Richter’s fingers closed on the shirt.
A bolt of agony shot up Richter’s arm from his wrist. Seba’s shirt slipped free.
His eyes flashed to his arm, just now noticing his wrist was crooked. The son of a bitch broke my arm! he thought as the pain started to throb.
Richter’s eyes being on his deformed wrist, he didn’t see the palm strike coming at his temple.
~~~
When Richter woke up and lifted his head, Seba was standing nearby, calmly eyeing him. The man said, “Stay down on the floor. The police and an ambulance should be here in a couple more minutes.”
Richter groaned and sat up.
Seba sighed, “Or don’t…
Richter looked around, No sign of Joe, he thought. The worthless prick. He glanced at Seba and thought, Even with a broken wrist, I should be able to take this bastard. He just had the drop on me the first time. Then I’ll climb out the window and call that pissant Joe. Richter tried to get up, but his ankles wouldn’t separate enough to give him a stance. A bleary glance showed they were tied together with electrical wire. He reached for the knot in it with his good left hand and was astonished to see his hand was wrapped in what looked like half a roll of duct tape.
Shit! he thought, wearily lying back down. Gonna have to wait for the cops.
***
After the cops finished talking to Kaem, they arrested Richter. They advised Kaem that he shouldn’t have tried to capture Richter himself. They dusted the stazer for fingerprints despite Kaem’s attempt to explain that fingerprints didn’t stick to Stade. They also dusted all around the window glass and frame without finding prints there either. Apparently, Richter’s partner had also worn gloves.
The police finally left.
Kaem wondered what to do about the window, but decided to worry about it in the morning. I’ll sleep in the stazer to keep watch, he thought. That brought him back to worrying about what’d gone wrong with his attempt to staze himself. In the morning, people are going to be asking me why I was here tonight. If they figure out I was trying to staze myself, some of them are going to be all over my case. Should I spend some time working on it tonight? he wondered, checking his watch. It was 10:38. Not quite as late as I thought. I’ll just have a quick look at the code If it’s easy to fix, I can try stazing myself again.
He opened his laptop and called up the script he’d written to delay the stazing. His eye caught on the clock in the corner of his screen. It read 10:55… Off by seventeen minutes, he realized.
Or, a little more than 16.7 minutes.
I was stazed!
And I didn’t even notice it!
Norm was right when he said he thought the dog didn’t even know it’d been stazed.
Kaem pumped his fist.
***
Kaem spent the night at Staze. When he woke up in the morning, the building was cold from the open window and Kaem realized he’d have to go to class before anyone else would arrive. That’ll probably be better than running into them, he decided.
He wrapped the sheet from the stazer around a likely sized empty box and stuffed it into the hole in the window, then put a post-it note on the glass above the hole. The note said someone had broken in and asked them to get a glass shop to repair it ASAP.
Partway through his first class, he got a text from Arya with a list of questions about the break-in.
He called her back during the break between his first and second class. She answered, “What the hell were you doing over here in the middle of the night?”
“Working on a little project of my own.”
“The police came by in follow-up. They said there were two guys and one of them got away?”
“Uh-huh, he was already outside when I came upon them.”
“Kaem!” Arya said, her voice breaking. Sounding scared, she said, “What the hell were you thinking, trying to stop a couple of criminals! You should’ve just called the police and let them deal with it… Nothing they could take would’ve been worth you… getting hurt.”
She truly sounds worried, he thought. Does she care that much about me; or is she just worried about whether they can keep Staze going without me? Trying to sound hurt and offended, Kaem said, “Hey! I’m not a wimp anymore, you know?”
“One of them had a gun, Kaem. In my karate classes, they teach us not to get in fights with people who have guns.”
“You’re right. Sorry. While I was trying to keep them from taking the stazer, I was telling myself it was stupid not to just call the police.”
“You should’ve listened to yourself!” Her voice turned suspicious, “The cop told me the guy they arrested broke his wrist. How’d that happen?”
“Um, when I pulled him and the stazer back out of the window, he fell. Maybe he broke it then.”
“And what kind of project were you over here working on at night?”
Kaem considered refusing to tell her, on principle since she was being so bossy and acting like he needed her permission. When he heard her take a breath, preparatory to barking at him some more, he said, “You remind me of my mom, back when I was about twelve, always yelling at me about something.”
“Kaem! I was worried about you!”
“She used to say that too.” He sighed, “Now that I’m of the opinion I’m grown up, it’s kind of irritating.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice breaking again. She sobbed, “I’m so
