Retriever Ransom

Chapter Eighteen

Denise screamed, her face turning white with fear. "Get out! Get out of here!" she cried, running to the edge of the cabin and pressing herself flat against the wall.

"Yeesh. What's wrong with her?"

I knew that voice. Pringle!

I watched as he hopped down from my chest and onto the floor below. Oh, I’d never been so happy to see that pesky raccoon in all my life.

"What are you doing here?" I sobbed, tears of relief flowing freely down my cheeks. "How did you know where to find me?"

"Enough with the questions," the raccoon said, tapping his thumb and forefinger together as he thought.

I sat quietly, waiting for him to reveal his master plan, praying desperately that he even had one.

Denise continued to shake and cry, realizing too late that she’d left the gun behind in her desperate need to escape the raccoon.

We both glanced down at the weapon, then our eyes met.

Pringle stood beside me, pushing the shards of glass away with his feet as he slowly cleared a path. He didn’t appear to be in much of a hurry.

"Not to pressure you," I said softly, "but I kind of need to know what I'm supposed to do here."

Yes, I was speaking with Pringle right in front of Denise, but right now the only options seemed to be exposing my strange secret or dying an assuredly painful death.

Today, I chose to let my freak flag fly.

"Why are you talking to it?" my captor asked with a ragged shriek. "Get it out of here!"

Pringle drew in a deep breath, his furry shoulders shaking as he attempted to remain calm. "You might want to tell that lady to stop calling me 'it'," he warned. "I ain't no nightmare clown."

I would've laughed, had I not been so terrified. Instead, I simply relayed his message to Denise. "He doesn't like you calling him it. His name is Pringle and he's a boy."

He chittered in annoyance, then corrected me. “I am a man, thank you very much.”

“He's a man,” I translated, keeping my affect flat.

Denise gawked at the two of us with wide, unblinking eyes. It looked as though she wanted to say something, but only a raspy croak escaped her throat.

"So anyway,” the master bandit continued. "Some giant, hairy dog showed up at the house, all panting and excited and saying you'd been carried off. I knew right then and there that it would be up to me to save the day."

I nodded my appreciation and would've hugged him if I hadn't still been tied to my seat.

"He led me back through the woods and now here I am. You miss me?" He smiled, showing off his pointy canines.

"More than you'll ever know," I told him, not caring if I was gushing. I would never punish him for stepping foot in the house again. Not only that, but I would keep him well fed with Fancy Feast, or Delectable Delights, or whatever he wanted. I wasn't above groveling, and I would also make sure to pay my debts, no matter how Pringle wanted them paid.

"I'm so glad you came," I told him. "They're planning to kill me."

"Well, that's a bit extreme," the raccoon observed, then turned toward Denise, taking several quick steps forward.

She pushed herself against the wall, still immobilized from fear.

"Were you really going to kill my neighbor?" he asked, squinting his eyes at her. "That's not very nice!"

Not very nice? Since when had Pringle begun to sound like Paisley? Personally, I had lots of words to describe the Thompsons’ plan for me and none of them were anywhere near that mild.

“You think you can untie me?" I couldn't take the chance that Denise would gather her bearings and make a run for the gun. No, I needed to be able to fight for myself when the time came.

And, already, I knew that it would.

"You're really impatient, you know that?" Pringle remarked with a nasally twang as he returned to my side, grabbed one of the larger shards of glass, and began to saw at my binds.

"Don't even give a guy a minute to relax. Do you know how far I had to run to get here? Ungrateful humans..." He let out a huff of air, and as he continued his work, he chattered along, whether to himself or to me, I wasn't quite sure.

"Anyway, I ran, and I ran. Do you know how deep the snow is out there? And that dog kept talking about pee. Dogs, I tell you. What weird creatures."

Just then, Marco got up from his napping spot by the armchair. I was surprised the ruckus hadn't roused him before.

"Oh, great. Here's another one," Pringle spat. "I'm up to my elbows in canines!”

“Speaking of, where's Cujo?" I asked, feeling one of the threads of twine holding me snap.

"Heck if I know," Pringle answered, continuing his work. "We got close enough for me to smell you for myself. Then the two of us parted ways. He said his job was done, informed me that he's a good boy and that he was going now. But me? I figured I might as well come and see. So what's going on, by the way?"

I swallowed back a sigh. I couldn't appear ungrateful. Not now.

"They kidnapped me and are threatening the mayor so that he'll resign. Then they're going to kill me," I summarized, hating the fact that these words were even coming out of my mouth—let alone that they were true.

"So if the mayor doesn't give in, they're gonna off ya?" Pringle asked, tugging on the rope and then resuming his work with the glass shard.

"Actually they plan to kill me either way."

"Wow. I really do not like this lady. Is it okay if I bite her? Give her a little rabies maybe?”

"Pringle, you do not have rabies,” I chastised him. Talk about spreading negative stereotypes. “But yes, you can bite her."

"Lovely," he said, at last delivering the finishing slash to the ropes.

I yanked my hands in front of me and rubbed at my wrists where they’d gone raw.

Free! This felt so good.

Now I just had to… Oh no.

Denise had finally begun to move again, and she was rushing right to the gun. I moved as quick as I could, throwing myself halfway across the room, but I already knew I’d lost.