She pushed back her chair, her eyes on the window that faced the street. She grabbed the bag at her feet and tossed it onto the table. I followed her gaze and saw a car out front, one that hadn’t been there a minute before.
“Who is it?”
She didn’t answer. She dumped her leather bag on the dining-room table and pulled out of the pile two sets of the weirdest-looking handcuffs I’d ever seen. There was no chain between the cuffs. The base of each cuff met the base of the other. They were encased in hard black plastic. One cuff was standard size. On the other end, it was tiny. Small enough to cuff a bird maybe.
Or a baby.
“What the fuck are those?” I crossed the dining room and threw the lock on the front door.
“Don’t curse in front of the baby.”
The top of someone’s head passed beneath the dining-room window.
“Fine. What the heck are those?”
“High-security rigid handcuffs.” Amanda struggled into her Björn. “They use them to transport terrorists on planes. I had these modified. They kick ass, right?”
“They’re cool,” I said. “How many doors into the house?”
“Three if you count the cellar.” She unstrapped Claire from the car seat. The baby groaned and then huffed out several unhappy grunts. Amanda fit her legs into the holes of the Björn, slipped one flap over her shoulder, and buckled it as someone kicked in the back door.
Amanda snapped one cuff over her own left wrist, one over her right.
I pulled my.45, pointed it at the dining-room portico.
Amanda snapped one of the smaller cuffs over Claire’s left wrist.
A window broke in the living room, followed a second or two later by the sounds of someone climbing through it. I kept my eye on the portico, but now I knew they could flank me.
“A little help?” Amanda said.
I came over to her and she held her right arm up so that the smaller cuff hovered beside Claire’s left wrist.
“You bring game, sister.” I snapped the cuff closed over Claire’s wrist.
“In for a penny, in for a pound.”
Kenny came through the portico at the end of the room with a shotgun leveled at us.
I pointed my.45 at his head, but it was a hollow gesture; if he pulled that trigger from this distance, he’d kill all three of us.
I heard the racking of another shotgun, to my left. I glanced over. Tadeo stood where the living room met the dining room at the base of the staircase.
“You just ejected a shell trying to make a cool sound,” I told him.
He turned a bit red. “Still got one to put in your chest.”
“Dang,” I said, “that gun’s almost as big as you.”
“Big enough to cut you in half, homes.”
“But the recoil will blow your ass into the front yard.”
Kenny said, “Put your gun down, Patrick.”
I kept my gun where it was. “You Mexican, Tadeo?”
He nestled the shotgun stock into his shoulder. “You damn right I am.”
“I never had a Mexican standoff with an actual Mexican. There’s something cool about that, don’t you think?”
“Sounds racist to me, homes.”
“What’s racist about it? You’re Mexican, this is a Mexican standoff. It’d be like going Dutch with someone from Amsterdam. Now if, because I’m Irish, you accused me of having a small dick and being a drunk, that’s racist, but describing a standoff as a Mexican standoff as opposed to a plain old, you know, standoff, that seems a pretty victimless racial modification to me.”
“You’re stalling,” Kenny said.
“I’m giving everyone time to calm down.”
Helene came through the portico behind Kenny. She saw the three guns and took a big swallow, but kept coming into the dining room.
“Honey,” she said in a syrupy voice, “we just want the baby.”
“Don’t call me honey,” Amanda said.
“What should I call you?”
“Estranged.”
Kenny said to Helene, “Just get the baby.”
“Okay.”
Amanda raised her wrists so Kenny and Helene saw the cuffs. “Claire and me? We’re a package.”
Kenny’s face grew long and defeated. “Where are the keys?”
“Behind you in the handcuff-key jar.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “Really, Ken?”
“I can kill you,” Kenny said, “and just cut those cuffs off with a hacksaw.”
“If it was 1968 and this was Cool Hand Luke, maybe,” Amanda said. “You see any length of chain on these? You see anything you could cut?”
“Hey!” Helene yelled as if she were the voice of reason. “No one’s killing anyone.”
“Gosh, Moms,” Amanda said, “what exactly do you think Kirill Borzakov is going to do to me?”
“He won’t kill you,” Helene said, patting the air for effect. “He promised.”
“Oh, well, then,” I said to Amanda, “you’re fine.”
“Right?”
“Patrick,” Kenny said.
“Yeah?”
“You can’t win this. I mean, you’ve got to know that.”
“We just want the baby,” Helene said again.
“And that cross on the table,” Kenny said, noticing it for the first time. “Damn. Helene, pick that thing up, would ya?”
“Which?”
“The only Russian cross on the dining-room table.”
“Oh.”
As Helene reached for the cross, I noticed something odd in the pile of things Amanda had dumped from her leather bag-Dre’s key chain. I experienced what Bubba likes to call a disturbance in the Force, and I was so baffled I almost said something to Amanda right then, but Kenny snapped my attention back the other way by tapping the barrel of the shotgun against the wall.
“Lower your gun, Patrick. Seriously, man.”
I looked at Amanda, looked at the baby strapped to her chest and cuffed to her wrists. Claire hadn’t made a peep since the second cuff went on her. She just stared up at Amanda with what, in a self-aware being, could have been considered awe.
“The gun’s making me nervous too,” Amanda whispered. “And I don’t see how it helps us.”
I flicked the safety on and raised my hand, the gun dangling from my thumb.
“Take his gun, Helene.”
Helene came over and I handed her the gun and she placed it awkwardly in her handbag. She looked past me at Claire.
“Oh, she’s so pretty.” She looked back over her shoulder at Kenny. “You should see her, Ken. She’s got my eyes.”
No one said anything for a few seconds.
“How is it,” Kenny asked, “you’re allowed to vote and operate machinery?”
“ ’Cuz,” Helene said proudly, “this is America.”
Kenny closed and opened his eyes.
“Can I touch her?” Helene asked Amanda.
“I’d kinda prefer you didn’t.”
Helene reached out anyway and squeezed Claire’s cheek.
Claire began to cry.
“Great,” Kenny said. “We gotta listen to that all the way back to Boston.”
Amanda said, “Helene?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you do me a huge solid and grab that diaper bag and the little cooler of formula?”
“What’re you going to do with me?” I asked Kenny. “Tie me to a chair or shoot me?”