Suckers - Jack Kilborn [60]
I couldn’t quite tell what the other woman was doing, but I hoped that her partner’s wails were keeping her attention. I scurried away from there, yelping as a clawed hand grab my ankle. I slammed my other foot into the hand. The crack sounded like it hurt.
I scrambled to the other end of the room, hoping I was out of chain-range. In theory, if the Vlad’s administrative assistants had thrown me into the “Pit” with the intention of letting these women devour me, it wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of sense for their chains not to give them total access to anywhere in the room.
After pausing to pluck part of a fingernail out of my ankle, I stood up and pressed myself into the corner. Okay, there had to be a way out of this little pickle. If I ran across the room at top speed (ably avoiding the women with my astounding dexterity) and bashed into the door, I’d either break open the door or the left half of my body. Or maybe both, in which case I could at least drag my mangled frame to safety.
I kind of wished that the woman would stop wailing. It was distracting me from figuring out whether the potential mangling was worth it.
The woman stopped wailing.
Much better.
Then she started giggling, which was less noisy but a lot more unnerving. The other woman giggled with her. I, myself, did not giggle.
I decided that the risk of shattering eighty-three bones was probably worth it.
Another shotgun blast. Much closer than the others.
The door flew open and I got a refreshing glimpse of light as Harry burst into the Pit. He slammed the door behind him, casting us back into darkness.
“Okay, who’s doing the giggling?” he asked.
“Harry, I’m in here with you,” I said.
“That you, Maypole?”
I was in the mood to be around pretty much any human being in the world but Harry McGlade at this point. “Are you trying to be funny when you screw up my name, or are you just an idiot?”
“Oh, I was talking to some other guy named Maypole. I guess he’s not here anymore.”
“Idiot.”
“Are we in the pit?”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty shallow pit.”
“I know. How bad are things out there?”
“Oh, things suck out there. Suck bad.”
“They suck in here, too.”
“Figures. At least we—crap, something’s got my leg!”
I could hear a struggle, and then a nice loud thump that sounded an awful lot like an incompetent private investigator being pulled to the floor by a chained-up carnivorous old lady.
“Get off me, you toothy bitch!”
I rushed forward to help him. If Harry “Obnoxious Prick” McGlade was going to die, I at least wanted it to be in a room with enough light that I could watch.
The door opened again, and Vlad stepped inside, holding a shotgun. The ladies immediately released Harry and ran to opposite sides of the room, hiding their faces and cowering.
It’s easy to be intimidated by a very large man with a shotgun. It’s a bit harder when the large man is naked and possesses male equipment that, immature as it may be, can only be described as a wee-wee.
Harry stood up. “You can kill me if you want,” he told Vlad, “but then I’ll take the secret combination with me.”
Vlad’s face went from crazily angry to crazily confused. “What secret combination?”
“If you kill me, you’ll never know. I’ll take it to my grave. I’ll tell you this much, though: The first number is 14. The first digit of the second number is 8, but that’s all you’re going to get out of me for now. Interested?”
“No.”
“What if I told you that diamonds were involved?”
“I’d say that you were a bad liar, and to be perfectly honest I’d be rather offended that you insulted my intelligence in such a manner.”
“What if they were big diamonds? The size of honey baked hams?”
I raised my hand as if I were in a classroom. “Can I say something here?”
“Go ahead,” said Vlad.
“We’re in a residential area, and you’ve been shooting this place up for the past few minutes. Instead of worrying about us, shouldn’t you be fleeing the scene before the cops arrive?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Ummmm…you know…getting arrested…going to