The Hostage Bargain (4 page)

I wondered if his thuggish air made people underestimate his intelligence. I sure wouldn’t. Not now, anyway. He squinted when he drank his soda. “Hate this stuff,” he said, looking casually around with those intense green eyes. His eyes were what stood out about him. He was like a handsome tough with the eyes of a feral animal.

His short brown hair twinkled merrily in the sunlight and curled wrong on the ends—it curled outward on one side and inward on the other, like the curl didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to be symmetrical, and he’d never learned to properly manage it in the maybe thirty years he’d walked the earth. This, too, made him seem somehow untamed in a way that very much turned me on. And of course I kept thinking about Thor’s skills comment. And the rules. The well-oiled organization.

“Does my hair look not too fucked up?” I asked.

He gazed at me with those green eyes, and it was like a tremor through me. “It looks convincing enough.”

I swallowed. “If you think you can sway me with flattery, you’re wrong.”

He looked away. I’d thought we had a certain connection, but he seemed wary of me now. He sipped his soda again and wiped his mouth with his arm. “Look, you’re doing great.”

“Are you trying to build my confidence?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“It reverses the effect if I know that’s what you’re trying to do.”

He said nothing. Really, just having him close was bolstering. There was a calm and power to Zeus that reminded me of the calm and power of a large animal. And I liked having his possessive arm over me. I hadn’t had a lot of boyfriends in my life, and those I’d had would’ve never thrown their arms around me in such a presumptuous and possessive way, and they certainly wouldn’t have named themselves for gods.

He said, “Let me do the talking until you think I don’t know the answer, then butt in. Let me see your tooth. Smile.”

I smiled.

“Good. Don’t lick it.”

I looked over my shoulder, into the van window. Thor and Odin were both lounging in the van texting or tweeting or something on their mobiles. Or at least pretending to.

One of the cops came to talk to the kids in the back of the truck next to us. Another pair of cops strolled up to us, both middle-aged men. One wore wire-rimmed glasses.

“There an accident up there?” Zeus asked. I watched him, amazed. He’d hunched his body slightly and got this bewildered, frowny look that gave him and oafish, even victimy air. You would never in a million years imagine this Zeus robbing a bank.

“Bottleneck,” the one with glasses said simply while his partner peered into the window. “Where’re you off to?”

“Tractor pull,” Zeus said.

“Who you rooting for?”

“Big Bessie,” Zeus said. “If we even make it.”

“You, too?” the officer asked me.

“Bessie for the win.” I raised my soda, heart pounding. “What happened? We’re going to miss everything.” I frowned. “Do you think they know to hold the main event?”

One of the officers shrugged, and I frowned harder. Engines were sounding ahead.

“It’ll loosen. Drive safe,” the one said. The two of them proceeded to the car behind us.

Zeus and I stood there together for a second. We’d done it, though I felt weird about the act. “I can see what you think about the kind of people who attend tractor pulls,” I said. “With that act you put on. You know, I go to tractor pulls. They’re fun. They’re not just for country bumpkins.”

“Let’s go,” he said simply, straightening back up to his cool badass self. Maybe that’s what they thought of me—a country bumpkin.

I walked around to the passenger side. Odin was there. “I think the girlfriend should sit up front,” I said to him through the window.

Odin smiled a smile that positively glittered with dark designs. “The girlfriend sits where we tell her to sit. That happens to be one of our rules.”

I got this quivery feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew that he was telling the truth, that they had some sort of rules, and the rules had nothing to do with bank robberies.

“The rules don’t apply to Melinda,” Zeus said.

The back door slid open and I got in next to Thor and shut the door. I wanted to hear more about these rules, and frankly, I wanted them to be really dirty.

“Please,” I said. “Call me Isis.”

Thor looked surprised at this, and both he and Odin swung their gazes to Zeus, as if to see what he’d do. Zeus just stared ahead grimly. His silence brought a hush down over the van. The man’s silence had power.

Finally I spoke up. “You all have god names. You said I could be in the gang until the next job. I think I deserve a god name.”

Thor seemed to pull himself together. “Thank you, Isis. You are awesome. That was awesome.”

