Paul Levine - Kill All the Lawyers

And there, on her knees, tape covering her mouth, ankles and wrists bound with a line attached to an engine mount, was Maria Munoz-Goldberg. Her eyes were closed as she banged her forehead against the deck. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

Heart pounding, Steve ripped the tape from Maria's mouth and winced as she cried out in pain. She had red marks above and below her lips, and her forehead bled from where she'd banged it against the deck. Her entire body trembled, starting at her shoulders and running all the way down to her legs and feet. She sobbed, great streaks of tears tracking across her cheeks. Her wrists were bound behind her back with quarter-inch line.

Steve worked at the line, but her chest heaved as she sobbed, and her arms shook, and it took a while to undo the knots. They weren't slipknots. They were knots never intended to come loose.

When the line finally came free, he gave her a moment to rub out the stiffness in each wrist, both raw and bleeding.

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." She seemed to be chanting it between sobs. Steve wrapped his arms around her, could feel the tremors shaking her from the inside out.

The air was greasy and stale, and Steve felt the sweat drip down his arms. He tried to untie the line around her ankles, but it was too tight and she was bleeding where it had cut into her. The other end of the line was fixed securely to an engine mount.

"There's a knife in the cockpit. I'll be right back, Maria."

"No. Don't leave! Please."

Steve sat down with her. He'd give her a minute. "Where's Kreeger?"

The name didn't seem to register. Apparently, kidnappers don't introduce themselves. "The man who took you. Where'd he go?"

She shook her head. She didn't know.

Steve wondered if she was in shock. But then the words poured out. She started at the beginning. Bobby was acting up, and she decided to ride home without him. When she got to her bike, a man was waiting. He grabbed her and threw her into his car. A BMW, she noted. He reached up under her shirt and pulled off her bra, touching her. She thought he was going to rape her, but he just crumpled the bra and dropped it in Bobby's bike bag.

"Then he put my bike in his trunk. And I thought this was good. Like, no matter what he was going to do to me, he'd let me go, let me ride my bike home. But after he tied me up and we drove a little bit, he took my cap and put it in my bike bag."

"Your cap?"

"Well, Bobby's cap. That Solomon and Lord one he always wears."

Including the day we went to Kreeger's office.

"Then the man threw my bike in some bushes."

"Near the road?"

"Yeah. A few feet away."

Where the bike would be found. With strands of Bobby's hair in the cap, his prints and DNA all over it. Another piece of evidence, another nail in the coffin.

"Then he put me in the trunk inside a big bag, and I could barely breathe. I might have passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was down here, all tied up."

She started crying again.

"Did he say anything?"

"Only that we were going for a cruise, but he needed to wait for a store to open. I asked if he was getting sandwiches and drinks, and he just laughed."

A store? It made no sense to Steve, but there was no time to figure it out. Kreeger would be coming back. Steve put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Maria, we need to get you out of here. I'm going up to get a knife. Is that all right?"

She nodded. "But come right back, okay?"

Steve scrambled up the ladder, climbed through the hatch, and took one step before the lightning bolt hit him. He felt his head snap back. He saw the pain itself inside his brain, an electrical flash behind his eyes. He heard thunderclaps. And then the world went quiet and black.

Steve had a sensation of being awakened by being tossed into an icy shower.

But I can't be awake. I can't see anything.

He sensed movement. Side to side and up and down. And a sound. A dull roar.

Okay, the boat is moving, the diesels singing.

He felt the wind rushing by his head, sensed he was in the open cockpit, eyes closed. His face felt raw, like chopped meat, and the salt spray wasn't making it feel any better.

Why can't I move my hands?

A hard, cold rain pelted him, a million freezing needles. A rain so strong, it hissed in the air and ping ed as it hit the deck.

He felt the boat ride to the top of a swell, then slide down the trough.

Great. Tied up, semiconscious, and I'm gonna be seasick, too.

A throbbing pain in his skull seemed to beat time with the engines. The boat was moving fast. Open water. Ocean, not the bay. He could tell that from the waves, even though he couldn't see anything.

His mouth felt dry. He licked his lips, tasted blood. He felt the spray hit his neck, the boat splashing down the side of a swell.

So why can't I see anything? Aha, my eyes are closed.

He tried to crank them open. A crowbar would have helped. Eyes swollen shut. He wanted to use a finger to push open an eye, but there was a problem. His hands seemed to be tied behind his back.

He concentrated on his right eye, tried to crank it open. It started to come up slowly, like a Venetian blind pulled by a piece of dental floss. He used his tongue to explore the inside of his mouth. He had bitten though his lip, and he spit out a chunk of tooth.

The rain came even harder, a solid wall of daggers. His teeth chattered. He had never been this cold in his life.

"How you feeling, Solomon?"

Kreeger's voice. The eye opened just enough to see his face, rain soaking his bare chest. The boat on autopilot, Steve figured. With any luck, maybe they'd hit an iceberg. If not, maybe run aground on Bimini.

"Where's Maria?"

"Warm and toasty in the master stateroom. She'll serve her purpose after I dispose of you."

"Bastard."

"That the best you can do, Solomon?"

Steve managed to get both eyes open a crack. "Ugly bastard."

"You don't look so good yourself."

Steve felt like he'd been hit in the face with a baseball bat. Now he saw it was a shovel. Kreeger was leaning on the garden spade Steve had seen in the storage compartment.

"You'd have two black eyes if you'd live long enough for the bruises to show," Kreeger said. "But as you've no doubt ascertained, this is your last boat trip."

Steve's vision cleared a bit, and he saw that Kreeger was wearing surfer's trunks and was shirtless and barefoot. He looked powerful, with wide shoulders and a deep chest. A dive knife was strapped to a sheath on one ankle.

My feet feel funny. I can't wiggle my toes. What's that all about?

Steve looked down. His feet were in one of the aluminum pails he'd seen earlier, his legs sunk up to his calves in cold mud.

No. Not mud. Wet cement.

"You've got to be kidding, Kreeger."

"We wouldn't want your head popping up on the Fifth Street beach, scaring the tourists, would we, Solomon?"

"You've been watching too much Sopranos. "

Steve wriggled his feet, just enough to lift them off the bottom of the pail, but not enough for cracks to show on the surface. The cement was hardening fast.

"Maybe we can work this out, Kreeger."

"The shyster wants to settle the case. What's your offer, Counselor?"

"I get you help. Not guilty by reason of insanity."

Kreeger barked a laugh. "Got a better deal right here. Not guilty by reason of not being caught."

"The cops know I came after you. You'll be the only suspect."

"Suspect in what? There'll be no body, Solomon. They'll figure you either fled to South America to escape your legal problems or committed suicide." He shook his head, almost sadly. "This isn't the way I planned it. You were supposed to be safe and sound. How else to suffer the torment of watching your nephew go through hell?"