Blown Away Read Free

here in Boston. Or down along the Cape. Holed up on a coastal island. Or stuffed in a spider hole in the Florida Panhandle. Maybe even in Canada, though she believed this abductor was too smart to risk Homeland Security sniffer dogs. She shook her pounding head. “You said an operating table, Timothy?” she asked. “Can you describe it for me?” Any little clue could jog a local constable’s memory.
    The trooper groaned. “I’m in an operating room. Handcuffed to a table, so I can’t move. There’s a large overhead light with a reflector. Two big air tanks. A metal tray with tools. Hammer, scalpels, pliers. The room is small. The walls are…breathing.” Before she could ask what that meant, his voice became deeper, more defiant. “He’s dressed in surgical scrubs, Bertha. Rubber gloves. A bag over his head. Holes for his eyes. Another for his mouth. His lips are painted a girly cherry red so he can hide even that much. Hey! You! Take off these handcuffs, and fight me like a man—”
    â€œForget that! Tell me everything else!” Bertha interrupted. “Height? Weight? Eye color? Tattoos? C’mon, you know the drill.” She was amazed the abductor hadn’t stopped this conversation already.
    â€œHe’s tall. Almost seven feet. Mirrored sunglasses. Can’t see his eyes.” The trooper sounded much weaker. “The damn walls keep breathing…What…what’s your name again?”
    â€œBertha,” she said. “It’s Bertha. Timothy. What do you mean the walls are—”
    â€œHe cuts me, Bertha,” he gasped. “With the tools. Ankle, throat, ribs, hands. Hurts so much—”
    â€œI’ve been carving on the lad since he woke, my dear,” the kidnapper interrupted. “Just surface cuts. In exactly the right places, of course. He’s not bleeding much.” Serene chuckle. “Not yet.”
    Bertha thought of her father, who’d worn a Boston shield for thirty-two years before retiring happily to the golf course. Not one injury all those years, not one wacko whispering death in his ear. “What did Timothy do to make you hate him?” she tried.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œNothing?” she said, genuinely curious. “Then why are you doing this to him?”
    â€œI needed to know.”
    She glared at the lead technician, who shook his head in exasperation, as if to say, “Hell, lady, I don’t know what the hell’s wrong.” She went back to the caller. “Need to know what, John?”
    â€œIf I could do it,” he replied. “It’s one thing to dream about executing a cop, Bertha. You can plan and rehearse all you want, and that’s fun. It’s another thing to actually, you know, do it.” He was extremely calm. Robotic. No, that wasn’t it, not exactly. Unsure. As if he needed to talk himself into this.
    â€œSoda,” she croaked, throat parched. “Hurry.” Trout Lips ran for one. Her supervisor was a good guy, but stunningly inept at his job. He survived because he was the mayor’s cousin. That guaranteed him two things—a city paycheck and a catty nickname. His came from his enormously fat lips, which stuck so far out they resembled a trout’s.
    The soda can hit her desk. She drank fast, sorting options. John Doe was approaching the center of the high wire, not sure if he should keep going, and risk falling, or walk back to the stability of the platform. Forward, victory, backward, safety. She could play with that. Ask about his life, his dreams, what bothered him so much he’d execute another human being in cold blood. Let him unburden his soul if he had one. In return, she’d tell him about herself, provide her full name. She owed that much to the brave young man on the table.
    But John Doe was no longer tentative. “I drove ahead of the trooper, flattened my own tire, and waited for him to