I pulled my dead tooth thing off. Odin handed back the box and I dropped it in. There were other dead tooth disguises in there, plus tattoos, fake scars, and moles. “I can’t believe you go around with a kit like this. Did you send away for it from the back of a comic book?”

Odin snapped the box lid shut. “Worked, didn’t it?”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Zeus said. “But—” He caught my eyes in the mirror and nodded. “Thank you.”

The cars in front of us started to move. Soon we cleared the bridge and were clipping along at a highway speed, leaving the police and copters behind.

Zeus and Odin discussed how the cops had handled the search, all cool about the whole episode. Maybe it was a bandit thing. I put my hand over my chest. “Wow. Phew!” I felt like my insides were vibrating.

“I know,” Thor said. We exchanged glances, and his blue eyes seemed quite bright. He was still in the white T-shirt and slacks, and when you really looked, he, too, seemed very keyed up. Aroused, even. It was exactly how I felt, like all my sex and danger circuits had crossed.

“What now?” I said, holding his gaze.

From the front, Zeus said, “We lay down miles, change license plates and van decal, and then stop for the night.”

Stop for the night.
For some reason my mind went right to Zeus, to that moment in the bank when I touched his glove, handing off the bag, the frisson of shivers.

“And hit another First City? As a gang?”

“You’re staying with us through the next job, we didn’t say you could take
part
in the next job,” Zeus said.

I sat back, disappointed. It seemed like there should be more, somehow. I wanted there to be more.

There’s this abandoned ski jump ten minutes from our farm, a creaky wooden thing built in the 1960s. It’s so tall, you can see its dark bones cragging up into the horizon for miles around, beckoning you,
daring
you with its insane height and rickety thrills.

When you drive over there and sneak up to it, you find a chain link fence around it and
No Trespassing
signs all over, but it’s easy enough to break in, easy enough to climb up it with your skis strapped to your back; you just have to take care to avoid the rotten rungs. Adrenaline and excitement build with every step, and then you’re standing on top and there’s nothing like it. You can see for miles round, and then you look down at the impossible downward angle, which tips up at the very end, designed to send you up into the air. Standing up there before you push off is like the edge of ecstasy, like the still point at the tip-top of a rollercoaster, and you know that you’ll go.

Or more, you know that it will take you. That there will be a point of no return.

It’s the most indescribable rush.

That’s how I felt with the bank robbers—like I was standing on the edge of something wonderful. I didn't want to take off my skis and strap them to my back and climb back down.

“I have a question.” I swallowed. “Why don’t the mysterious rules apply to me? You said I was in. Shouldn’t the rules apply to me as well as you guys?”

More silence.

Thor said, “Look, they’re stupid rules we had once when our gang was different.”

“It’s important to me to play by the rules,” I said, mouth going dry.

“You don’t understand,” Thor said.

Odin made a derisive sound and turned around in his seat so that he faced back, staring right into my eyes. I couldn’t begin to guess his background—Middle Eastern, North African. But lord, he was hot. He could slap on all the scars and moles and dead teeth from that box and still be hot.

“What?” I said, fighting the hypnotic effect of his gaze.

“Forget the rules,” Zeus said from the driver’s seat. “That’s what. She’s not playing.”

Odin said, “She took a god name. She wants in. She already guessed what the rules are, or at least their nature.” He paused, letting that sink in. It was unnerving that he was talking about me while looking at me. Telling my secrets.

But I liked it—the out of control-ness of it. Like I was giving over to something, the way I do on the ski jump.

Odin said, “I’d say she has a pretty good fucking-g idea what the rules are.”

“Is that so?” I tried not to smile.

“Very much so,” Odin said. “And you wouldn’t want it any other way.”

I swallowed. It was as if he were engaging my body in an erotic conversation.
I wouldn’t want it any other way
. I crossed my legs, suddenly aware of the tickly energy there.

Odin raised his dark brows, as though my crossing my legs provided further proof of his rightness. I loved the way he talked, the way he knew things, and I wanted him to say more.

