The Hostage Bargain (2 page)

Sirens sounded. I braced, eyes shut, as the van peeled out and turned.

“It’s okay,” Thor reassured me, knotting the cloth at the back of my head without getting any of my hair caught, a skill that impressed me. For somebody who didn’t typically take hostages, he was pretty handy with a blindfold. “None of us wants to kill anyone,” he said. “So let’s stay strangers. We’ll let you off once we know we won’t need you, got it?”

“Got it.”

“Hands.”

I put out my hands and he bound them up with efficient movements…for a bandit unused to hostage taking. The sirens grew louder, cranking the air of tension inside the van. Where were we?

“Fuck,” somebody said.

Were the sirens coming for us?

The sirens passed.

“Okay, then,” Thor mumbled.

Whichever robber was driving—Zeus or Odin—he was driving sanely, which pleased me. I figured the biggest danger would come in with a high-speed chase at this point.

Romano’s was an actual restaurant a few towns over, but I doubted these guys were from Romano’s. They were smarter than that.

Train crossing bells. I felt the van slow. Low voices up front. I could feel the rumble through the seat.

“Are we held up by a train?” I asked loudly.

A door creaked open. What was happening? Had somebody bailed from the van?

“Because if we are,” I continued, “there’s a bridge you can take.”

“You think we’re idiots?” Odin barked—I could tell it was him, because Zeus had a deep voice, and Thor was right next to me. Also, Odin had just a whiff of an accent. “I think we know the logistics of the area,” Odin added.

“Just trying to be helpful.”

“Don’t be,” Odin said. “We are awesome at this, and we don’t need your fucking input.” Odin’s accent involved saying the ‘g’ just a little bit too hard, so that it sounded like
your fucking g-input
.

A door slammed and we squealed out—a U-turn from the feel of it.

Softly, Thor said, “Somebody needed to get rid of those trackers.”

“Oh,” I said. So they’d thrown them into a boxcar.

We continued on, saying nothing.

“I want you to know something,” I announced. “I won’t be any trouble. My main mission in life is to screw the owner of that bank. And I’m not talking sex. Even if I saw your faces, which I swear I haven’t, I would never tell. I want you to get away.”

“Can you shut her up?” Odin said, and started up a hushed conversation with Zeus in the front.

“Fine,” I whispered, feeling annoyed, nervous, and excited all at once.

“Don’t worry about him,” Thor said to me. “We’ll find a place to let you out and you’ll have fifteen minutes of fame.” I felt the seat depress next to me—Thor, sliding closer. He lowered his voice to a hushed, sexy tone. “We have to find the right sort of place, though. There’s an art to every part of this.” I liked his familiar tone. Like he was confiding in me.

I nodded. I couldn’t see their faces, but I was starting to differentiate them by personality as well as voice. Thor was smart and easy to get on with, and we seemed to be on a certain wavelength; he was the one who’d immediately understood why I was talking in different voices in the safe and played along. Zeus was the big silent green-eyed robber who oozed masculine hotness. Odin was the bad boy techie, and he had that accent and a high opinion of their smarts. The three of them seemed sane and even kind of cool, yet excitingly dangerous, being that they were bank robbers. I rather liked the combination.

Sirens in the distance. “Oh, no!” I said.

“It’s fine,” Zeus said. I imagined him there in the front, his green eyes and solid presence, utterly in control of everything.

Thor said, “Why don’t you tell me why you hate your boss so much.”

I rested my head back on the seat, trying to think where to start.

“That bad, huh?” Thor said.

“If it wasn’t for Hank Vernon, my parents would still be around,” I said.

The hush in the car was palpable.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said softly.

“It’s been five years,” I said. “I’m…”
getting used to it
wasn’t quite right. More like struggling to live with it. “I’m okay.”

I told them about how the whole thing started, with the Vernons’ quest to take our farm, run us off the land, and lease it to a company that mined frack sand, which was way more lucrative than the mortgage their bank held. I told them about how amazing my mom and dad had been, standing so strong against the Vernons. Like scruffy warriors, my folks. That farm had been their life.

I took a breath. “Right after I graduated from high school, we had a fire in one of the barns and missed some payments, and that let Hank Vernon change the mortgage terms. He doubled the payments. We got so behind, we were in so much debt.”

