KnockOut

a hand up.
    Lissy continued to work her fingers over her jaw. “You could pop him right between the eyes? I could take care of Bernie. Then we’d be free and away from this hick town. We’ll find us a car. I want to go to Montana.”
    “Montana might be good. I wonder how long it takes to drive there.”
    “We’ll take five days, take it easy.” Lissy looked up to see Bernie speaking low to Savich. “Shut up, or I’ll shoot your heads off! Victor, before Super Cop takes us out of here, I’ve got an idea. Hand me his cell phone. I want to look at his speed dial.”
    Victor pressed the muzzle of his gun against Savich’s throat as he pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. Victor jumped to his feet and took two steps back and handed Lissy the cell. She flicked it to his stored numbers. “Isn’t this a kick!. The very first name, it’s Sherlock.”
    “What kind of name is that? I wonder who he is.”
    “Probably a stupid nickname,” Lissy said. “Let me place a call, see who this Sherlock is.”
    Bernie sent Savich a look, saw his face was perfectly still, expressionless.
    The cell rang once, then a woman answered. “Yes?”
    “Hey, is this Sherlock?”
    “Yeah, I’m Sherlock. Who wants to know?”
    “Smart mouth, aren’t you? This is Lissy Smiley. I got me two big federal agents right here. Special Agent Savich, and Special Agent Bernie with two little kids. You’re Savich’s partner, right? You’re the one with all that red hair?”
    “That’s me.”
    “You’re really not sleeping with him? He said he didn’t even like you much. Still, why wouldn’t you want to get in his pants?”
    “Why are you calling me, Lissy?”
    “I want to know what hair color to buy to get your shade. And is that a perm?”
    “Sorry, what you see is what you get.”
    “Well, that’s too bad, now, isn’t it? I called to warn you to stay inside that dumpy house or you’ll get blood all over that pretty hair. I want you to tell the cops if they try anything I’ll shoot these guys’ heads off. Oh, yeah, the big guy is now our hostage. He’s going to accompany us out of here.” And Lissy flipped off Savich’s cell, threw it back at him. He caught it, stuck it in his shirt pocket. His right hand was only inches from Bernie’s wrists, and neither Victor nor Lissy seemed to notice.
    In that instant Autumn yelled for him.

71
    SAVICH HEARD HER yelling, louder than ever before. Her face was white, her eyes wild. She was panting.
    What’s wrong, Autumn? What’s going on?
    It’s my grandfather, Dillon, he’s alive and he’s here, and I think he’s going to hurt Ethan and Mama!.
    Whoa, wait a minute. Where are you?
    In this building, it’s underground, all white rooms and bad, real bad.
    Autumn, listen to me. I’ve got a huge problem of my own right now —
    Show me.
    He looked over at Bernie, bound, propped up against a tree trunk, then at Victor and Lissy, their guns pointed at him. Could Autumn see what he was seeing, as he had seen that motel sign? Could she possibly see through his eyes?
    “What are you doing?” Lissy yelled at him and took a step forward. “Whatever you’re doing, you stop it or I’ll have Victor drill you right now!”
    Savich didn’t think he’d moved. What had he done to spook them? He said, calm and easy, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lissy.”
    “Your eyes went all funny, then you stared at Victor and me and you looked like some weirdo freak, like you were looking through us. What did you do?”
    Savich smiled. “Well, the thing is, and this is the absolute truth there’s this little girl who was looking at you guys through my eyes.”
    Victor whirled around, shouting, “What little girl? Where is she? There isn’t a little girl! What are you talking about?”
    Whatever the two of them had seen on his face, he’d shaken them up. He said, “Her name is Autumn, and she’s in Georgia, I think.”
    Lissy screamed at him, “You lying piece of—”
    Victor grabbed her arm, shook it. “Lissy, no, he’s doing this on purpose, trying to rattle us, get us to make a mistake. Look, he’s not moving, it’s all right. Whatever he does, whatever he says, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s just trying to creep us out. We’ve got to decide what to do, use him as a hostage or shoot his head off. Thing is, they can’t shoot us if we’ve got him in front of us as a shield.”
    She screamed, “No! He’ll do something; he’ll kill us. He won’t