“Rory,” Luke called.
“Shut up,” the man said.
He ordered Luke inside, keeping a bead as Luke climbed the steps and entered the foyer.
Rory was sitting on a living room sofa. A second masked man stood over him with a pistol. On the end table glinted the two tumblers, whisky and water, as though Rory and the man had been sharing a drink.
The rifleman told Luke to put the flashlight on the ground. Luke set it on the tiles.
“Lie down,” the rifleman said. “Hands on your head.”
“Take anything you want,” Rory said.
The second man pistol-whipped Rory, felling him to the marble.
The rifleman said, “Lie down.”
Luke lay on his stomach. He could hear Rory moaning in pain.
“Get over here’n help me,” the rifleman said.
The man with the pistol came over and held it to Luke’s cheek while the rifleman zip-tied Luke’s wrists behind his back and cleaned out his pockets.
The man with the pistol said, “Fuck we do with him.”
“Your problem, you deal with it.”
“How’s it my problem?”
“You’re the one so wet you can’t wait till he comes down the driveway.”
“He wasn’t coming.”
“He would, you could learn to sit still for five fuckin minutes.”
Behind them Luke saw Rory struggling to pull himself up on the end table.
“How d’you know?” the man with the pistol said. “You don’t know that.”
“Tell you what I know, I know you’re a fuckin moron.”
The table tipped, dumping the tumblers to the floor with a crash.
Both men spun around.
Rory lurched up and across the foyer and down the hall.
The man with the pistol swore and took off after him.
Seizing on the distraction, Luke rolled onto his side and began kicking at the rifleman’s legs. He heaved up at the waist and had almost managed to stand when something hard caught him square in the temple.
Several loud bangs; a long buzzing silence.
“... ’spect me to do? He was getting away.”
“Yeah cause you let him get away.”
Luke stirred. His head throbbed. He was on his stomach again. His ankles were bound, too.
“You asked me to help you.”
“Yeah, okay. Problem solved. Nice job, idiot.”
“Fuck you.”
“Stay here.”
“Where you going.”
“Just stay here.” A snicker. “Hey, Jace: Try not to let him get away.”
“Eat a dick.”
Footsteps went and came back.
“Whad you do?”
“Put him in the bathroom.”
“Fucks’at spose to do?”
“You want me to leave him out where they’re gonna see him?”
“They’re gonna see him. There’s blood everywhere.”
“Hey. Hey. Shut up. I don’t take lessons from you. It’s your fuckin mess I’m cleaning up here. Fuckin idiot. Whatever, let’s get the fuck out of here already.”
Luke readied himself to die. They had come for Rory but run into him; now he must be eliminated. He took a deep breath and felt himself leave the ground. The thought crossed his mind that his spirit was leaving his body. He found it encouraging that he was going up instead of in the other direction.
The men carried him to the truck. They raised the tonneau cover and locked him in.
He could hear them arguing in the cab, their words unintelligible over the churn of the engine. They drove a short distance and braked hard, throwing him headfirst into the front panel.
A door opened, a door slammed, they resumed driving.
Luke tried to keep track of the turns but he was dizzy and had bagpipes whining in his skull. He wriggled around in search of a weapon or a means to free himself. Found nothing and lay still, conserving his energy.
They got onto the freeway. He felt the rhythm of the seams in the concrete.
Then came a road that curved and rose and fell.
The truck slowed and shuddered. He guessed they’d been traveling for an hour but he had no idea in which direction.
The tonneau cover lifted. He kicked at them with his bound feet. He’d gotten disoriented in the lightless chamber of the truck bed, and he was facing the wrong way, battling air. They dragged him over the tailgate and onto the stony dirt, pummeling him with the rifle stock, the pistol butt, fists, boots. He considered himself a strong guy, but so were they, and he was trussed like a pig.
Hoisting him by the elbows they hauled him drooling and bleeding into shadows. He still expected to die at any moment. He thought they were stringing it out, for fun.
They held him down, cut the zip-ties from his wrists, and handcuffed him to something cold.
They were bickering again. They’d ripped off their masks and were slashing at each other with the beams of their flashlights. To Luke’s dismay there were now four of them.
No. Just two, he was seeing double.
He forced the images into alignment, piecing their faces together from brief illuminated fragments, like a mosaic displaced in time. The similarity of their voices and builds and their combative shorthand led him to conclude that they were brothers. One had a beard and the other did not. The beard made its possessor seem older and larger and lent him an air of authority.
By shooting the “old guy” No Beard had gone off book. Beard berated him for his stupidity. Now the pistol tied them to the crime scene. They had to ditch it.
No Beard opposed this suggestion. If they did that, they’d only have the rifle left.
Beard retorted: Whose fault was that. But he had an idea. He’d head out to some random spot, turn on the phone, and toss the pistol there. Then turn off the phone. That way if the cops traced the phone, or the gun got found, they’d be looking way over in the wrong place. Lemons to fucking lemonade.
“Give it,” Beard said.
No Beard glared but surrendered the pistol. Beard tucked it in his waistband, like a movie gangster. He crouched and stuck Luke’s phone in Luke’s face. “Code, bitch.”
Luke didn’t answer fast enough. Beard raised the pistol over Luke’s head like a tomahawk.
“Okay,” Luke said. His mouth was full of mashed tissue and blood. “Okay.”
He recited the passcode.
“You tell me right,” Beard said. “Cause I get there and that’s not right, you know what I’m going to do?”
Luke nodded.
Beard smiled. “Okay. Stay the fuck here,” he said to No Beard, and left.
The truck drove away.
No Beard paced, as if he could walk off his humiliation.
Luke’s eyes had begun to adjust to the dim. He was in some sort of pen. The surrounding structure was unwalled, similar to his car shelter but much larger. Through the open sides he could see the smudged charcoal outlines of other buildings. No lights were on.
Blood and snot dripped down his throat.
He said, “Can I have some water, please.”
No Beard startled. He stared at Luke, then took a two-step run-up and kicked him in the stomach. Pain radiated out from Luke’s belly to his fingertips.
In the morning he turned over and surveyed his new home.
His stall was one of eight, each measuring about thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, four on either side of a center aisle. The floor was dirt, tamped by hooves and flecked with old hay. His right wrist was cuffed to a rear railing, his ankles still zip-tied. His nostrils felt blocked solid but he could taste ammonia and smoke. Fading tang of manure.
Sunrise backlit a welter of tumbledown buildings. Nearest was a farmhouse. The truck was parked outside it. Overgrown fields stretched to the hills. A scrim of haze made it difficult to tell if the hills were high and far away or low and close. Electrical towers threw spiky shadows. The lines met at a place with long walls like a prison yard. Antennas stuck up. A power station.