Tripwire

herself, but she wasn’t going to worry about that now. She pulled the tape off Sheryl’s mouth and held her while she cried. Then she ducked behind her and worked the binding free from her wrists and unwound it up to her elbows. She balled up the sticky mass and dropped it in the trash and went back to help massage some feeling back into her shoulders. Then she found a washcloth and ran hot water into the sink and sponged the crusted blood off Sheryl’s face. Her nose was swollen and going black. She started worrying about getting her to a doctor. She started rehearsing things in her head. She had seen movies where hostages get taken. Somebody always elects herself spokesman and says no police and gets the sick released to the hospital. But how exactly do they do it?
    She took the towels from the bar and gave Sheryl a bath sheet to use as a skirt. Then she divided up the remainder into three piles and laid them on the floor. She could see the tiles were going to be cold. Thermal insulation was going to be important. She slid the three piles into a row against the wall. She sat with her back against the door, and put Chester on her left and Sheryl on her right. She took their hands and squeezed them hard. Chester squeezed back.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said.
    “How much do you owe?” she asked.
    “More than seventeen million.”
    She didn’t bother to ask if he could pay it back. He wouldn’t be half-naked on a bathroom floor if he could pay it back.
    “What does he want?” she asked.
    He shrugged at her side, miserably.
    “Everything,” he said. “He wants the whole company.”
    She nodded, and focused on the plumbing under the sink.
    “What would that leave us with?”
    He paused and then shrugged again. “Whatever crumb he would feel like throwing us. Probably nothing at all.”
    “What about the house?” she asked. “We’d still have that, right? I put it on the market. This lady is the broker. She says it’ll sell for nearly two million.”
    Stone glanced across at Sheryl. Then he shook his head. “The house belongs to the company. It was a technical thing, easier to finance that way. So Hobie will get it, along with everything else.”
    She nodded and stared into space. On her right, Sheryl was sleeping, sitting up. The terror had exhausted her.
    “You go to sleep, too,” she said. “I’ll figure something out.”
    He squeezed her hand again and leaned his head back. Closed his eyes.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said again.
    She made no reply. Just smoothed the thin silk down over her thighs and stared straight ahead, thinking hard.
    THE SUN WAS gone before they finished for the second time. It became a bright bar sliding sideways off the window. Then it became a narrow horizontal beam, playing across the white wall, traveling slowly, dust dancing through it. Then it was gone, shut off like a light, leaving the room with the cool, dull glow of evening. They lay spent and nuzzling in a tangle of sheets, bodies slack, breathing low. Then he felt her smile again. She came up on one elbow and looked at him with the same teasing grin he’d seen outside her office building.
    “What?” he asked.
    “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.
    He waited.
    “In my official capacity.”
    He focused on her face. She was still smiling. Her teeth were white and her eyes were bright blue, even in the new cool dimness. He thought what official capacity? She was a lawyer who cleaned up the mess when somebody owed somebody else a hundred million dollars.
    “I don’t owe money,” he said. “And I don’t think anybody owes me.”
    She shook her head. Still smiling. “As executor of Dad’s will.”
    He nodded. It made sense that Leon should appoint her. A lawyer in the family, the obvious choice.
    “I opened it up and read it,” she said. “Today, at work.”
    “So what’s in it? He was a secret miser? A closet billionaire?”
    She shook her head again. Said nothing.
    “He knows what happened to Victor Hobie and wrote it all down in his will?”
    She was still smiling. “He left you something. A bequest.”
    He nodded again, slowly. That made sense, too. That was Leon. He’d remember, and he’d pick out some little thing, for the sake of sentiment. But what? He scanned back. Probably a souvenir. Maybe his medals? Maybe the sniper rifle he brought home from Korea. It was an old Mauser, originally German, presumably captured by the Soviets on the Eastern Front and sold on ten years