Coyly, I said, “Well, I’d certainly like to know what the rules are, and to evaluate them for myself.” Even then I was beginning our strange dance, like somewhere deep inside I knew the steps.

Zeus eyed me in the rearview mirror with his usual stern, bullish power. I felt Thor’s eyes on me, too—I could practically feel him vibrating beside me.

I became keenly aware of my nipples at this moment, crazily hard and punching out under my flimsy top. I wanted to touch them. I wanted
them
to touch them.

“Well?” A twinge deep in my belly. I felt like I might start panting at any second. “It seems customary,” I said in my bank teller voice, “that those who create rules would inform others of them instead of asking them to guess.”

“Yes that would be customary,” Odin said darkly. “Fine then. The game is that we’re dissolute, depraved, sex-crazed bandits and the rules are, firstly, that you have sex with all of us at different times and in different combinations.” Odin paused.

My pulse fluttered. “That’s firstly?”

“Yes, Isis,” Odin said.

I imagined being pressed between them. I imagined their hands and mouths on me. Oh, he was a little evil to pause like that. This too, I richly enjoyed. “And what might be secondly?” I asked.

“That we tie you up, etcetera,” he said casually, almost bored, like it was a totally normal thing. “And we give you various commands that you must obey, within reason of course, and utterly pleasure-focused. Or you’ll be punished in various ways. And if you were to refuse your punishment...” He paused here, seeming to consider the punishment. “I’m sorry, but if you were to agree to our rules, and then you
refused
one of your punishments or you refused any activity that we named”—he exchanged glances with Thor, who looked as rapt as I felt— “you would lose your right to a god name,” he said. “You would lose your right to the name of Isis. Forever.” He said it like it was the most horrible thing in the world. “You would remain Melinda for the duration of our association. A simple guest until we pull the First City job and dump you. As opposed to Isis. You would no longer be one of us.”

I could barely breathe. It was weird, but the way they made such a big deal out of my god name, that made it a big deal. I didn’t want to be Melinda anymore. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be Isis!

“I’m sorry, but that’s how it would have to be,” Odin said, looking grimly at Thor.

Thor put a heavy, warm hand on my thigh, and I sucked in a breath. “Do you understand why we have to make the ultimate punishment so harsh?”

It was weird and surreal and I sort of didn’t get it. “Are you making this up as you go along?”

“That’s not the sort of question we like to hear,” Thor said.

I tried not to grin, but it was all so crazy and hot. I could see no reason not to go along with the whole thing, aside from the fact that, somewhere back In Baylortown, Wisconsin, my sisters were probably worried out of their minds about me, crying, and I could get the guys to let me out and be reunited with them by nightfall.

Except I wanted this more. Did I have no heart?

“Fuck,” Zeus said, shifting lanes. I couldn’t tell whether his commentary regarded the road or our conversation.

Gravely, Thor said, “We don’t want to take away your name, Isis, but if we have to, we will. And you’ll be Melinda again.”

Thor scooted closer. “What do you think about the rules, Isis? Will you abide by them?”

I looked up at Zeus’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were fixed on the road. What did he think about this?

“Did Thor just ask you a question?” Odin said.

My mouth was quite dry. Would I abide? I knew nothing beyond very regular sex, and a bit of cartoon porn. They would laugh about the cartoon porn. I resolved never to tell them about the cartoon porn. I wanted Isis to be worldly.

“What’s the etcetera? You said
tie you up, etcetera
.” The pulse in my ears amplified, the way it used to when I’d start down the ski slope. I was starting down a ski slope into a wildly hunky unknown.

“The etcetera is mutually decided as we go along,” Odin said.

Thor looked at me new, like he’d just realized something. “You’re into it.”

I wasn’t clear on what the
it
was, and I didn’t care. “Yes,” I breathed.

“Wow, Sherlock,” Odin said. “Your brilliance is blinding. Did you just figure that out?”

“
We’re
into it,” Thor said. “Come here.” He pulled me onto his lap, and I happily settled in. I felt my sex throbbing, wanted his hands there. Would we have sex now? It would be so outrageous.

“Say yes,” Thor said, drawing his fingers over my sensitive nipples, which were somehow more sensitive through the fabric.