“Ladder, stairs, and fences riding hard going…”
“Take him out now,” Dario demands. “As a show of good faith.”
“… where no buffalo roam, just big iron beasts.”
“Why?” Sergio asks as if it’s a completely legitimate question. “He’s got a good six minutes left in that song.” He bangs on the frost-crackled plexiglass. “Don’t you, buddy?”
“With big toothy buckets, yeah, going…”
Dario says something I can’t hear, then reaches under his jacket. Every man in the lot draws their gun. Dario holds up a hand, then lowers it. His men lower their weapons.
“What are you doing?” I ask the screen.
“Home, home, home to junktown.”
Dario removes his gun from the holster and holds it with fingertips pinching the handle.
“Take me,” he says, louder this time.
“No,” I tell him from miles and miles away in my safe house. “No!”
“Let him go.” He puts the gun on the ground and holds up his hands. “Forget Sarah. Just take me.”
“No!” I scream, elongating the vowel in a forever denial, as two men drag Dario out of the frame and the parking lot erupts into gunfire.
When I have no breath, the scream continues.
I tap keys, trying to find the next camera. I need to see where they’ve taken him. If I lose sight, I don’t know what they’ll do to him. But there’s a ramp. An office. A safe.
And still, my scream continues.
The deer in the woods, knocking his antlers into a tree to untangle the chair. The back gate at the end of the service road.
The scream.
The front gate.
On the other side—a man standing next to an idling car.
And inside the gate—Benny, face down in the mud.
The scream isn’t mine. It’s not even a scream. It’s the beep of the front gate intercom. The man has his back to me. He’s pushing it over and over.
Who is it?
“Who is it?” I ask, but he can’t hear me from this tiny room.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t care who it is. I care about Dario. The only man who’s ever loved me for who I am and who I can become.
Sobbing, I try to bring back the underground parking lot, but I can’t.
A door.
A stairwell.
The deer.
The front gate again.
Benny hasn’t moved, but the man has turned.
It’s Massimo.
I freeze. The far away danger to Dario has become very personal and very close.
Run. I’m going to run. That, I can do. I run out of that terrible room, through the kitchen, to the garage. When I thumb the pad, the light goes from red to green, but the door won’t open. I jerk it back and forth, but the rain has swelled the wood to a near-impossible size. I ram my shoulder against it.
“Ow!”
Can I go around? Or just walk down the driveway?
No. Enough is enough. This is the best way, and I can get through. I throw my shoulder against the door even harder, and it pops open with a squeak.
The loud beeping is nonstop, even here in the garage.
The Audi is gone, but the Buick shines, uncovered and ready. Dario keeps the keys in the cabinet. It opens without a trick or delay. No fingerprint required because every second counts. Keys in the door, guns on the rack. I open the garage door with the button on the wall and take the keys with the MET 5th AVE keychain.
I can’t save Dario from here, but I can get to him. I take a rifle that looks like one I saw on television. Is it the same kind? Holding one end, I slide the wood tube on the bottom against the black barrel on top. It clicks.
Right. Slide, shoot, slide, shoot.
I realize I can’t run. The outer gates won’t open for me. My access was set up to protect me and now it’s trapping me.
But the back gate. Maybe it’s stuck. Maybe it got left open on garbage day. And anyway, if I can’t open it, I’ll shoot it open. Drive out the back while Massimo’s in the front, waiting to bring me home so I can fulfill a trade my husband would never make.
I’ll find Dario. I’ll get him. We will swim with sharks together.
I put the rifle in the trunk and get into the car. My ears are relieved from the constant screeching when the door closes.
The car starts.
“Okay,” I say to myself. “I know how.”
I push the brake and put the car into drive. Ease up on the brake. I go out to the turn and stop.
Getting to the back is easy. Left around the house, then follow the road. Should be right around there.
But Massimo’s in the front, trying to take me away. He can chase me.
More importantly, he has value.
I can use him to get Dario back.
I go straight, to the front, so slowly it seems like forever before the gate comes into view. But there it is, with Massimo’s car pulled right up to it, and my brother pushing the intercom button enough to wake the dead.
I stop before hitting Benny’s body. Massimo sees me and takes pressure off the button to wave with both hands. I get out.
“Goody!” He grips the bars of the gate as though he’s jailed. “You’re okay! We tracked your number from that call and…”
He’s smiling. How can he be happy?
“… now I can take you where it’s safe.”
“I’m not going with you.” I walk around to the back of the Buick and open the trunk.
“Everything’s going to absolute shit,” he says. “You have to come with me. It’s…”
When I slap the trunk closed, I have the rifle over my shoulder.
His eyes go wide. “What are you doing?”
“Where are they taking him?”
“Put that down before you hurt someone.”
I point it in his direction. I don’t know if I’m aiming right, but I imitate what I saw on television, putting it at my hip, not in front of my face. I’ll figure out if I’m doing it right once Massimo tells me where they took my husband.
“Where is he?” I demand.
“Who?”
“Emo!” The tops of my lungs empty until all I have left are sobs. “Tell! Me!”
“What happened to you?”
I pull the trigger. Get thrown back a step as the bullet goes who-knows-where.
“Jesus fuck!” Massimo cries. “Are you serious?”
I get both feet under me and the muzzle back up. I’m panting so hard I don’t know if I’ll even get that close to hitting a target again.
I don’t want to.
I can’t possibly shoot him, but when I slide the bottom of the gun against the top, the loud click is enough to scare the hell out of a grown man—and I feel the power in that.
“You’re not gonna shoot me, Goody. Unless you aim for Hoboken or something.”
He’s trying to make me laugh so I’ll calm down and not shoot him by accident, because I’m crying too hard to shoot him on purpose.
“Can you just put that down for a minute?” He holds out his hands. He hasn’t taken out his own gun yet. He trusts me too much.
“I won’t trade myself for Dario,” I say through tears. “And don’t lie. You’ll never let him go. Not for me. Not for someone you don’t value more.”