The Hunt for Excalibur

17 Court’s Intuition

Court could hardly breathe, but he tried to straighten his legs to get his diaphragm to open a bit. His skin burned from the cold, but it was the biting restraints that chewed into his wrists that really brought the hell. Dressed in only his underpants and socks, he shivered wildly in the darkness. Outside the wall he was tied to, his car was waiting, he thought. What a terrible thought, that freedom, that the road home, was just about twelve inches of wall away. Yet, here he was, trapped alone in the storeroom of a cheap, shitty pawnshop in Gorbals.

Pain shot through every inch of his battered body. He wondered what Sue and the children were thinking. Surely they would know by now that he had to be in trouble, that he was not just out on some underhanded spree, or so he hoped. Barely escaping with his life, he now knew that he had to keep the location of the scabbard secret. However, time was running out faster than free minutes in a whorehouse and he had to get free before Silver and his associates found out where the scabbard was. It was the only leverage he still had that kept him breathing.

On the other hand, he was perplexed and heavily concerned about the supposed picture someone had sent of the sheath. It was under the floor of his home, as far as he recalled, so the prospect of how someone else could have discovered it was the first worry. Someone was inside his home? The second jabbing panic was that said person had not only managed to obtain the sheath, but took pictures and spread it around for any police organization or cartel to find.

Court had so many questions about his own secrets. Tomorrow night the German and his minion would be back to ask him about that secret, and with him having no idea how the item was found or where it was now, he would be as good as dead. If only they would allow him to go and retrieve it, he wished, but he soon realized that such an undertaking would lead them straight to his family.

He wept bitterly in the merciless dark. “I am so fucked.”

Only a lonely streetlight peeked into the storeroom where he was crying like a child, lost and afraid for his family. A few hours before he was convinced that their struggles were over when he came to sell the items for the reward of financial freedom. Now the money that drove all his actions was the last thing he could hope for. Now, he had to be grateful that he was still sucking air. How things could go bad if he only resorted to another form of conducting his business. Had he not taken this route of deception, he would have been in his bed right now, with his family safe. Yes, he would be poor, but poor is a cheaper price than dead.

Major Johannes Rian had questioned him about the new information obtained by that wretched phone call. From what he heard while the bodyguard, Yiannis, was beating the shit out of him, the scabbard was photographed and sent to some woman. Even now, Court could not figure out how this could happen, since the scabbard was safely lost under his house. Therefore, he was certainly in no position to even begin trying to articulate the conundrum while under the spell of agony.

In any event, the problem was now growing two heads for the poor mechanic who meant well. On one hand, he had tried to sell stolen goods that held the attention of the worst kind of people. One the other, he now had to explain how the woman who sent the pictures got her hands on the scabbard, if Court did not sell it to her. The entire thing was a huge misunderstanding, of course, but for him to argue the contrary of what looked like obvious treachery was a nightmare.

Parched and cold, Court tried in vain to reach a bottle of liquor that sat on a small chair near him. With his hands tied behind his back, around the plumbing, it was practically impossible to reach. The clear vodka would serve him in so many ways if he could only get it down his gullet. Surely it would warm his innards and inebriate him enough to reason with reckless liberty. This kind of logic usually got drunk men to do absurd things and survive. Why would it not work for his escape plan?

The tip of his dirty foot prodded the leg of the chair, inching it away from him with every attempt, but Court was no quitter. If he was going to die tomorrow night, he was going to celebrate his last night by drinking all Silver’s vodka left over. With three more taps to the chair, he had managed to disturb the balance of the bottle successfully, and it toppled over, thankfully not breaking on the floor.

“Yes!” Court shouted, but all that escaped his throat was a stupid moan through smiling lips. “Come hither, me beauty.” He smirked like a beast bound on its catch, rolling the bottle toward him with his foot. It was only when the smooth glass surface touched his leg that he realized he was still unable to open and drink.

“Fookin’ idiot,” he rasped in frustration. Once again, he tried to extricate his right hand from the duct tape, but even after so many attempts, he accomplished nothing more than a bruised wrist and aching joints. Desperate, Court felt like crying. He had already told the bastards that he had the scabbard. Once they found out who this mystery woman is, he was done for. They were only keeping the mechanic alive until they knew where she had found the relic. After that, he was dead.

During his interrogation, the German and his Greek enforcer had confiscated Court’s wallet and driver’s license. They had his street address. Nothing was stopping them from paying a visit to his family to make him talk. Panic overwhelmed Court in the solitude of the storage room, but he could not help it. As calm as he tried to keep himself, nothing could deter the constant scenarios that popped up in his head about the awful things they could do to the women and to little Beany.

Court Callany was not a man of intuition, but the horrid feeling about his family would not subside. And for good reason.