Free Certain Prey by John Sandford Page B

“Yeah, you are. You wouldn’t give the keys to anyone, you’d hide them someplace.”
    “I’m not lying,” Rolo protested. “Look, I can call my friend . . .”
    “What’s her name?” Carmel asked. “Quick.”
    Rolo’s eyes went sideways and he stumbled over a couple of syllables. “Um-m-m, Mary,” he said.
    “Would that be the Virgin Mary?” Carmel asked sarcastically. To Rinker: “He’s lying.”
    “Should I shoot him again? A little more this time?” Carmel looked at Rolo for a moment, pulled on her lower lip, then shook her head slowly. “Nope. I think we should just chain him up . . .” She touched the hardware store bag with her foot. “See about this Mary. Tear the house apart. See if we find any safe-deposit keys.”
    “I don’t think there is one,” Rinker said. “I think I should shoot him again.”
    “Jesus Christ,” Rolo said, listening to the argument.
    “Let’s just get him on the bed, so we don’t have to watch him every minute, and try to work this out,” Carmel said to Rinker. She touched the bag with her foot again and looked at Rolo. “We’re gonna chain you to your bed and tear this place apart. Either that, or Pamela’s gonna shoot you again, and then we’re gonna tear this place apart. Are you gonna give us a hard time?”
    “You’re gonna kill me,” he said.
    “Not if we don’t have to,” Carmel said.
    “You’re both fuckin’ crazy.”
    “Which you should keep in mind.”
    “Into the bedroom,” Rinker said, gesturing with the muzzle of the gun.
    “My leg is killing me,” Rolo said.
    Rinker dropped the muzzle toward his other leg and Rolo lurched forward, said, “I’m going, for Christ’s sake, I’m going.”
    Rinker moved with him, just behind him, the gun pointed at his spine. “Just stretch out on the bed,” she said when they got to the bedroom door. “No problems.”
    They’d gotten a package of lightweight chain at the hardware store, the kind used for children’s swings; a roll of duct tape at a pharmacy; and four keyed padlocks and two pairs of yellow plastic kitchen gloves at a Kmart. While Rinker leaned on the end of the bed, the gun ready, Carmel took a couple of turns of chain around Rolo’s neck, wrapped the chain around the end of the bed and snapped on a lock. “And his feet,” she said. She did his feet the same way.
    “His arms,” Rinker said.
    “Hmm,” Carmel said, looking at him. Finally she took a tight wrap of chain around one of his wrists, snapped on a padlock, leaned over the side of the bed, threw the chain beneath it, fished it out from the opposite side, took a wrap around Rolo’s other wrist, and snapped on the last padlock. “That’s it for the chain,” Carmel said. She went back to the sack for the duct tape.
    “What’re you going to do with that?” Rolo asked.
    “Tape up your mouth,” Carmel said.
    Rolo thrashed a little against the chain, but it cut into his neck and he stopped and looked up at Carmel. “Don’t hurt me,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet.
    “How many copies?” Carmel asked.
    “Just the one,” Rolo said.
    “And it’s in your safe-deposit box?”
    “That’s right. I’ll get it for you.”
    “Shut up,” Carmel said. She pulled off two feet of duct tape and wrapped it around his head, taping up his mouth. C ARMEL AND R INKER spent an hour ripping through the little house, working in the yellow plastic gloves. They dumped cupboards, closets and dressers, looked through the small, dank, empty basement, poking their heads up into cobwebs and bug nests; they probed the equally empty ceiling crawl space, which was stuffed with pink fiberglass insulation that stuck to their skin and tangled their hair. They dumped all the ice cube trays out of the refrigerator, dumped all the boxes in the cupboard, looked in the toilet tank, ripped the covers off all the electric outlets. They found a half-dozen tapes under the television, but their labels said they were pornographic, and when