to get much worse for misbehavior, but within moments Hugh was kneeling on his back and holding him down firmly.
Tom placed the butcher knife against Stanley's upper arm.
And began to saw.
It was a long, involved process, but fortunately for Stanley, he was insane for most of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stanley sat in the darkness, hurting and miserable.
He missed his arm already.
They'd taken it away, laughing, and then packaged it up and mailed it off.
He'd be okay. He was still alive, and Brant would pay the ransom. Maybe with an extra splash of virgin blood they could reattach his arm. Hopefully the thugs packed it carefully.
No matter what happened, he wasn't going to get depressed. He might cry and scream and pound his fists (well, fist) against the floor, but he was going to remain upbeat. He'd get out of this. Project Second Chance knew about the injection deadline, so they wouldn't waste any time coming up with the money.
Since handcuffs were somewhat ineffective on an individual with only one hand, they'd tied his remaining arm behind his back by wrapping the rope around his chest.
He tried to think happy thoughts. After all, having only one arm wouldn't limit his lifestyle all that much. What would he miss out on? Push-ups?
That was pretty much it. Push-ups. And really, you could do one-handed push-ups if you had enough strength in your arm, so he'd be losing out on nothing.
He'd be fine.
He could make a lot of jokes about his disarming presence, and he'd have an advantage over two-armed actors if they ever cast for a remake of The Fugitive, and maybe he could even get a really cool prosthetic arm, one with superhuman crushing abilities or a telescope built into the forearm or a laser or something.
Then he'd be fighting some serious crime.
He closed his eyes and wept.
He woke up, not sure if he'd actually been asleep. He knew that Tom had come in and said something to him, but he'd understood it to be something about lemmings and trampolines, which was probably not the reality of the conversation.
He felt weak. He wasn't sure how long he'd been locked in the room, but it may well have been twenty-four hours or more.
He wondered when the oozing would begin.
He heard voices on the other side of the door. He couldn't make out the words, but one of them was definitely Tom. The other wasn't Hugh.
The door opened.
'Donald…?'
The scream had jolted Donald Mandigan out of a very nice daydream involving the new makeup girl. She'd been wearing a nurse outfit that would be unacceptable at any state-approved hospital, and she kept dropping her thermometer.
He hurried out of his office and over to the source of the scream. One of his interns was pressed against the wall, pointing at the package she'd opened.
Donald rushed over and glanced inside.
An arm. A bluish-grey arm that looked a hell of a lot like the arm that had been formerly attached to Stanley Dabernath.
'Everyone stay calm!' he announced to the other five people in the area. 'Where did this come from?'
'It was in today's mail,' the intern explained.
There was an envelope taped to the lid of the box. Donald pulled it free, opened it, and removed the handwritten letter inside.
Donald Mandigan, we have Mr. Corpse. If you want to see him alive again, bring twenty million dollars to 313 East Arginine Blvd. at midnight tonight. Let nobody follow you. Tell nobody. If you disobey our instructions, the next package will contain his head.
'Did anybody else see this?' Donald demanded.
The intern shook her head. Donald looked around the room, and the rest of his staff shook their heads as well.
'Okay, you're all under information lockdown. There are raises for all of you if you keep quiet. Nobody is to say a word to anybody, got it?'
The members of his staff nodded their understanding.
Donald closed up the box, returned to his office, and shut the door. He had to think about this.
Donald drove to the appointed address, a briefcase resting on the car seat next to him. It did not contain twenty million dollars. He didn't have that much. He did have enough hundred dollar bills wrapped around stacks of one-dollar bills that if the contents were not carefully inspected, it would pass for twenty million dollars.
He hadn't told his producer because she would freak if she knew he was putting himself in this much danger and probably call the cops herself. Yes, it was a big risk, but the story potential was immeasurable. And he didn't think he was dealing with criminal geniuses, or else they would've mailed the arm to Project Second Chance, not him. Then again, they were the kind of sadistic bastards who would cut off somebody's arm, so he had to be careful.
He spoke into his handheld recorder as he drove. 'If these are the last words I speak, I want the world to know that I died to save a truly great American…'
He pulled into the driveway of a small, decrepit home. It was about ten minutes until midnight.
He waited.
A couple of minutes after midnight, a man approached the car, pointing a gun. 'Come out with the money,' he said.
Donald picked up the suitcase and got out of the car. 'I'm unarmed,' he lied.
The man grinned. 'So is Mr. Corpse.'
'Funny. Where is he?'
'He's safe.'
'How do I know that?'
The man gestured at him with the gun. 'Put the suitcase on the car and open it, slowly.'
Donald set the suitcase down and popped the lid.
'I said slowly!'
'That was slowly.'
'Slower.'
Donald very slowly opened the lid, revealing the bills inside. He picked up the stack on the upper right corner,
