"Uh-uh."
"Your friend Buck has a gun pointed at me. I don't have a weapon, and I'm not stupid."
"Let him," Buck said. "I'll keep watch."
"Thank you," I said.
Bodine was sitting with his legs folded. His face was battered and swollen. He looked up at me, humiliated and angry, like a whipped dog. I sat down on the floor next to him. "How're you feeling?" I said.
He didn't look at me. "You don't want to know."
"Mind if I take a look?"
"Lost a couple of teeth," he said, pushing out his lower lip with his tongue. I gingerly felt his face, under his eyes. He winced. "Jesus, Landry, watch it."
"You might have a broken cheekbone," I said. "Maybe a fracture."
"Yeah? So what am I going to do about it now?" he said bitterly.
"Take some Tylenol. Or whatever pain meds we have."
"Not going to happen with these assholes," he said quietly.
"We can try. You think your nose might be broken?"
"Feels like it."
"If we can get some Kleenex or some toilet paper, you should stuff some up your nose. Just to stop the blood flow."
He didn't say anything.
"You got a headache?"
"Wicked."
"What about your vision?"
"What about it?"
"You seeing double?"
"How'd you know?"
"That means he might have fractured the-I forget what it's called, the bone around the eye. The orbit, I think. Anyway, your vision should go back to normal in a day or so. You're going to be okay, but we've got to get you medical attention."
Bodine gave me a fierce look. "Yeah? When?"
"Soon as we can. Soon as this is over."
"When's that going to be?"
He didn't expect an answer, but I was surprised he'd said it. It was a sign of how far he'd fallen, how demoralized he was. Hank Bodine was always in charge.
Buck yelled to me, "Time's up. This ain't a church social."
I said softly to Bodine, "Depends on how we play it."
Bodine nodded once.
I said, "There's blood and stuff all over your pants. Let me see if they'll get you another pair from your room. Least they can do."
Bodine had pissed himself during the attack. I could see the large wet area and smell the urine. I felt a pang of embarrassment for him, and I didn't want him to know that I knew.
He watched me as I got up.
"Hey," he said after a few seconds.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks."
31
The whole place smelled of cigarette smoke: Verne was chain-smoking at the other end of the room as he frisked Ali, taking his time of it. I had a feeling he was maybe paying a bit too much attention to areas on her body where she wasn't likely to hide a weapon. Her back was to me; I couldn't see her face, but I could imagine the look of grim resolve.
The middle of the room was a chaotic jumble of furniture: tables on their sides, chairs upended on top of sofas. Russell's men had shoved the furniture away from the wall on either side of the great stone fireplace to make room for the hostages.
We sat on the wideboard floor on either side of the fireplace, in two groups. On the other side-which might as well have been miles away-were the manager, the other lodge staff, and Danziger and Grogan. All the lights were on, giving the room a harsh, artificial cast.
Verne had wound the ropes around my wrists a little too tightly, before tying the ends expertly with a couple of overhand knots. "There we go," he'd said. "Try and get out of that. Harder you pull against it, tighter it gets. Give yourself gangrene, you're not careful."
Geoffrey Latimer, next to me, tried to shift his hands to get them more comfortable. "I wonder if I'm ever going to see my wife and daughter again," he said softly. He looked ashen. His face was flushed, and he was short of breath.
Cheryl said, "This damned rope is too tight. I'm already losing circulation in my hands." She looked weary, suddenly ten years older. There was what looked like a dirty handprint on her long, pleated skirt, as if one of Russell's men had pawed her. Without her big earrings and necklace, she looked somehow vulnerable, disarmed.
"I wish I could help you," Slattery said. "But my hands are tied."
If that was his attempt at black humor, no one laughed.
I said, "You want me to call one of them over here to retie you?"
Cheryl shook her head. "The less we have to do with them, the better. I'll get used to it. Hopefully this isn't going to be too long." She paused, looked at me, spoke quietly. "How's Hank?"
Bodine lay on the hard floor, dozing. His closed eyes were bruised and bloodied, his face a patchwork of red and white: Travis, who I had become more and more certain was Russell's younger brother, had thoughtfully taped up some of the more serious wounds with strips of white adhesive tape and a variety of Band-Aids he'd found in a first-aid kit.
I doubted she actually cared, but I said, "He might have a concussion. A broken nose. Maybe a broken cheekbone, too."
"My God."
I smelled her perfume, strong and unpleasantly floral, like a funeral home.
"Could have been a lot worse."
"We have to get the word out," she said. "Somehow we have to tell the outside world what's going on."
I didn't think our captors could hear us. Russell was outside somewhere, and his brother, Travis, was patrolling the room, his gun at his side, a good distance away. The blond crew-cut lunk was upstairs grabbing loot. The other two-Buck, the vaguely sinister black-goateed one, and Verne, ex-con and speed freak, were at the far end of the room.
"How?" Kevin Bross said. "You have a sat phone you're not telling us about?"
Cheryl glared at him. "No, I don't have a satellite phone. But the manager has one. He keeps it locked in his office. I know, because I've used it." She glanced at the stone wall that made up one side of the fireplace. "Maybe one of us can sneak over there."
Bross snorted.
Upton Barlow straightened his shoulders. "Now, isn't that interesting," he said with heavy sarcasm. He'd eased one of his shoes off with the other. I could see his Odor-Eaters insole. "And I thought we were all supposed to be 'offline,' as you put it."
"One of us had to be reachable, Upton," Cheryl said icily. "I am the CEO, after all."
"Hmmph," Barlow said. One little syllable conveyed so much-ridicule, skepticism, condescension.
Cheryl turned slowly to face him. "I wouldn't get too high-and-mighty if I were you, Upton," she said. "Wasn't it you who made Russell an offer-put the whole ransom idea in his head? Brilliant."
"That idea was already in his head," Bross said. "He and his thugs broke in here to rip us off."
"Forgive me for my clumsy attempt to save your life," Barlow said, his syrupy baritone dripping with contempt. "Or maybe you've forgotten that he was pointing a gun at your face at the time? I should have let him pull the trigger."
"Cheryl," said Lummis, "he was about to kill you and me both."
"And wasn't it you who told him about our K &R insurance?" Cheryl turned to face Lummis. "In violation of our strict secrecy agreement with Lloyds of London? Do you realize the policy becomes null and void if you reveal its existence to anyone outside the executive council?"
Lummis's plump, pink cheeks were slick with sweat. "Good God Almighty, I'd say this qualifies as a situation of extreme duress."
The fact that we had a kidnap-and-ransom insurance policy was news to me, too, but I didn't get what the big deal was about revealing its existence. So what? Would knowing about it encourage potential kidnappers to escalate their demands? Hammond Aerospace was a multibillion-dollar company with very deep pockets anyway; who cared whether some insurance company paid us back?
"Hey, folks, let's all just count to ten," said Bo Lampack. The red mark across his face had begun to fade. "I know tempers are short, but we need to work together as a team. Remember, if we all row together, we'll get there faster."
"Oh, Christ," said Kevin Bross. "Where'd this knucklehead come from?"
Lampack looked bruised. "Hostility's not productive."