Kill All the Lawyers

Thirty-Nine

Heart pounding, Steve ripped the tape from Maria's mouth and winced as she cried out in pain. She had red marks above and below her lips, and her forehead bled from where she'd banged it against the deck. Her entire body trembled, starting at her shoulders and running all the way down to her legs and feet. She sobbed, great streaks of tears tracking across her cheeks. Her wrists were bound behind her back with quarter-inch line.

Steve worked at the line, but her chest heaved as she sobbed, and her arms shook, and it took a while to undo the knots. They weren't slipknots. They were knots never intended to come loose.

When the line finally came free, he gave her a moment to rub out the stiffness in each wrist, both raw and bleeding.

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." She seemed to be chanting it between sobs. Steve wrapped his arms around her, could feel the tremors shaking her from the inside out.

The air was greasy and stale, and Steve felt the sweat drip down his arms. He tried to untie the line around her ankles, but it was too tight and she was bleeding where it had cut into her. The other end of the line was fixed securely to an engine mount.

"There's a knife in the cockpit. I'll be right back, Maria."

"No. Don't leave! Please."

Steve sat down with her. He'd give her a minute. "Where's Kreeger?"

The name didn't seem to register. Apparently, kidnappers don't introduce themselves. "The man who took you. Where'd he go?"

She shook her head. She didn't know.

Steve wondered if she was in shock. But then the words poured out. She started at the beginning. Bobby was acting up, and she decided to ride home without him. When she got to her bike, a man was waiting. He grabbed her and threw her into his car. A BMW, she noted. He reached up under her shirt and pulled off her bra, touching her. She thought he was going to rape her, but he just crumpled the bra and dropped it in Bobby's bike bag.

"Then he put my bike in his trunk. And I thought this was good. Like, no matter what he was going to do to me, he'd let me go, let me ride my bike home. But after he tied me up and we drove a little bit, he took my cap and put it in my bike bag."

"Your cap?"

"Well, Bobby's cap. That Solomon and Lord one he always wears."

Including the day we went to Kreeger's office.

"Then the man threw my bike in some bushes."

"Near the road?"

"Yeah. A few feet away."

Where the bike would be found. With strands of Bobby's hair in the cap, his prints and DNA all over it. Another piece of evidence, another nail in the coffin.

"Then he put me in the trunk inside a big bag, and I could barely breathe. I might have passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was down here, all tied up."

She started crying again.

"Did he say anything?"

"Only that we were going for a cruise, but he needed to wait for a store to open. I asked if he was getting sandwiches and drinks, and he just laughed."

A store? It made no sense to Steve, but there was no time to figure it out. Kreeger would be coming back. Steve put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Maria, we need to get you out of here. I'm going up to get a knife. Is that all right?"

She nodded. "But come right back, okay?"

Steve scrambled up the ladder, climbed through the hatch, and took one step before the lightning bolt hit him. He felt his head snap back. He saw the pain itself inside his brain, an electrical flash behind his eyes. He heard thunderclaps. And then the world went quiet and black.