I told the guys about them leaving for a two-month gig on a fishing boat in Alaska. The money from it would get us caught up. Lambing season had ended, and my three younger sisters and I were old enough to run the place over summer.

I swallowed, remembering the last time I saw my mom and dad. “Two weeks in, the boat went over. They were killed.”

“I’m sorry,” Thor said.

“Thanks,” I said. Such a small word for how much I missed them. “There was a bit of insurance money that let us catch up, but…”

“Your parents were gone.”

“Right,” I whispered.

“And you stayed.”

“I had to keep it going.”

Back before all that, my plan had been to leave Wisconsin to start my life—I had this whole round-the-world bungee jumping and rock climbing trek dreamed up. I was going to pick up odd jobs along the way and maybe finish college somewhere with mountains, or at least near a ski jump. But after that, it was all about keeping the farm. Not letting the Vernons win. I usually tried not to think of the life I’d planned before the boat accident. The secret truth is that I’d always hated the plodding predictability of farm life.

Thor said, “Bungee jumping is pretty dangerous, you know.”

“So are guns.”

Thor laughed softly. “So you managed to keep it?”

“Sure did.”

“Good for you.”

I nodded. “We expanded our cheese making operations, and started making these awesome wool comforters that we sell online.”

“Maybe I’ll buy one,” he said.

“Oh, please do. May I suggest the organic Paris Hilton Deluxe comforter?”

“Yeah?”

I snorted. “I’m just kidding. That one costs twenty thousand dollars. It’s kind of a pie-in-the-sky product that we made to cheer ourselves up. Like,
Hey, maybe Paris would buy it
. Our normal comforters are a few hundred bucks. They’re very well made.”

“Hey, you exchanging phone numbers back there?” Odin grated. “Can it.”

Wistfully I pictured nights sitting around the kitchen table with my sisters, freaking out over the latest vet bill or whatever. Times like those, one of us would say,
‘It’s okay because Paris Hilton will be buying these comforters for every room in her house soon, including one for her dog. Isn’t that great?’
It was our favorite inside sister joke.

“So why the hell are you working at his bank?” Thor whispered, interrupting my thoughts. “If you hate him so much?”

“Buying time. There’s a balloon payment coming up that we’ll never be able to handle. Hank said it could be delayed if I worked at the bank. But, you know—wink wink—we’re talking extracurricular duties. Which I’ve avoided because, let’s just say,
no way
.”

“I’m glad we hit his bank,” Thor said.

“Oh, me, too. It’s the best thing ever. Did you notice how nobody pulled the silent alarm? Everyone there hates him.”

“Wouldn’t’ve worked anyway,” Odin said from the front. “We took it out.”

“Would you say that’s true of all FCNs?” Zeus asked. “Wanting to bring down that owner?”

“Not as much as the branches Hank Vernon visits. They have 132 branches across the Midwest, dude. Vernon can’t terrorize them all. Hey, you know what would be awesome?” I fumbled for Thor’s arm and clutched it. “If you gave me one of those diamonds. That could go a long way toward helping us protect the farm. I could pay the entire balloon with one of those!”

Thor laughed softly. “I don’t think so.”

“What’s so funny? I showed you where they were. I could have it cut up and fenced or whatever. Isn’t that what you guys’ll do?”

“But the difference is that you would never get away with it, and we will,” Thor said.

“Oh, you will.” I let go of his arm. “I won’t, but the big, bad, god-named robbers will.”

“That’s right,” he said. “‘Cause we’ve got skills, baby.”

I smiled. “You’ve got
skillz
.”

“Amazing skills,” Thor said. “Like you’ve never seen.”

Something went tight in my belly. I was finding this Thor sexy and I didn’t even know what he looked like. Maybe that was part of it—the unknown. I said, “And you’re unable to impart these skills?”

Thor lowered his voice to a silky rumble. “We don’t impart them to just anybody.”

“Because your skills are so very god-like?”

He shifted next to me. “Very,” he whispered.

My face went red. “And you would never deign to impart them to the likes of me?” Was I flirting with this guy?

Yes!

“And why would we do that?” he breathed into my ear. “Why would we ever, ever do such a thing? What would persuade us?”

I can guarantee the subject was no longer diamonds. “Perhaps because you are benevolent gods,” I said.

