Day 280

Writing exercise

Was this how it was going to end?

…

How did we get here?

That was easy.  I got out of bed this morning, even when I didn’t want to, because that work ethic my father had instilled in me from a very early age kicked in at 6:05 that morning, the same as it did every morning.

Without fail.

And i hated it.

I had said once in a conversation fuelled by too many bottles of beer that it would kill me in the end, and it was like a self-fulfilling prophesy.

A gun pointing at me by a person who self-confessed they had an itchy trigger finger.

I believed them.

Earlier that morning on the way to the office, the boss’s wife had called me and said her husband had forgotten an important file and since i was passing his house would I call in and collect it?

It was no problem; it was on the way and would not cause me to be late.

Not a problem.

Except… the boss’s wife was a problem and in calling it sometimes meant if was difficult to get away.

I drew the line in the sand before i stepped across the threshold, and that meant bring decent.

Stories abounded of her opening the door in her birthday suit.

She had done it to me before and I had asked her not to do it again.

Water off a duck’s back.

She had a weird idea about out of work fun.

This morning it was not a problem because something else was in play.  She had opened the door and stood to one side, allowing me to pass

I hadn’t taken 10 steps when two men appeared with guns and had me tied up in a matter of seconds.

It was not her idea.  She was too scared to have been the one to initiate it.  Not even when they roughly tied her up too.

They, whoever they were knew all of this before they got her to call me.  Yes, they knew we had been exploring the possibilities but not yet gone down that path.

Now it would be quite unlikely, depending on what happened over the next hour.

I was sat down after they tied me up.  Tightly.  Perhaps they thought i was the reincarnation of Harry Houdini.

I probably was.  Once.

Genevieve sat in another chair and made no bones about showing her legs under the short skirt.  Men being men they could be distracted.

Was that her plan?

If it was it was different from the one i expected.

She was a spy novel aficionado and was often rambling in about spy novel plotlines and conspiracies, and what she would have done differently.

I was one of those aficionados and had seem from the outset that combination of beauty and brains her husband failed.  She was to him a trophy wife.

He just saw a pretty girl he could exploit.

She was hoping to run distraction, and I was going to get us out of this mess.

Before her husband came home and made a mess of everything.

He was adept at stuffing the simplest of problems up.  Just look at his marriage.

I wondered if the two thugs had run surveillance on the location and knew what her true potential was.

I’d seen it, and a lot more at the last Christmas party.  Some gate crashers had taken her for an easy mark.

He ended up with fractured eye sockets a broken left arm broken right arm and a stiletto that just missed an eyeball.

He still held all the cards but was not quite so cocky, until she hit him with the baseball bat.

The 3vil underlying smile on her face told me that she was perhaps reliving that same moment in her mind.

An hour passed, several phone calls back and forth between one of the thugs and someone else, and judging by the thugs attitude, not happy with delays.

Who was he waiting for?

It was obvious whoever it was, was coming here otherwise we would have left by now.

Her husband?

Why?

I heard the front door open and close then hushed voices.  I’d also noticed that one of the thugs had gone missing, not that without his presences it would be any easier to escape.

What was also interesting was that she had not tried to speak to me since we were tied up.  Id asked a question or two but had been met with stony silence

Perhaps that was to establish there was no rapport between us.

Did she suspect it was her husband going off the deep end.

Then I heard the boss’s voice.

He had gone off the deep end.

She had too, and yelled out, “What the hell is this about?”

He came to the doorway and stopped.

I glared at him.  No point yelling.

“I would never have suspected you two.  The guy next door, maybe.”  He glared at me. “It just goes to show you can’t trust anyone.”

Was I supposed to answer that?  No.  Proably not.  He would have an answer for everything I said nothing.

He came over and stood in front of her.  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“You’re an idiot, and you’ve lost the plot.  Whatever you think I’m doing, I’m not.”

“I have graphic images of you.”

That look of fury melted into a smile, a complete change.  If i was to guess, she was about to explode and all that would remain of the immediate 100-meter perimeter: shrapnel.

“Of my sister, perhaps, but not me.  You know about Angelique.  She was the stripper you screwed at the bucks party you said you never had.”

A momentary flicker, just enough to turn the self-righteous man into a doubting Thomas.

She had me investigate the nonattendance, where I discovered the missing tapes that were not as missing as they were supposed to be.

Everything had a price.

She nodded towards the TV.  “Play the tape.”

He had a death wish; he played the tape.  I’d seen it several times.  Her sister was much bigger in various places but to a drunk that would be the last of his concerns.  That and removing the mask she wore.

Yep.  Death wish.

“So, whatever this is Dave, you made a mistake.  Your third strike.  Call this off.”

He watched, ignoring her.  Perhaps he was reliving the moment.  I shook my head.

I was going to add my advice but didn’t.  He stopped the tape and the screen displayed static.

The thug waiting on the other side of the room.  “Take her to the shed.”

He looked like he was going to disobey then shrugged.  He came over dragged her to her feet by the hair and shoved his gun in her face.  ‘Any trouble I shoot you.  Dead.  Got it?”

The gun was enough.  The snarl was icing on the cake.

She left obediently.

He came over to me.  “I should shoot you but that would cause a mountain of problems I don’t need.”

“What are you going to do to her?”

“Teach her a lesson.”

“Not to use her sister to set you up?”

He pulled a gun out of his pocket and hit me with it.

It hurt.

I looked up at him.  “Now you’re going to have to kill me.”

Guns with suppressors made a particular type of sound.  People who didn’t understand the dynamics would call them silenced.  The thing is they are not silent, and if you listen hard enough, they can be heard over distance.  In the room, the silenced sound is quite loud.

He never heard anything.

Which was not surprising.  When I turned, returning from the outside was Genevieve, gun in hand and very distracting.  The second thug didn’t have time to put his eyes back in their sockets

Leo managed to turn his head just as she came in the door.  Two shots, two knees.

Accuracy of a woman who spent a lot of time at the gun range

This was now officially a crime scene.

She cut the bindings.  “Leave by the back, though the rear gate.  Like you’re not running from a crime scene.  Ill fix this.”

Spoken like lines out of a script.

A line ran though my head, was this how it was going to end?

I didn’t run, just looked like I was heading towards the back shed.  A short distance away was the gate.  Before I went through it i looked back.

A mess.

I shrugged and closed the gate behind me.

“Cut.”

The group outside the gate up until that moment highly focussed on getting the scene.  It was the fourth take.  The husband kept making mistakes.

And Genevieve kept improvising.

“This time,” I asked the assistant director.

“Finally.  Take a break.  Oh, and well done.”

One small step for mankind…and all that.

An assistant handed me a cold bottle of water.

“Just got the word.  It’s a wrap.”

She smiled.

And, at last I let out a sigh of relief.

Until I heard the blood curdling scream.

“What the hell…?”

The assistant put her hand to her ear, listening.  Then she looked at me.  “They were real bullets.  Two dead, one critical.  Oh my God.”

“Genevieve?”

“Gone.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025