No Safe House

Sixty-three Terry

Vince called up to me from the study of my house, where an armed Reggie was babysitting him.

“You find it?” he asked. There was something in his voice. Was it... mischief?

“Yes,” I said, my body blocking Wyatt’s view of the guns that had been secreted under the attic insulation. There was a hint of light filtering its way around me from the opening in the ceiling and from my phone, set to the flashlight app, which Wyatt was holding up by the rafters.

“That’s good,” Vince asked.

Reggie called up, “Is there a vase?”

I was running my hands over the contents of the box, all the guns. I was guessing at least a couple dozen.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I’m still feeling around.”

“How hard can it be to tell what you’re feeling?” she shouted.

Vince, of course, had to know what I was going to find up here. I remembered what he’d said to me.

If an opportunity presented itself, take it.

What was it he wanted me to do when I found these? Come out shooting? Kill Wyatt, then Reggie?

No, that made no sense. We had to find out where Jane was, and that wasn’t going to be easy if Reggie and Wyatt were dead. As if shooting a couple of people was even within my capabilities.

As I’d told Vince, I didn’t know a lot about firearms, but I was betting these weapons were Glocks, just like the gun in the glove box of Vince’s truck.

There is no safety.

So if these guns were loaded, all one had to do was point and pull the trigger. Maybe some were loaded, and others not. Kind of like playing the Connecticut lottery.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Wyatt. Phone in one hand, gun in the other.

I said, “I need to pass you some of this stuff — you can pass it through the hole down to them.”

He’d have to take a step closer and bend down to do that. Plus, he was going to have to put away either the phone or the gun, or both.

“Hang on a sec,” he said.

He chose the phone. He slid it into the front pocket of his pants and started to crouch down.

“Christ’s sake,” I said. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

He stood up again. “Okay, fine.” The phone came back out, the flashlight app reactivated. This time, Wyatt tucked his gun into the waistband of his pants. But as he started to kneel, he realized tucking it in front was pretty uncomfortable, so he shifted it around to the side.

He knelt down, fumbling with the phone, trying to shine the light where he thought I wanted it.

I swung around, squatting on my haunches, and touched the barrel of the gun to his temple.

I whispered, “Not. One. Word.”

Wyatt took a breath.

“If you move an inch I’ll pull the trigger,” I said.

And thought, Please don’t move.

“Vince,” I called out softly.

“Yeah, Terry?”

“Could you tell Reggie that our situation has changed up here?”

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“I’m guessin’,” Vince said, “the balance of power has shifted.”

“What are you talking about?” Reggie said again.

“That be fair to say, Terry?” Vince said.

“Yeah, that’s fair. I’ve got one of these Glocks pressed up against Wyatt’s head here.”

Wyatt twitched, like maybe he was thinking of going for his gun, but it would have been an awkward move for him to make, and not something he could do quickly, kneeling as he was.

Reggie said, “What? Wyatt?”

“It’s true,” he said. He’d set my phone, faceup, on the narrow side of a stud, the upward cast of light highlighting the droplets of sweat beading up on his forehead.

“How the hell’d that happen?” she asked. “Jesus! How’d he get your gun?”

“He didn’t! It was already up here.”

Vince said, “Hand your piece over, Reggie, or Wyatt’s brains become part of the insulation.”

“No! No way!” she shouted upward. “You take that gun off Wyatt, or I swear to God I’ll shoot your boss!”

Sweat was trickling down my forehead, too. A drop went into my eye and stung like the dickens. I blinked several times.

I said, “How would you like to handle this, Vince?”

Vince, directing his voice my way, said calmly, “Shoot him.”

“Wait!” Wyatt shouted. I couldn’t have been more grateful.

“No!” Reggie screamed. “I swear, if you do, I’ll shoot him one second later. You — you get your ass down here now, you fucker, and let my husband go, or I’ll kill Vince. You think I won’t? You want to try me?”

Vince said to her, “Go ahead. Shoot me. And then my friend will kill your husband. That’s what you stand to lose. Your husband. But all my friend’ll lose is an asshole boss he’s never liked much anyway. But if you hand over your piece, I can talk my friend into not putting a hole in Wyatt’s head.”

