M Sellars - The Law Of Three

“Tell me what you mean, Eldon,” I pressed.

“You aren’t the same,” he answered me, his voice shaking with yet unreleased anger. “You… You aren’t the same as when I talked to you before.”

“I’m the same, Eldon,” I told him.

“It’s a trick! You’re trying to trick me again!” His voice jumped a notch in volume as he fired the accusation at me. “I told you it won’t work, Gant. It won’t work, Satan! Do you hear me?! It won’t work!”

The calm insanity I had always associated with him was gone. He was now coming across as someone with one foot tenuously planted in reality but ravaged by unimaginable delusions. He was escalating beyond anything I had imagined, and I was rapidly losing faith in my ability to contain this.

My mind raced as I tried to formulate a response that wouldn’t push him any further than I had already managed. Agreeing with him definitely wasn’t the way to go. Trying to stick to the middle of the road wasn’t any better. It seemed the only thing that had kept him on an even keel thus far was when he felt like he had pushed my buttons. He was at his calmest when he had my ire raised.

I swallowed hard and started to open the stopcock on the mental valve that was presently holding back my anger. I figured I would start small. Let some of it creep into my voice and see what his reaction was. On the chance that it worked, I would take it a little further. If he wanted me to let loose on him, I would be more than happy to oblige.

I glanced up and saw that Constance was looking off to the side and nodding vigorously as she motioned to me. I could hear her saying something into her phone, but I couldn’t make out exactly what it was. Ben was apparently still just around the corner, because his urgent voice hit my unblocked ear. His words were much easier to understand.

In a quiet voice, he was telling someone, “He looks okay, so go now.”

Before I could put my hastily formed plan into motion, Porter began to scream into the phone, forcing me to pull the handset away yet again.

“TELL THEM TO STOP, GANT!” His distorted voice arced several inches from the earpiece as I held the phone away from my head. “YOU BASTARD, I KNOW THEY ARE MOVING! TELL THEM TO STOP, OR I’LL KILL HER NOW!”

“No! Eldon! Listen to me!” I blurted.

Constance was shaking her head and waving. I could hear the frenzy in Ben’s tone as he asked, “Did they catch that?!”

She didn’t respond quickly enough for him.

“Mandalay!” his voice jumped. “Did they hear that?!”

“I don’t know!” she shot back with her own thread of panic. “I lost the signal!”

“Abort!” Ben immediately bellowed, presumably into his phone. “He made you! Abort!”

Throughout the tangle of frenzied voices, I could still hear Eldon screaming at me, as well as my own pleas for him to listen.

The next sound to reach my ears came from the handset in the form of an agonized scream drilling its way deeply through my inner ear. It was high-pitched and definitely female. The tortured sound was followed by a sharp, thudding noise and then a second pained wail.

“Oh Gods!” I stammered as I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. I balled my free hand into a fist and began thumping it against my forehead in a vain attempt to push the imagined horror out of my head. “Dear Mother Goddess, no!”

The floodgates opened, and my anger spewed forth. My skin grew hot, and my ears began to ring as my blood pressure set a new benchmark for the term hypertension. I brought the handset against my head and shouted, “PORTER!”

There was nothing at the other end. Just a random repetition of hollow clicks that indicated the call had been disconnected.

I swung the handset out and hammered it downward into the base then vented my anger at the first person to enter my sights.

“What the hell was going on?!” I screamed at Mandalay. “Did you know what they were doing?!”

“Calm down!” she shouted back.

“Calm down?” I demanded as I stepped toward her. “Screw you! Don’t tell me to calm down!”

An immense column of Native American filled the space between Mandalay and me as Ben quickly hooked himself around the corner. He planted one large hand against my chest and pushed, thrusting me rearward at an angle until I was backed against the countertop. “Goddammit, Rowan! Settle down!”

I heard Felicity yelp, “Ben!”

“You knew!” I roared, incredulity underscoring my anger. “Dammit you knew what they were doing, and you fucking got her killed, Ben! What the hell were you people thinking?!”

“Rowan, you don’t know that he killed her.” Constance projected her voice over mine as she wedged herself around Ben and into the kitchenette.

“You were listening in!” I spat as I struggled against my friend. “What the hell did it sound like to you?!”

“Dammit, Row,” Ben appealed, his voice a deep boom. “Don’t make me cuff you.”

Hot tears were beginning to roll down my cheeks, a product of both anger and despair. I glared back at my friend, fighting the urge to scream at him again.

“Rowan, please…” Felicity’s voice came from behind him in an anguished appeal.

“Did you even know where he was in the building?” I asked, my voice even but hard.

“Every indication was that you had his attention, Rowan,” Constance explained. “We were just trying to get a couple of men into the building so we could pinpoint him.”

“Yeah,” I shot back. “Well look what it got you. Just what the hell were you doing calling the shots anyway, Ben?”

“Rowan,” Ben said. “Like Mandalay said, it looked like you had his attention.”

“What?” I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. “You used me?”

“Dammit, Row,” Ben lamented. “It wasn’t my choice.”

“You were our barometer, Rowan,” Mandalay said. “The SAIC made the decision not to go on voice analysis alone. Ben and I were gauging your reaction visually and feeding the information to the scene.”

“I can’t believe you did that,” I said, swinging my disbelieving gaze between them. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We couldn’t be sure that you wouldn’t accidentally tip him off,” she explained. “Besides, you were already on the line with him when the decision was made. I’m sorry.”

“It was how it had to be done, white man,” Ben told me, his voice apologetic.

“Well, how it had to be done sucks.”

He continued to hold me against the cabinets, my torso bending back over the edge of the countertop. We simply stared at one another, neither of us quite sure what to say next.

A few steps across the room, the apartment phone began to ring.

An electronic chirp issued a half step behind it, and Constance immediately flipped her cell phone open. She tilted her head and pulled her hair back with her free hand as she tucked the device to her ear. “Mandalay.”

The bell jangled again.

“It’s him,” Constance stated as she looked at me then cocked her head toward the phone on the wall. “He never actually shut the phone off, and they tagged him as soon as he dialed. They want you to go ahead and talk to him again.”

Ben looked me over and apparently decided that it still wasn’t safe to leave me unrestrained. He twisted at the waist, keeping one hand firm against my chest while reaching past Felicity with the other and snatching the phone out of the cradle.

He held the handset in front of my face, and I took it from him wordlessly.

There was no way to put my rage in check, so I skipped the initial phase of my plan and went straight for voicing my disdain.

“What do you want now you sorry bastard,” I snarled.

“Don’t let that happen again!” Porter demanded.