Rick Mofina - Every Second

Lori couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop the adrenaline coursing through her as she battled to stay ahead of her fear.

Use it. Use it to fight back. Use it to protect Billy.

She swallowed hard and tried to find the strength to not give up.

On her left she’d noticed a small outbuilding that was at the end of a path that led into the woods some distance from the cabin.

Are we in the Catskills or the Adirondacks?

They climbed the stairs of the cabin’s covered front deck, entering through the screen door. The interior was one large open area. One corner contained the kitchen, and there was a picnic table and a few Adirondack chairs set up near the middle.

Two large bunk beds occupied another corner.

An opened laptop and a backpack with a large half-eaten bag of potato chips and bottles of water were on the picnic table. Clothes spilled from duffel bags near the bunk beds. In the far empty corner, a camera mounted on a tripod was pointed to a blank wall.

Lori grew uneasy.

What’s that for?

Across from the bunk beds were two mattresses set side by side on the floor with sleeping bags and pillows. Two long, fine dog chains extended from steel hardware bolted to a wooden stud.

“Over there.” Cutty pointed his gun to the mattresses.

Lori and Billy took a few steps to their corner before she turned.

“We haven’t eaten and we need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Cutty looked at Thorne, who nodded.

“The boy first. Let’s go.” Cutty pointed to the cabin’s rear screen door, which Lori could see opened to the path she’d noticed on her way in. He took Billy and she moved to go with him.

“Sit your ass down.” Cutty pointed his gun at Lori and she froze midstep. He kept the gun aimed at her for a moment before heading out alone with Billy.

Lori hesitated at the screen door, watching them.

“Sit down-” Thorne held up his phone “-or I dial a number and he’s gone.”

Lori sat.

When it was her turn, Cutty took her to the outhouse at the end of the path, about thirty yards from the cabin. He forced her to leave the door open, as he’d done with Billy, and relieve herself at gunpoint with her hands cuffed in plastic.

Necessity helped her endure the humiliation.

When they’d returned to the cabin, Lori saw that they’d locked a metal handcuff on Billy’s ankle, fastening him to the chain that hung from the wall. With several quick snaps, they did the same to her. The metal cuff was cold on her skin as she crawled to sit next to Billy on his mattress.

Cutty tossed the handcuff keys onto the table next to Thorne.

“You take them next time,” he said, then pulled out store-bought egg salad sandwiches and water from the backpack on the picnic table and handed them to Lori.

Their chains jingled softly as they ate.

Cutty stripped off his coveralls. Now he was wearing jeans and a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt with the words Hammer of the Gods on it. He dragged one of the chairs closer, placing it in front of the back door. He sat with his gun on his lap, watching them over his phone while he played a video game. Thorne had removed his coveralls, too. He was wearing khaki cargo pants and a military green T-shirt. He faced them from the picnic table where he watched them over his laptop as he worked with his gun next to him.

Soft beeping and clicking mingled with birdsong, breezes and the occasional swish of water as Billy drank from his bottle.

After they were done eating, Billy fell asleep.

In that surreal moment, as Lori struggled to understand what had befallen them, she wished Dan was by her side.

“Can I please talk to my husband again?”

Cutty ignored her. Thorne continued working on his laptop. The silence grew ominous.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

Thorne stopped his work and looked at her.

“Because you deserve it.”

She was baffled-what could she possibly have done to deserve this? “I don’t understand.”

“You will. You were chosen because of your crimes as nonbelievers.”

“Nonbelievers?”

“Let me show you what happens to nonbelievers.”

Thorne got up from the table with his laptop, holding it so Lori could see the video he played for her.

A woman in her thirties was on her knees in the desert. Her hands were tied behind her back.

Lori gasped. The familiar footage was from a recent news report she’d seen on TV. She remembered that the woman was an aid worker from England working in the Middle East before she’d been taken hostage by extremists. Lori had never seen the video in its entirety. It was too graphic for news networks to broadcast. Standing next to the woman was a man, clad head to toe in black. A black balaclava concealed his face. He held a large knife in one hand and was ranting to the camera before he yanked the woman’s hair back, exposing her throat and-the knife flashed-Lori turned away.

She knew what followed.

The woman had been beheaded.

Dallas, Texas

Music hammered in the hallway.

Empty pizza boxes, beer cans and used napkins were strewn along the floor. Vulgar graffiti bled on the cracked walls near Unit 506 of the apartment complex in South Dallas.

This was Jerricko Titus Blaine’s most recent address.

From the command post across the street, Dallas FBI agent Trent Doyle trained his binoculars on Blaine’s unit. Colors and shadows flashed as someone inside moved from room to room.

One of Blaine’s associates?

Doyle rolled the focus wheel.

The Dallas Police Department had set up the outer perimeter and helped evacuate the building’s residents. Children clutched stuffed toys, and a white-haired woman grabbed her Bible as anxious tenants were escorted out of harm’s way to a park just beyond the perimeter set up with police tape.

The SWAT team, which had already studied the building’s floor plan, moved swiftly and quietly into position, forming the inner perimeter.

The music still pulsed from behind the door of apartment 506.

This part of Dallas generated a large number of police calls to the neighborhood every day. Over the past six years, five officers had been shot while executing warrants, as the FBI, backed by Dallas PD, was doing today. The five officers had survived, but it was just another reason why Doyle, like all others at the command post, was wearing body armor.

Slowly, he swung his binoculars toward the snipers on the adjacent building’s roof. There were others behind Dumpsters, cars, and in apartment units facing the target.

Inside the building, SWAT members had taken positions on the stairs leading up to Unit 506, and on the landing, the fire escape and the roof. Everyone was in place, whispering reports over their headsets above the thunder of the music.

Given that Blaine was suspected in an ongoing robbery-hostage-taking, the team poised for a no-knock, forced rapid entry. After a final round of radio checks, the commander gave the green light to his squad sergeant. A signal was relayed to the electricity company. Power was suddenly cut. The building became eerily silent, save for the distant yelp of a dog.

Within seconds, deafening flash-bang grenades smashed through windows and heavily armed SWAT members charged through the apartment door and the windows from the balcony, shouting orders to the man on the sofa.

“FBI! Get on the floor, now!”

SWAT members, guns drawn, forced him to the floor amid the smoke and chaos.

“Hey, what the hell’s this!” the man protested while on his stomach as his hands were cuffed behind him.

He was in his twenties. He wore a tie-dye T-shirt and torn jeans.

His wallet was yanked from his back pocket.