Kris Longknife's Bloodhound, a novella (9 page)

Chapter 11

Taylor came aware of his surroundings slowly.  Before opening his eyes, he took stock of matters and found them grave. 

He was seated in a comfortable chair.  His hands were cuffed in his lap.  He could also feel restraints at his ankles.  In all likelihood, the two were chained together.

His first glace upon opening his eyes verified that.  He kept his chin resting on his chest and surveyed his surroundings through slit eyelids.

The room looked comfortable, in an expensive way.  The rug was white, the chair and sofa he could see were white leather.  The walls were a sterile white as well.

If they beat up on me, the blood will sure make a mess of the decor. 

Taylor didn’t find his joke funny.

Arlen Cob sauntered into the room.  “Ah, sleeping beauty has awoken.  I feared I’d have to give you the required kiss.”

“It only works if true love is behind it,” Taylor said, dryly.  “But I would trouble you for a drink.  Water please.”

“I think that can be arranged,” and Arlen left the room.  A moment later he returned with an icy glass of water and a straw.  He brought the straw to Taylor’s lips and the agent sucked up half the glass in one gulp.

“Yeah, I’m told that stuff dries you out,” he said.  “There’s more cool stuff where that came from.”

“So you don’t intend for me to die of thirst.  Starve?”

“We intend to return you to your life, untouched by angry human hands, right about the time your leave runs out.”

“How nice, and, no doubt, after the ships have sailed.”

The security man’s smile was pure evil.  “I don’t know nothing about no ships.”

Taylor looked around the room.  “Comfortable place you got here.”

“We like to think it is.  In time, I think you’ll find it that way.  We can provide all kinds of amenities, once you understand that you aren’t going anywhere.  Why, I’ve even been given a cash allotment to give you so you can join in our poker game.  We really want you to think of this as a holiday.”

“And not a kidnaping?”

“Oh, you strike me to the quick,” Arlen said, raising his free fist to his heart.  “Such a strong word for folks that just want you to enjoy your holiday and not waste it poking your nose where it don’t belong.”

“Into what
you
don’t want me to know.”

“Six one way, half a dozen the other,” the security man said.  “Just so long as you understand that you are not leaving here for the next two, three weeks, we’ll get along fine.”

“And if I refuse your hospitality?”

“That would be a major mistake, Agent.  A major mistake.  We can do this the easy way, and you can join our poker game, swim in our pool.  Share the hot tub with some truly lovely gals that don’t own a swim suit among them.  Maybe share other stuff they got that you wouldn’t believe,” he said with a friendly leer.

All the friendly was gone in a blink.  “Or we can do this the hard way.  I got more of that shit we used on you.  We can keep you out for a long, long time.  ‘Course, I understand that it ain’t healthy for a man of your age to spend a couple of weeks in bed.  It could lead to embolisms and other messy stuff.  It’s your call.  Choose wisely.”

And with that, Arlen left the room, leaving Taylor to contemplate his sins, past, present and to come.

Alone, Taylor tested the boundaries of his imprisonment.  The cuffs on his hands were linked to his ankles with a chain that let him move a bit, but not enough to reach his pants pockets, assuming they hadn’t been emptied, and assuming he was carrying anything useful.

His leggings were not only chained to his cuffs, but had chains going to each leg of the chair.  His feet couldn’t move more than a centimeter or two to the right or left.

He managed to struggle to his feet.  He had to stand stooped over; the chain to his legs was not long enough to stand fully upright.  He tried to shuffle forward.

The chair would not move.  Whether it was just too heavy or somehow secured to the floor, it wasn’t going anywhere, and he with it.

He sat back down.  As much as he hated to admit that the security flake was right about anything, Taylor could already feel his blood pooling towards his feet.  Sitting, hour after hour, was not going to go well.

So, old boy, what do you do?  Have them deal you in, or what?

Taylor hated the question.  He hated the answer even more.

If he stayed here in the chair, the situation would remain static.  If he played along, he might get an opening.  Criminals always made mistakes.  If he played their game, he might get an opening.

But keep your pants on, old friend.  No doubt, they’ll have cameras around to capture anything worthy of blackmail.

Assuming they didn’t digitize him into a compromising position anyway.

From somewhere, the heavenly smell of steaks on a grill wafted through the room, and Taylor found it had been a long time since breakfast.

It was thirty minutes before Arlen returned.  “What’s it going to
be?  Steaks fresh from the grill or a bottle of sugar water jabbed into your arm?”

Taylor scowled.  “I will escape.”

“I fully expect you to try.  You won’t,” had finality in it.

Taylor found himself freed from his chair and allowed to shuffle to the next room.   A spacious kitchen and
dining room had a table that clearly had been the center of a poker game only a few minutes before.  The three men now lounging around it had the distinct air of alertness and power. They also looked like they were very comfortable with the automatics that hung ready in their shoulder holsters.

One end of the room faced a expansive patio and pool.  Through large
French doors, a fifth man brought in large platter with a huge steak, a baked potato slathered in butter and an ear of corn.  With a cautious eye, the armed cook set the steak before Taylor. 

The agent eyed it hungrily.  “Do I eat it with my hands, guys?” Taylor asked.

The hard cases enjoyed a laugh and Arlen produced a steak knife with a serrated edge but a well-rounded end.  “You aren’t getting away from us,” his kidnaper said.

They waited for him to get fully involved with his steak, there was just enough play in the wrist restraints for him to eat if he bowed his head to meet the fork, before they went outside one by one to return with their own platters.  The table chatter was focused on the upcoming hockey championship.  Taylor followed the sports pages enough to make a few comments on the chances the Accomack Fliers would have against the Wicomico White Lightnings. 

