Nick Stephenson - Eight the Hard Way

He answered what June had been thinking, that they knew each other in prison. She needed to tread lightly, but still apply pressure.

“Who helped you with all this?” she asked. “There is no way you could’ve got that much information about her without help, especially about the safe. Or how you knew the kids would be here today.”

“Shut up.” Reagan glanced down at the phone. “Georgie, you sure you dialed the right number?”

“Yeah, but...”

“But nothing. Her name is Amy. Look at all the ‘A’ names. She might have it hidden in there.”

June set her eyes on Reagan, ignoring Georgie working with the phone in front of her and Clinton at her side. Mostly, she did her best to ignore the hard metal muzzle pressed against her nieces’ heads.

Scrolling through numbers one at a time for several minutes, Georgie said, “There’s nothing here with her name.”

“Try the first one again.”

Georgie found ‘sis’ and dialed.

June stared down at the phone as it rang a dozen more times.

“She went out of town for peace and quiet for the weekend,” June lied. She knew if the men found out Amy was home right then, they might go straight there for their second home invasion of the day. But she was as confused as they were why Amy wasn’t answering her calls. “She probably turned her phone off.”

“Why isn’t it going to voice mail?” Reagan asked.

“I have no idea. Maybe she saw my number and just doesn’t want to talk to me?” June asked. “I mean, there are more interesting people to talk to than me.”

Reagan was obviously pissed that the call hadn’t gone though. His neck had broken into a full sweat and he tugged at the edges of the rubber mask. He dropped his cigarette to the hardwood floor and stepped his toe on it. “If you’re screwing with us...”

“What? What can I be doing? I’m tied up with a gun to my head, you have my phone, George found the number and called. What could I possibly be doing?”

That’s when she remembered the last thing Amy said to her, that she had got a new phone and number, and that she wrote it on a slip of paper at the desk. Amy even mentioned that both girls already had it memorized. The number George had found under ‘sis’ was the old number, and June hadn’t taken the time yet to correct it. The correct number in the phone was labeled only as ‘new’.

Mostly she was ambivalent if she wanted to help the three men with the sudden recall, or just let them flounder for a while. If they got frustrated enough, there was the chance they would just leave. She couldn’t allow them to go to Amy’s house when she was there, but she was also putting her nieces at risk by not divulging the new phone number. Either way, she had the growing dread deep inside that the afternoon was going to end poorly.

Reagan tapped one of the girls’ heads with the muzzle of his gun. “Hey brat, what’s your mother’s name?”

“Hey! Leave her alone!” June shouted.

Reagan aimed the gun at June for a moment. “You were saying?” He turned the gun back to Koemi’s head. “I asked you, what’s your mother’s name?”

“Mommy...” the girl mewed softly.

Reagan sighed. “Georgie, look for mommy in the phone.”

“Auntie...” one of the girls began to say.

“Be quiet, please, Ruka.”

The little girl turned her head a bit to look in June’s direction. “But mommy has...”

“You’re making me very angry, Ruka!” June said, barely holding her temper.

“Not to interrupt the soap opera, but could the two of you shut the hell up?” Reagan said. His gun hand shook, the one that held the pistol to the side of the girls’ heads.

June turned her sights back on him. “Don’t even think of hurting them,” she said with as much control as she could muster.

Both girls burst into tears.

Reagan shoved the butt of his pistol into a girl’s head, nudging it to the side.

“God damn you...” June muttered.

She got a backhand across her face from Clinton.

“I told you to shut up!” bellowed Reagan. “I won’t put up with this hysterical female shit!”

Georgie had his gun in his hand again, aimed then at June’s chest from point blank range, the phone call forgotten. His eye began to tick.

They all remained that way for some time, the girls whimpering, Reagan’s gun hand shaking, Clinton pressing his pistol against June’s head, Georgie’s eye ticking, and June fighting swirling numbness in her mind. She could taste blood in her mouth from being slapped by Clinton.

Maybe because of the stress, Reagan’s voice was falling into a southern drawl. And the way he called the man in the George Bush mask Georgie, June figured that was his real first name. Just as she figured, the men were beginning to crack. She was getting some power back from them.

She had to continue to push.

After several minutes, Reagan lifted his pistol away from Koemi’s head, put the safety on, and stowed it in his jacket. He nodded to the other two men and they slowly put their guns away.

“Okay.” He pronounced his words carefully, but his voice warbled with cracked nerves. “Now that everyone has their heads out of their butts, we’re all gonna start playin’ nice again. Everything is going to be just fine.”

June knew she had to distract the intruders from trying to call Amy again, and to keep Georgie from snooping through her phone numbers too closely. It would only be a matter of time before he found the heading called ‘new’ and figured it belonged to Amy. Or for one of the girls to let it slip that they knew the number by heart. If she let on with the right number then, they’d never believe she only just remembered it. She also needed to find a way to distract the girls from the drama that was unfolding in front of them.

“I have to make lunch for the girls.”

“Forget it,” Reagan told her, taking a seat again.

“Then I gotta sit down before I fall over. My feet are numb from standing here.”

“Help yourself. The floor looks very comfortable.”

She bent her knees and sank down. Without the use of her hands, she fell to the hardwood floor with a clunk. She pushed up to an elbow, and then struggled to a sitting position.

“Okay now?” Clinton asked, glaring down at her.

“Never better.”

As soon as she settled, June inspected the skin on her wrists being abraded from the plastic ties. The one on her right hand was much looser then the other, loose enough that she might even be able to jerk that hand loose if she had a chance. She decided to leave it alone for the time being.

“Georgie,” Reagan said. “Try sending a text to that number you called before.”

Georgie found the number. “What should I write?”

“Send, call ASAP,” Reagan said.

Georgie wrote the message. But before he could send it, June got his attention.

“That’s not what I would write to her. ASAP means something else to us,” she lied.

June had no choice but to pretend to go along with their captors. Part of the plan she had been working out was to lie, deceive, and manipulate dialogue, if only to create as much confusion as possible. If she could do that, she might just be able to turn them against each other. Then all she could do was try and separate them. And she had to do it soon.

Georgie looked down at where June sat awkwardly on the floor. So far, he had been the only one that had acted reasonably toward her and the girls, if aiming a gun at her chest could be called reasonable. “What would you write to get her to call right away?”

“Something like, prob with kids.”

He started tapping that into a text message.

“No! She’s lying,” Reagan said suddenly. “That will just bring her here. Put in that ASAP thing instead.”