In position. Go when ready.
Thirty-Eight
At just after 5:00 a.m., Louis’s phone vibrates on the desk. He grabs it as he stands from his chair and starts toward the bathroom, the phone to his ear.
I nearly shout at him.
“I have to pee.”
He pauses, glances back at me with a frown.
“Hold it.”
“Not sure I can. You want me to pee my pants?”
The phone to his ear, he makes a face, takes a deep breath.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum are still lounging on their respective beds. Tweedledum isn’t on his cell phone anymore, but he has it on the bed beside him. Tweedledee’s phone is still in his pocket.
Louis gestures at Tweedledee, whose bed is closer to me.
“Take care of her.”
Louis doesn’t wait for a response; he steps out into the hallway, murmuring into the phone.
Tweedledee grunts as he slides across the bed and stands up, facing me.
I push to my feet at the same time—and lurch forward, as if tripping over my own feet. Straight into Tweedledee.
Tweedledum is on his feet a second later, his Beretta in hand, the barrel aimed at my head.
Tweedledee pushes me away angrily—“What the fuck?”—and I stumble back and fall into the chair.
“I’m sorry! I just”—I hold up my zip-tied wrists—“I don’t have much balance with my hands like this. Plus, I’ve been sitting for hours. My legs fell asleep.”
Tweedledum keeps his gun trained on me while Tweedledee takes a step back. He glances at his counterpart, then at the door Louis disappeared through, and motions at me to stand up again.
I stand up.
Tweedledee reaches into his pants pocket—the right-hand side, fortunately—and pulls out a tactical knife, pops the blade. He motions with the knife toward the bathroom.
I move past him, conscious of Tweedledum tracking me with the Beretta. The bathroom door is closed, and I push it open and hit the switches inside the door, turning on the light and overhead fan.
Tweedledee says, “Toilet.”
I pause, turn back around.
“Is that how you get your rocks off—watching a girl use the toilet?”
Tweedledee doesn’t answer. For some reason, he doesn’t get my sense of humor.
The lid is already up. I unbutton my jeans and push them and my underwear down as I sit on the cold toilet seat.
I stare back up at Tweedledee, ignoring Tweedledum who stands a couple feet behind him with his gun still aimed.
“Like what you see?”
He steps forward, holds up the knife. I hold out my hands, and with one simple twist of his wrist the zip-tie snaps and falls to the floor.
As he shuts the door, he says, “One minute.”
The moment the door closes, I reach for my jeans pocket, where I slipped Tweedledee’s cell phone once I lifted it from him. Thankfully, the phone isn’t locked. Of course it isn’t. Why bother locking a phone that will be destroyed in a couple hours and doesn’t contain any personal information?
I punch in Atticus’s number, the same number I gave Erik the other day. I have to assume Erik didn’t contact Atticus, and even if he did, it doesn’t matter. Atticus needs to know I’m still alive. He needs to know what’s happening, and how President Cortez is in danger. Most importantly, of course, he needs to know about my family.
“Thank you for calling Scout Dry Cleaners. Our normal business hours are Monday through Friday, seven a.m. to seven p.m., and on Saturdays eight a.m. to three p.m. We are closed Sundays.”
A beep sounds, and that’s when I hit the plunger to flush the toilet and start to whisper.
“It’s Holly. My entire family is in danger. They need protection ASAP. I’m in L.A., and they want me to assassinate—”
The door handle turns, and at once I disconnect the call and shove the phone back into my pocket as I stand and start to pull up my underwear and jeans.
The door opens. Tweedledee stands there, the knife still in his hand, his face stoic.
“Minute’s up.”
“Can I at least wash my hands?”
He says it again, this time slowly.
“Minute’s up.”
He moves away as I step into the room. I head toward my chair in the corner when Louis returns.
Closing the door, he says, “We’re still on schedule.”
I’m almost to the chair when Tweedledee speaks, his voice low and menacing.
“You bitch.”
I pause, glance back at him.
He says to Louis, “She took my fucking phone.”
Before I can even argue my case, Louis grabs the fob from his pocket, and a firework explodes around my neck. I turn and fall back into the chair, my body jerking for the couple seconds it takes before Louis disengages the fob.
Tweedledee advances toward me, his face a storm of rage, the knife held up at his side.
“You fucking bitch.”
I manage, “Wait—”
Louis zaps me with another firework, and I’m starting to wish I used the toilet, because if this keeps up much longer, I’m probably going to pee my pants.
With a shaking finger, I point at the floor.
“There!”
Tweedledee pauses long enough to spot his phone on the carpet, right beneath the bed. It’s where I managed to kick it when Louis entered the room, granting me a second or two of distraction. I didn’t have time to delete the call from the log, so if they check it, I’m screwed.
Louis disengages the fob, and I sit slumped in the chair, breathing heavily.
Tweedledum covers his counterpart with the Beretta as Tweedledee retrieves the phone from the carpet.
Tweedledee stares down at it for a beat, then shakes his head as he glances at the two men.
“Musta slipped from my pocket.”
He tosses it on the bed and turns to the bag on the floor. He takes out a fresh zip-tie and crosses back over and tells me to hold out my wrists.
Once he’s bound my wrists together, Tweedledee asks Louis, “How much longer before this shit’s over?”
“Two more hours, give or take. Mr. Hayward will alert me once he gets notification. Then we can wrap this
