I wait for a minute before moving, let my rage simmer and eyes recover, hating the rapid pant of my breath. I must remember my size, my limitations. Need to squash my confidence a bit.

I give him another jolt of juice and crawl forward, straddle his shins for more leverage, and zip-tie his ankles, moving as quickly as I can, breathing easier once his feet are under wraps. Then I duct tape his mouth shut and turn off the lights. Sit in the misty dark for a moment and let my heartbeat slow. My eyes readjust, following the line of his prone body, stretched out on the floor, his chest heaving, cries muffled by duct tape, his instruments of attack moved to the kitchen counter. My breath is hot in the mask and I exhale slowly, evenly, trying to get my body under control, trying to tame the madness to a point that it will be productive. I have done it. I have subdued him. He is tied up. My objective attained. Now, I just have to control myself. Gain information. Find out why he is here. Find out why he hurt Mike. For the hell of it, ask where my motherfucking money is. Have fun. Yes, in the midst of fact discovery, I will have one hell of a good time. My own personal present to myself.

CHAPTER 89

JAMIE PUSHES MIKE’S chair through the glass doors, the frigid air hitting them both at the same time. Good lord. He needs to move to Florida. Somewhere where the girls have real tans, somewhere you can open your windows and enjoy fresh air without a parka. Somewhere the sun lights up more than dingy slush and worn faces. She slips slightly on ice and the chair jerks a bit as she catches herself with the handles. “I don’t need you to push me,” he mutters, rubbing his arms and wishing that one of them had had the foresight to bring jackets.

“Shut up. You don’t need to be using your hand or your shoulder.”

“They’re fine.” Not really. With stitches, wound dressing, and gauze, he feels like a fiddler crab, one arm dressed to twice its normal size. But at least he isn’t in pain. The cocktail of meds has helped, along with the injections that make half of his body numb. He feels high, a woozy, sleepy state that barely allows brain function. “What time is it?”

“Eleven.”

Eleven. So this is what the city looks like at eleven at night. Pretty fucking boring. Dark streets, every fifth streetlight out, the city’s budget too tight to allow something as economically wasteful as new bulbs. “Where’s my phone?”

“I told you, it’s at the house. And you’ve already bitched me out about that twice, so shut it. We’ll be back there in ten minutes. I’m sorry that, in the midst of freeing you from your bed and carrying your jingle-bell-ringing ass to the car so you didn’t bleed to death, I didn’t think about your precious cell phone.”

“You found me tied up—that doesn’t seem like an odd situation—one that I might need my cell phone to get out of?”

“I got you out of it… the in-shock, wasn’t-in-shape-to-talk-on-the-phone-anyways person that you were. And no, you should have mentioned that. After telling me not to call the cops. Or after telling me to call that bitch. At that point in time, you should have said ‘And, should we leave this house, bring my phone.’ ”

“She’s not a bitch.”

She yanks the chair to a stop next to her car, a motion that is twice as abrupt as it needs to be. “Oh, she’s a bitch.”

“She’s probably just pissed about her money.” He watches her open the back doors to her Mazda. A car not equipped to carry a wheelchair, but they didn’t have many options. Mike’s big van, the one parked at his house, hasn’t been driven in years, the battery dead, the tires rotten. His parents thought it would make him more independent. Nothing is as independent as staying home, in a place where everything is easy, where no one stares, and where mountains can be moved and new people created in a few hours with his computer.

“Yeah.” She shoots him a sideways glance. “She mentioned something about wanting her money back. You need help getting in?”

“No.” He pushes himself to the edge of the wheelchair. Uses his arms to support his weight, swinging himself into the low enclosure, bringing his legs along once his butt is in. “You got the chair?”

She nods, flipping clasps and dismantling it. “Yeah.”

“Then let’s get back home. I need to call her.”

He shuts the door with his good hand and leans back, his head against the headrest. By the time she finishes with the chair and climbs into the driver’s seat, he is asleep.

Deanna’s not answering. She’s not answering and he doesn’t know if it’s because she is pissed or dead. He has four missed calls, calls that accrued during their stint at the hospital. Calls that occurred while Jamie was launching into a detailed explanation to a nurse who didn’t care, an unnecessarily elaborate story about a masked intruder who stabbed him and then took off. The nurse nodded, looked busy, scribbled, then whisked him away to surgery while lecturing him on his poor state of nutrition. Calls that rang to voice mail while he was pumped full of antibiotics, fluids, and painkillers. While they repeated the whole song and dance to a pair of uniforms, who nodded respectfully and avoided eye contact. His condition makes people nervous. And they can’t imagine a cripple would lie. No messages were left by Deanna, his voice mail still full from his two days of imprisonment. Jamie also left that important task undone while scrambling around with her head cut off.