Макс Коллинз - No One Will Hear You

Maybe she could make that up to him.

Their special guest had been whisked on set from right outside his hotel room door. In fact his room became the set! Across the way, “Sam Wild” was registered — the Lawrence Tierney character in the classic Robert Wise film noir, Born to Kill . After all, hadn’t she and her brother been born to kill?

No, not born. Shaped. Molded. Created by the old man...

She took pride in this latest scenario, devised only yesterday, in a brother/sister brainstorming session, as they searched for a way to guarantee that Crime Seen would have to showcase them next Friday. This diverged from their original outline, but was a worthwhile, imaginative revision.

Tracking their guest performer to this hotel, this room, had been a breeze, given her brother’s computer skills. They had to forgo their usual in-depth “recon” (as her brother liked to put it). But risk carried a rush...

Not long ago, she had watched from the cracked door across the way as their guest approached his room and was digging for his key card. She waited till he had opened the door and was about to step in.

Then she stepped out — a blonde vision in spiked heels, a curvy female dream in a black mini with a sheer, black silk top with spaghetti straps, ideal for her creamy complexion.

He heard her, turned, and she smiled at him.

“Looks like you’re coming,” she said, “and I’m going.”

He gave her a goofy grin and seemed to be fishing for something clever to say in response to that loaded remark — men... give them a look and the blood runs from their big head to the little one and makes them stupid .

For all his supposed worldliness, their guest star had been no different.

Then his expression turned to a puzzled frown as she stepped aside and her brother emerged and brought up the Taser.

And fired.

The two darts struck the victim, dropping him mostly into his room, to flop and flap like a freshly landed carp.

Her brother dragged their catch by the arms inside and closed the door. She knelt and jerked the man’s handgun from its holster. When their guest began to come around and push up on his hands, she used the commandeered gun to club him.

He sagged back, unconscious.

From then on, it had been easy — strip him, get him onto the bed, tie him down. Duct-tape his mouth. Simple, straightforward, right to plan, but somehow exciting, exhilarating, since it varied from their established routine.

They had made sure the hallway was clear before moving the camera and their equipment in from across the way. While her brother set up, their guest star remained unconscious.

Or pretended to be.

Anyway, he was still breathing, with a strong, steady pulse. So if he wasn’t faking, and already conscious, he soon would be.

Finally, however, she became impatient, and cracked an amyl nitrate capsule under his nose. He shuddered awake, struggling with an invisible foe, then seemed to get a least a vague fix on the situation, trying to pull free.

Eventually he stopped struggling, apparently figuring out he had nowhere to go. Maybe the blood had moved back to the big head.

She smiled sweetly down at the naked man spread-eagled before her. He blinked rapidly, as if trying to wake from this bad dream, wild eyes swiftly scanning the room. Now and then he would struggle against his bonds — apparently more in anger and frustration than out of any sense of really escaping.

Leaning forward, putting a gentle fingertip on his hairy bare chest, she said, “Welcome to our world, Special Agent Rousch.”

Beneath the duct-tape gag, he roared with rage, so pitiful a sound she might have laughed, if she’d been truly heartless.

She ran fingers through the FBI agent’s chest hair. She found hair on a man’s body strangely compelling if somewhat gross; she had come to prefer her own hairless body. And her brother’s.

She said, “You’ve been looking for us — well, here we are.”

Now he was silent beneath the duct-tape strip. His eyes were wide — unblinking now.

“My brother and I — we’re brother and sister, you know... but you didn’t know, did you? My brother and I are a team — like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? Or more, Fred and Adele. Anyway, my brother and I have been very disappointed in you. You’ve been in town for weeks now and haven’t done any better than the LAPD or those TV fools. Or have you been keeping secrets?”

She clutched his chest hair and yanked out a clump. He bucked on the bed and yelled under the tape. When he came to rest, a bald patch in the jungle of curlies was pink and pearled with blood droplets.

“Perhaps we should torture you, my brother and I — and find out what you people really know. How close you really are? You figured out I was B-i-l-l-i-e, not l-y. But you don’t seem to’ve known Don Juan and Billie Shears are partners. The media almost guessed it, with their stupid, insulting ‘Odd Couple’ thing. That pisses me off!”

He lay very still. His expression had changed. Not angry now. Scared, but... something else, something she’d never seen in a victim, because both Billie and Don Juan had in the past struck mercifully quick, and this was a new stage to her: pleading.

Eyes begging for mercy.

It was somewhat unsettling.

She patted his nest of chest hair, and moved a few steps from the bed.

“You’re probably wondering about the camera,” she said. “That’s usually a Don Juan specialty, and Billie isn’t known for making performance-art videos. But you’re a special case. A special catch. A special guest star...”

Rousch lay limp now. She’d seen him go through a lot of changes, a lot of stages, in a short time. What were the stages of the grieving process, anyway? He was grieving his own death, after all.

She’d studied them in an acting class — shock and guilt and anger and denial and depression were in there. Was this acceptance? And what was the other one? Hope?

Not tonight, Josephine.

She dropped her pose. She didn’t feel like acting.

“I could tell you our whole story, about what our father did to us and so on, but it’s very unpleasant. It’s not the kind of thing somebody in your position would want to hear.”

The FBI agent came alive, suddenly — he was trying to get something across. What? He wanted to talk! He wanted to exchange views and ideas and try to talk them into freeing him, because he understood they couldn’t help themselves, and he could help them , and...

That was it! Bargaining! The other stage...

Ironic, because she had just been about to bargain with him.

“I will give you a chance, Agent Rousch. To save yourself. All you have to do is love me. Just love me.”

His eyes tensed, his forehead beaded with sweat, bulging with veins.

“If you love me... your love will set you free. If you love me. But you have to love me. Understand?”

She slipped the spaghetti straps off, let the silky top fall to her waist, revealing firm milky white breasts with bright pink tips (a little lip rouge had made them even pinker).

Rousch was wide-eyed, and against all odds — naked, tied spread-eagled, facing two serial killers — he proved her point about the big and little head: that flaccid thing of his twitched.

Stirred.

“Do you love me, Agent Rousch? But that’s so impersonal... your name is Mark. Mark — do you love me? If I believe you love me, I will let you go.”

She did not look at the camera or over where her brother stood behind it; she was too professional, but she felt him with her, his presence, his love for her.