The book said it was a good idea to help your kidnappers see you were a human being like them.  Arlen might be saying he didn’t intend Taylor any harm, but the agent hadn’t heard that from the rest.

Besides, in a situation like this, things were always subject to change.

The steaks were hardly done when the girls arrived.  What little they wore didn’t stay on after a dip in the pool or the hot tub.  The kidnappers enjoyed their very available feminine gifts.  Taylor had to work hard to keep his pants on, not that that kept each of the girls from trying her hand at getting him into the fun.

“You know you want me,” each of them would purr, taking him firmly in hand.

“Thank you, but I think I’ll pass,” Taylor said, time after time.  No doubt they would produce a film of him fully involved in the orgy, but he wanted to be able to face his wife and say, “That is a fake.  I didn’t do anything of the sort.”

He also wanted to pass a Bureau of Investigation polygraph test.

While he was trying not to gawk at the live porn action around him, he studied what he could see out the window.  There were hills in his view.  His best guess was that he was in a house deep in the foothills to the west of Wardhaven.  He doubted they were all the way to the mountains.

With any luck, the recording of this, with him no doubt naked and
flagrante
, would also have some of the scenery.  His agents would be able to locate the house from that.

Assuming he survived long enough for them to attempt black mail, or whatever Alex Longknife intended to do to cover up this bit of kidnaping.

Through the carrying on, Taylor kept his eye out for an escape, but while a lot came up, an escape wasn’t one of them.  All through it, one of the guards was seated a meter or so from him.  Well out of reach for a lunge, something that would be worthless, anyway, in his shackled condition.  His guards never got close enough for him to make a grab for their gun.

“Isn’t it the pits when the bad guys hire people good at what they do,” Arlen said with a smirk when it was his turn to keep watch. 

“Yeah, the boys like to play, and I make sure they get a good chance at it, but no, none of them is going to slack on the job.  We know what needs doing, and we do it.  For example, note your computer and burner phone,” he said with a wave of his hand to the counter where the contents of Taylor’s pockets lay spread out.

“We took the battery out of your computer and the chip and battery out of your phone.  Did it as soon as you were out cold in the car.  No locator is going to find you.”

Arlen walked over to the counter and picked up the batteries.  “We won’t be needing these, will we?” he said, and dropped them into a glass of water.

Correction, glass of acid.  The contents of the glass bubbled and the batteries dissolved.  Then the kidnapper added the phone chip.  “There, you can quit looking at your gear.  Even if you managed to hop your way over here, there’s be nothing you could do to make any of this junk work.  You’re screwed, even if you won’t enjoy the entertainment we’re offering you.”

“I will escape,” Taylor said, doing his best to make it sound ominous, thought he still had no idea how he might pull it off.

“In your dreams, boyo.  In your dreams,” Arlen said, his back to Taylor as his hands wondered through the agent’s pocket contents.

“My, now what is this?” the kidnaper said, raising a sphere to eye level.

“That’s a marble my father gave me.  I keep it as a kind of good luck piece,” Taylor said, lying through his teeth.  It was the sphere Trouble’s Tech mage had given him.  What it did, he still had no idea, but he wasn’t about to tell this bunch of criminals that.

“You, a hard headed type, believe in magic.  I think not.”

“My father died two years ago,” Taylor said, finding no problem telling this painful truth.  “It reminds me of him.  I roll it around in my hand when I have a tou
gh call to make and ask myself, ‘What would dad do?’”

“What do you know?  Someone who cares about his old man.  Me, I would have spat on his grave, but his fourth wife cremated him and kept the ashes on her
mantelpiece.  She’s got a collection there, now.  Four husbands.  She would have hired me some girls for this, if I’d made her an offer.”

Taylor wondered how this bit of
self-revelation would end up.  Not the rambling talk, but the fate of the sphere.  Arlen held it up to the light.  “It’s got all kinds of colors in it,” he muttered, then he put it in his own pocket.

“Ask me for it nice when we let you go and I may give it back to you.”

“You really want to add theft to kidnaping?” Taylor asked.

That got him a nasty face, but the head honcho pulled the sphere from his pocket and, carefully approaching Taylor from behind, slipped it into his left pants pocket.  “There, you happy?”

“Thank you,” Taylor said.

“You’re welcome.”

The sun was well down before the girls were sent packing.  They made a final attempt on Taylor but he managed to keep as much of his virtue intact as conditions allowed.  Arlen sent them on their way with a large bonus and then had his four henchmen see that Taylor was put to bed and shackled to it most securely.

One man was ordered to the comfortable chair Taylor had awoken in.  “We’ll trade off every two hours.  Don’t worry, Boyo, you won’t get lonesome.”

With not much to do, and little chance to do it, Taylor decided to let himself sleep.  They might kill him, but trussed up like he was, he wouldn’t be able to stop them.  He’d learned as a soldier to get his sleep when he could.  No use being tired when the chance came.

To Taylor’s surprise, he fell asleep rather quickly.

Chapter
12

He came awake to someone gently shoving his foot back and forth. 

“Wakie wakie, boss,” came in Leslie’s delightful voice.

“Aren’t you up past your bedtime?” Taylor said, fully awake and alert to not only his subordinate laughing at his question, but a large number of uniformed, armored and armed men and women moving about the room.  One produced a pair of cutters and soon Taylor was free to sit up in bed.

“We’re hunting for the key to the cuffs and shackles,” Leslie said.

“What took you so long?” he grumbled, unable to think of anything better to fill the silent void.