Locked Doors

Free Locked Doors by Blake Crouch

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Authors: Blake Crouch
judicious thwack .   But the blade will do.   In the car he settled on a name for his knife: Zig , short for Ziegler, Andrew Thomas’s middle name.
    Luther hears the creak of the stall door swinging open.  
    Hesitant footsteps approach and eddies of Daniel’s cologne sweep over him.  
    He feels Daniel beside him now, the clerk’s hand on the cinderblock wall, groping for the light switch.
    The knife feels coldly sublime in his palm.
    Suddenly the restroom is awash in hard fluorescent light.  
    Daniel’s eyes register first bewilderment, then terror.  
    The blade moving, two graceful strokes—one to silence, one to open.  
    Daniel sits in a warm expanding puddle, fingering the gorge in his abdomen, unable to make utterance.
    “Now you sit there and think about what customer service means.”
    Luther reenters the stall and quickly dresses.  
    Then he hits the light and is out the door, one more cairn for this trail he’s blazing.

18
     
    UPON regaining consciousness, Karen’s first thought was that she was no longer in the trunk.   Though she couldn’t see, her present blindness owed to the blindfold tied around her head.   She felt a cold wind in her face and an erratic source of light struggled through the oily-smelling cloth that masked her eyes.  
    Karen did not remember being moved.   For all she knew she was dreaming again though the chill metal against her cheek seemed convincingly real.   She tried to move but could not, her hands and feet now bound with thick rope.   The numbing grogginess of thirst weighed down her head.  
    Footsteps approached, the tip of a boot now inches from her face.   She smelled the grass and dirt that clung to it—raw and earthy.
    “You’re conscious, I see.”  
    The voice contained no reverberation.   She was outside.
    “Where am I?   Please take off the blindfold.”
    “We better leave that on for now.   I tell you, you’re a heavy gal.   If I sound winded, it’s because I just carried you up two hundred fourteen steps.”
    A prickling crawled through Karen’s spine.   “Where is this?” she asked.
    “Don’t you see the light?   Even through the blindfold I don’t know how you could miss it.”
    “I don’t under—”
    “That light is magnified by a First Order Fresnel Lens, operational since October First, Eighteen Seventy-two.   Karen, let me quell your fear.”   The man sat down beside her.   “I brought you here to let you go.”   Karen began to cry, filling with the purest relief.   “But I have to hold on to the Widow Lancing.   You remember her from the trunk?”
    “ Yessir .”
    “See, the only reason you’re being released is because I flipped a coin.   You were heads, it landed on heads, you get to live.”  
    “Why are you doing this?”
    She smelled his lemony breath in her face and his words came very even and very quiet.
    “You think this is all about you you arrogant twat?”
    “No, I—”
    “I only took you and Elizabeth Lancing to get someone’s attention.   Can you guess who it is?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You should know.   You’ve fucked him.   Well, I’m just making an assumption there but—”
    “I don’t know who you’re—”
    “Andrew Thomas.”
    “What do you want with him?”
    “Seven years ago, Andrew shot me, left me to die in a snowy desert.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “No, don’t be.   What I’ve got planned for him is going to make it all worthwhile.   One last thing.   Think hard before you answer.   Do you believe you’re an evil person?”
    “No, I’m—”
    “Why not?”
    Her captor’s breath warmed her mouth as she thought of all the charitable acts she’d performed in the last year—Wednesdays in the soup kitchen on 54 th , the new writers she’d guided to publication, the angel tree at Ice Blink.
    “I’m a decent person,” she said.  
    “And me?   From what little you’ve seen.   Am I evil?”
    “No sir.   I don’t believe you are.   I

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