with all kinds of wonderful intentions,” Kurt said. “So we just made sure that you couldn’t fulfill any of them.”
He shook the cobwebs from his brain, as he turned, finding Laurie Ann and the baseball bat in her hand, his gaze widened. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” Kurt said. “What do you expect when you come in here and attack a single woman? You gonna get upset when she defends herself?”
“Hey, it was supposed to be a simple job,” he said, “just a little payback.”
“Really?” he said. “A little payback for what?”
He just shrugged. “For that scene at the parking lot.”
“Yeah? Well, how do you feel about a little payback now?” she said in a threatening manner.
He cringed, but he was already tied up and had no place to go.
She looked at the detective and said, “So do you need any more to put this asshole away or will you just let him back out again?”
He shrugged and said, “Again, three strikes out, so this guy will go to jail now.”
“Nope, can’t,” he said. “I’m still a juvie.”
“Nope, not now. Not with this kind of a record, you aren’t,” he said, “You’re considered eighteen.”
“I’m seventeen,” he said quickly.
“Doesn’t matter,” the detective said. “For something like this, you’ll be tried as an adult. Particularly if you came in here with a weapon.”
“I didn’t,” he said, but his response was way too quick.
At that, Kurt looked at her and asked, “Did you check your bedroom?”
“I haven’t left him at all,” she said.
Kurt motioned to the detective. “While he’s lying here, let’s go check her room where he came in.”
“Hey, I didn’t come in with anything,” he said. “Anything you find is hers.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” the detective said. “We can get DNA off anything now.”
And the kid started blustering with denials. As they walked into the bedroom, they stopped short because, there on the floor, he had a small hatchet and a handgun and rope in a canvas bag.
“Why would he have dropped those here and then gone from room to room?” Amos asked, pulling on disposable gloves.
“I suspect that he didn’t. They were either there for another purpose—or for a second intruder—or he figured that she would be easy to overcome, and then he could come back and deal with her.” He paused, looking at Amos. “You could always ask him,” he said, “but I think he was just too stupid to realize that he would need them against her.”
“Is she the one who captured him?”
“I did,” he said. “She saw him out in the backyard earlier in the evening, casing the joint. I believe she texted you that already.”
Amos shook his head. “Stupid kids,” he said. He walked back into the hallway with the tools all in the bag now. He approached the kid, shook the bag. “Look at these. Rope too.”
“Not mine,” he said.
“Yeah, well, they’re not mine,” Laurie Ann said. “And you are so stupid to not even wear gloves. Like the detective said, they can get DNA off anything. So you can BS your way all you want, but you’re not getting out of this one now.”
“Honest,” he said, “I was told to bring them, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I’ve never fired a gun before.”
“Ah! So that’s why you left it there,” the detective said. “Why did you even bring it up?”
“Because I was told to.”
“From the boss?”
“Yeah, the boss, and you don’t argue with the boss.”
“Well, except that the boss is in the hospital,” she snapped. “You should be thinking for yourself.”
“Naw, he got out already.”
She groaned and turned toward the detective. “Seriously?”
Amos just shrugged and said, “The law works in mysterious ways sometimes.”
“Depends if you had anything to do with letting them out,” she said in an angry voice.
The detective glared back at her.
“Who the hell keeps me safe if you keep letting the animals out?”
“Well, hopefully this guy here,” the detective said, motioning at Kurt. Amos looked over at the punk. “And what about the hatchet?”
“Well, I brought that,” he confessed.
She stared at him. “What would you do with it?”
“Use it, if you gave me any trouble,” he said.
“I’m supposed to just what? Lie here and let you what? Beat me up? Rape me? Is that what you came for?”
He just stared at her and shrugged. “I was supposed to terrify you.”
“Well, you succeeded in doing that,” she snapped. “What about the rest?”
“If you gave me any resistance,” he confessed, “I was supposed to beat you up pretty good.”
“Keep me alive, or was that a secondary consideration? Especially considering you thought the hatchet was the tool for the job?”
He didn’t give any answer on that. “He just said to make sure that you’d never forget it.”
“How nice,” she said, her tone faint. She walked to where Kurt stood, Sabine as always at his side. He wrapped an arm around her and tucked her up close. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ve got him now.”
“For how long?” she whispered. “Amos let them out last time too.”
“It’s not that I let them out. We must have enough to hold them,” the detective roared.
“And is this now enough?”
“Considering he brought a rope and a hatchet and God only knows what else,” he said, looking at the bag, “and we haven’t even checked him yet. Did you check his pockets?”