“Reggie,” Wyatt said, trying to keep calm, “I don’t want to fucking die up here.” And then he said an interesting thing. “Babe, come on, you can’t run the tax thing without me. You need me for that.”

Like, if Reggie was going to save him, it was going to be for more than love.

I know it’s a cliché, but things really did seem to be moving in slow motion. Every second I held that gun to Wyatt’s head felt like an hour. It wasn’t as if the Glock weighed twenty pounds, but holding it with my arm extended, I was feeling the strain. And my legs, hunched down the way I was, were screaming with pain.

I was a teacher of high school English and creative writing. Holding a gun to the head of a kidnapper did not fall into my general realm of experience. Sure, things got pretty hairy seven years ago, but even then, I hadn’t found myself in a position quite like this.

“So what’s the fucking deal, then?” Reggie asked.

“I want Jane,” Vince said.

“Okay, fine, you get the little bitch back. Wyatt comes down. You get Jane. We’re square. Just give me the vase and the cash that’s up there.”

“There is no vase,” I said. “And there is no cash.”

“Look harder!” Reggie shrieked. “The vase, it doesn’t mean anything to me or you. It’s got no value. It’s my uncle’s.”

“If you’re looking for something Eli Goemann left with me,” Vince said, “it’s not up there. Never was. We stashed his stuff elsewhere. Everything there? It’s from those bikers you asked about earlier. From New Haven.”

“Then we go to where you hid Eli’s stuff,” she said. “You take us there. Then you get Jane. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

“No.” Vince’s voice was very calm. “That’s not how it’s going to work. I get Jane, right now, and you two live.”

Wondering whether there might be a way I could move things along, I pressed the Glock harder against Wyatt’s temple, to the point he nearly lost his balance. I said to him, “She needs to decide just how much she loves, and needs, you.”

“Give him the gun, for Christ’s sake!”

From below, near total silence. I thought I heard a muttered “Fuck.” The tension probably didn’t last more than ten seconds, but it seemed to stretch out for much longer.

It was a relief when I heard Vince say, “I’ve got it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“The two of you can come back down now. Wyatt, you first.”

“He’s got a gun on him,” I said.

“Wyatt, be a good boy and let Terry relieve you of that,” Vince said.

“Use your left hand,” I said. I’d seen a movie or two.

Wyatt forced his left shoulder up and took the gun from his waistband. Holding it between his thumb and index finger, he dangled it toward me and I took it with my left. Without looking, I dropped it behind me on some insulation.

“I take it,” I said to Vince, “that I don’t have to bring all these guns down.”

“Just the one in your hand.”

Wyatt turned himself around and lowered his legs through the hatch, found a perch on the ladder, and descended. I grabbed my phone on the way to the opening, and by the time I was down, gun still in hand, Vince was stationed in a corner of the room with the gun trained on the happy couple, now standing shoulder to shoulder.

“We tell where she is, right now, you let us go,” Reggie said, still an edge in her voice, still thinking she had some leverage.

Vince looked at me and sighed. “Do I look like I have some sort of mental problem?”

“It’s okay. We’ll take you,” Wyatt said. “We’ll take you to the house. We’ll take you to her.”

“Who’s with her?”

“Nobody,” the woman said. “She’s alone. Tied up, but just fine.”

Vince’s eyes went from her to him and back again. He said, more to himself than anyone else in the room, “We only need one person to take us there.”

I thought, Please don’t kill someone in my house.

“Come on,” Reggie said, a hint of pleading in her voice. “We’re cooperating, we are.”

“We’ll get her back to you,” Wyatt said flatly. “We’ll do what you want.”

“We’re going back out to your car,” Vince said, “and you’re driving.” He was looking at Reggie. “I’ll be in the back with your husband.”

Which put me up front, riding shotgun, as it were. Unless Vince no longer required my services.

I decided to ask, “You still need me?”

The man looked wounded. “Are you kidding? You’re my number two.”