Chris Jordan - Torn

The custodian’s closet is just as we left it, door unlocked. Shane is the first inside, and he doesn’t even bother to flip on the lights, he drops to his knees, pushing away mops and buckets, searching the area of floor where the hatch had popped open.

“Got to be here somewhere,” he mutters. “A pressure switch.”

The lights come on. I assume it was Irene because I don’t even know where the switch is, and besides, Noah has climbed back into my arms and I quite literally have my hands full. But it isn’t Irene, she looks as startled as me, and then in an instant her face drains white with fear. Not just fear-terror.

“Nobody move.”

Standing in the doorway is the handsome guy with the killer eyes. The man with the mustache. The man who stopped me on the stairs and let me go. The man they call Vash, which is short for something else, I can’t remember what, now, exactly. Doesn’t matter what his proper name is, he’s pointing a funny-looking gun at Shane, who remains on his knees in the middle of the crowded custodial closet. Looking, and this scares me, very spooked, if not exactly frightened.

“Nobody move,” Vash repeats with a humorless chuckle, as if applauding his own cleverness. “They say that in American westerns, yes? Okay, Mr. FBI man, you got gun in belt, I can see that. Pistol you stole from BK vehicle, you naughty boy. You think you draw fast like in westerns, blow bad guy away. No, no, no.”

“Go ahead, tase me,” Shane says, not making a move for the pistol. “See what happens this time.”

Vash laughs. “I already see. Two times, already. Third time, you pee pants for sure.”

“Maybe I learned how to take it. Maybe the third time, you’re the one who wets his pants.”

“Ha! Not possible. While you flop around, I take pistol you stole and shoot you,” Vash promises. “Bang, bang. Self-defense.”

What I want to do is put down Noah and grab a bucket and throw it in this horrible man’s smug, handsome face. But before I can think it through, Shane gives me a warning look and says, “Don’t. I’ll handle this.”

Which Vash thinks is very funny. “You handle? Big joke for big man. Where you going, huh? Escape into tunnel? I don’t think so. We find the entrance, toss in a little boom-boom, make part of tunnel collapse. Forget tunnel. Forget escape. You are safer right here, trust me.”

Shane snorts. “Trust me. From a war criminal? I’m guessing most of those who ever trusted you are dead.”

Vash shakes his head, disappointed. “I’m wishing I had time for this,” he says. “Could be lots of fun.”

“What’s your hurry?” Shane says.

Taunting Vash. Daring him to fire. Which doesn’t make sense, with Shane more or less helpless on the floor and Vash holding the Taser. I know enough from what I’ve seen on TV that getting hit with a Taser may not be fatal, but it does turn you into a nonfunctioning slab of twitching muscle.

Is he planning to sacrifice himself while Noah and I get away? But where can we go that Vash can’t find us? It doesn’t make sense.

“Is the place going to blow up?” Shane asks him, pushing. “Is that why you’re in a hurry to get away? Like you blew up the school?”

“Stupid penny man blows up school, not me.”

“So you knew Roland Penny. I’ll bet it was you that filled his head full of nonsense about ruling the world, and then pointed him in the right direction. Is that how you did it?”

“Never mind the penny man,” Vash says dismissively, no longer smiling. All business, and in a hurry, too. “You lie down! Everybody lie down! I put plastic ties on wrists, not too tight. Then I give myself up to FBI, okay? I explain everything. You be fine, don’t worry.”

Irene whimpers and collapses to her knees, holding out her wrists like a child who knows she deserves to be punished. With one hand, cocky Vash whips a tie around her wrist, cinches it tight. “Good girl,” he says. “Lie facedown. Nothing bad happens, I promise.”

Eyes streaming, she obeys. Obviously convinced she’s about to be executed, but too frightened to resist.

Meanwhile Shane is staring at me with great intensity, as if trying to communicate something, though for the life of me I don’t know what. Has he changed his mind, does he want me to make a move, distract the man with the mustache? No, that’s not it. He wants me to stay where I am, he’ll make the first move. So we’re back to sacrificing himself to help us get away. Or else he has something else in mind entirely, something I can’t quite fathom, and I’m hoping that’s it, because I’ve run out of ideas.

“Out the front door, huh?” he says, sneering at Vash. “Give yourself up? Might work, if there’s nobody left to testify against you. What happened, did you and Evangeline break up? Did you decide to sacrifice her before she sacrifices you?”

“Facedown,” Vash insists, taking aim with the Taser. “Now.”

“Now would be good,” Shane says, standing up.

Vash’s eyes widen in surprise, but before Shane can reach for the pistol wedged into his belt, he fires the Taser.

It all happens so fast I can’t be sure what I’m seeing, but it looks like a couple of little wires attach themselves to Shane’s chest, and then his whole body begins to twitch and convulse in the most awful way.

I instinctively turn so Noah can’t see what’s going on, and then a truly astonishing thing happens.

Shane’s face is horribly distorted by the twitching muscles, but somehow he’s grinning like a maniac. His eyes, alive in the midst of quivering facial muscles, are triumphant. As if this is exactly what he planned.

Shane, through sheer force of will, does the impossible. The supposedly impossible. He regains enough control over his flailing limbs to tear the wires out of his chest. He then yanks the Taser out of his assailant’s hands, and with a roar takes the stunned security chief by the neck and smashes him into the wall like a rag doll, wham, wham, wham.

It’s all over in a few seconds. A moment later the semiconscious Vash is being cuffed with his own plastic ties, trussed up like a calf at a rodeo and pushed to the side of the closet.

Irene, staring with bugged-out eyes, says, “Wow.”

Wow is right. He’s amazing. Magnificent, really. The only reason I don’t applaud is because my son is squirming around, getting an eyeful.

“Who is the big man, Mommy?”

“He’s our new friend, sweetie.”

“I’m glad,” says Noah.

Me, too, I’m thinking. Me, too.

Shane isn’t done. He pops open the escape hatch, gives me a grin. “We better get a move on. Time’s a wasting.”

“He said he blew up the tunnel.”

“The man is a liar-it looks okay from here. We’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

He holds out his hand. I take it.

A temporary helicopter landing site has been set up in the parking lot of the Conklin Institute, and that’s where Maggie Drew lands, amidst a cloud of fine snow kicked up by the blades of the McDonnell Douglas 530, affectionately known as a ‘Little Bird.’

The affection is not shared by Maggie. She hates helicopters, and they hate her. It was a two-barf-bag trip from Denver International, and the crew is glad to see her go. They keep their snarky comments to themselves, however, when they realize Assistant Director Monica Bevins, the on-site commander herself, is waiting to personally assist the lame little puker out of the aircraft.

“Any news?” Maggie shouts over the whirr of the turbines.

“Lots of news,” Monica says, holding out an arm for her limping friend. “None of it good.”

“He hasn’t made contact?”

“Not since that call to you.”