Free The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen

long?
Maybe he hadn’t been flirting; maybe he had less chivalrous ends in mind.
“Let’s just say there are parts of this drive that we prefer to be
secretive, and leave it at that.” Jason’s voice sounded the
slightest bit different—not cold, exactly, but businesslike. She was a
commodity, something to be held and then traded. She had felt this way before.
The men didn’t talk anymore, so neither did she. She missed the
exhilaration of the running boards, the wind in her hair. Already she was
amazed she had felt that way—God, she was crazy. She was being
kidnapped by gangsters and she had foolishly smiled her way into the
executioner’s den. The freed hostages were likely offering her
description to the police even now. Somewhere an obituary was being prepared.
They drove for an hour, maybe two, stopping intermittently. A doorwould open and one of the shoulders beside her would
depart. At least she had some room back here now.
“I’ll have to ask you to lie down now, Miss Windham,” Jason
said after the second stop. “Wouldn’t want any passersby to see
your blindfold and get suspicious.”
She obeyed, reluctantly. She began to wonder if she would ever see anything
else again.
“So how much money did we make today?” she asked them, again hoping
her own words could lighten her mood. Even when she had nothing else, like in
the sanatorium, she always had herself, always had her words. She used them to
calm herself, reinvent herself.
“Can’t say yet—haven’t had the opportunity to count
it.”
“Well, let’s imagine. Let’s imagine this was a pretty good
day. What does that translate to in this line of work? Ten thousand? Forty
thousand?”
“That’d be nice” was all he said, but she heard a second
voice grumble, “I’ll bet that’s a typical day for her
daddy.”
Minutes later the car stopped again, though the engine was still running.
“All righty, Miss Windham, this is your stop,” Jason said as two
doors opened. She sat up, and then another door was opened, and she felt a hand
on hers. He gentlemanly guided her out of the car, then she felt him untying
the blindfold.
Her eyes needed a moment to adjust to the sun, and to him standing so close.
She backed up despite herself, wishing she hadn’t.
She was in a small field that looked as if it had once been a farm but had been
lost to neglect. To her right was an abandoned farmhouse and a narrow pathway
they had driven through. Surely this drab locale would not be her final resting
place.
“Sorry to leave you here, but this is where the adventure ends. Once
we’ve driven off, you can start knocking on doors and I’m sure
someone will have a phone.”
She let herself exhale. All would be well, as she had originally believed.
These weren’t such bad men, especially this one right here. After the
period of enforced blindness, her nascent vision was fuzzy around the edges but
just sharp enough in the center for her to appreciate his face. She
hadn’t been imagining it before—he really was this handsome.
“What a pity,” she said. “I was
rather enjoying myself. For a moment, I thought the famous bank robber was
moving into kidnapping.”
“Not my style.”
“Why is that? Not dramatic enough? Not enough witnesses for your
vanity?”
“Takes too long. Ransom notes, waiting for them to rustle up the money,
phone calls …”
“You prefer immediate gratification.”
“Pretty much.”
“Perhaps you need to learn the benefits of patience.”
“I suppose you know of a good teacher?”
“Hate to interrupt, brother,” the other one said, his voice the
very sound of rolling eyes. “But we’re running late.”
Jason was still smiling at her. He had started and never stopped. He tipped his
hat.
“Been a pleasure, Miss Windham. You take care.”
Twin door slams like gunshots, and the Pontiac was pulling away. She was alone
now, on an abandoned farm, in an abandoned town, in some abandoned state, in
the center of an abandoned country.