“Well, we
can
be benevolent, it’s true. Benevolent beyond your wildest dreams. But we can also become quite wrathful.”

Heat speared through my core.

Somebody in the front cleared his throat. Warningly.

Thor seemed to straighten up. Were Zeus and Odin the bosses of him?

Anyway, I straightened up, too. Because,
hello
, I was blindfolded and flirting with one of the robbers who’d taken me hostage.

Thor asked me more questions. It was so easy to talk with him, and soon I found myself describing the book of humorous essays I was writing, ironically entitled “Adventures in Sheep Farming,” about life on a sheep farm. Someday I wanted to have real adventures and write about them, but it didn’t seem quite the thing to divulge at the moment. “Maybe ‘Adventures in Sheep Farming’ will be a best-seller and save the farm,” I joked. “You never know.”

“Your boss won’t be foreclosing on your fucking-g farm today,” Odin snarled from up front, somewhat threateningly. I liked it, because his threatening attitude seemed aimed at Hank.

“Why not?”

“That would look pretty fucking-g bad in the media, don’t you think?” Odin said. “You get kidnapped from this guy’s bank, and he decides to yank the family farm? You’ll be able to milk this for at least a few weeks.”

I sat up and leaned forward toward Odin. “You’re right.”

“Fuck.” Thor yanked me back and scootched me down. “Stay low or I’ll put you on the floor.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling happy and hopeful for the farm. I could milk this hostage thing!

In a matter of minutes, these three had accomplished what I’d been dreaming of doing for years: they’d royally messed with Hank Vernon and derailed the foreclosure.

“Or what if I stayed gone after you released me?” I said. “Get a job in nowheresville and make them sweat. As long as I’m gone, the farm would be safe.”

“Yeah,” Odin said sarcastically. “You’d be picked up in about two seconds.”

“Well, I guess once you let me go, you don’t really have a say,” I said. “Maybe I’ll try to stay hidden.”

“Don’t play games.” Thor’s voice sounded soft, but rumbly, somehow. A silky kind of gravelly. “This shit’s not as easy as it looks. You’ve been cool, so that’s the advice I’m giving you. Staying out of jail is worth more than money or a farm. We’ll dump you somewhere, and you just play your hand straight.”

It was here I got my new idea. “Okay, this might sound like a radical notion,” I said, “but, how about if I tag along with you guys?”

A mean bark of laughter came from up front. Odin.

“No way,” Thor said. “It’s just…no way.”

“I could be the wheel man. I’m a freaking amazing driver. Let me stay your hostage.”

Thor chuckled softly.

I imagined the media. If I disappeared indefinitely, the Vernons would never be able to touch the farm. Folks who disappeared from the Midwest got famous. People would probably send money. Maybe they’d start buying our Paris Hilton comforter. Maybe Paris Hilton would!

I could secretly get word to my sisters that I was okay, somehow. Though I knew in my heart it wasn’t enough. They’d want me back. My entire mood deflated at the thought of going back.

“You don’t have a wheel man,” I said. “What kind of gang doesn’t have a wheel man?”

No reply. Had I hit a nerve?

My head swam with visions of adventures with a bank robbery gang. Maybe just a few months! We’d split the money we’d steal. It would be awesome. I’m not the kind of girl to steal money, but what if we only hit Vernon-owned banks? I would feel pretty damn okay about that.

I felt fingers softly graze my forehead, brushing a lock of hair off my face. Thor. “There are
rules
to being in our gang.”

Rules.

I don’t know if it was the way he was touching me, or the rumbly intimacy of his voice, but warmth flooded through me at the idea of these rules, like they might be sexy rules.

I was not all that sexually adventurous in the real world, but this wasn’t the real world. I was a hostage now. It was like a holiday from the sheep farm life I secretly wanted out of.

I swallowed, senses humming. “I have no problem with rules.”

Thor said, “You might with these rules.”

They say in sales that when a person starts voicing objections, it shows they’re interested. Was Thor interested? Was he suggesting I might have problems with the rules because he hoped I wouldn’t?

“Why would I have a problem?”

“We are a very well-oiled organization,” he said, “demanding total obedience to the group.”

Excitement surged through me. “You don’t say.”

“I do say,” Thor said.

“That’s enough,” Zeus barked from the front.