Twisted

was in- credible.
    “And he didn’t stop there. Next, he comes after me. I go in to work and the foreman tells me I’m fired. Too many unexcused absences. That was bullshit—I didn’t have more than most of the guys. But Morgan must’ve been a friend of the Kroegers. I was still new so the union wouldn’t go to bat for me. I was out. Just like that.
    “Well, I couldn’t beat him at his game so I decided to play by my rules.” Manko grinned and scooted forward. Our knees touched and I felt all the energy that was in him pulse against my skin. “Oh, I wasn’t worried for me. But Allison, she’s so . . .” As he searched for a word his hands made a curious gesture, as if stretching thread between them, a miniature cat’s cradle.
    I suggested, “Fragile.”
    The snap of his fingers startled me. He sat up. “Ex- actly. Fragile. She didn’t have any defense against her father. I had to do something fast. I went to the police. I wanted ’em to go to the house and see if she was okay. But also it’d be a sign to her father that I wasn’t going to take any crap from him.” Manko whistled. “Mistake, Frankie. Bad mistake. Morgan was one step ahead of me. This sergeant, some big guy, pushed me into a corner and said if I didn’t stay away from Morgan’s daughter, the family’d get a restraining order. I’d end up in a cell. Then he looked me over and said something about did I know all sorts of accidents could happen to prisoners. It was a risky place, jail. Man, was I stupid. I should’ve known the cops’d be on Morgan’s payroll too.
    “By then I was going crazy. I hadn’t seen Allison for weeks. Jesus, had he sent her off to a convent or something?”
    Serenity returned to his face. “Then she gave me a signal. I was hiding in the bushes in a little park across the street, watching the house with binoculars. I just wanted to see her is all. I wanted to know she was all right. She must’ve seen me because shelifted the shade all the way up. Oh, man, there she was! The light was behind her and it made her hair glow. Like those things, you know, gurus see.”
    “Auras.”
    “Right, right. She was in a nightgown, and I could just see the outline of her body beneath it. She looked like an angel. I was like I was gonna have a heart attack, it was such an incredible thing. There she was, telling me she was all right and she missed me. Then the shade went down and she shut the light out.
    “I spent the next week planning. I was running out of money. Thanks again to Thomas Morgan. He’d put out the word to all the factories in town and nobody’d hire me. I added up what I had and it wasn’t much. Maybe twelve hundred bucks. I figured it’d get us to Florida. Give me a chance to find work with a printer and Allison could get a job in a hospital.”
    Then Manko laughed. He studied me critically. “I can be honest with you, Frank. I feel I’m close to you.”
    So I was no longer Frankie boy. I’d graduated. My pulse quickened and I was moved.
    “Fact is, I look tough. Am I right? But I get scared. Real scared. I never saw any action. Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm. I missed ’em all, you know what I’m saying? I was never tested. I always wondered what I’d do under fire. Well, this was my chance. I was going to rescue Allison. I was going up against the old man himself.
    “I called his company and told his secretary I was a reporter from Ohio Business magazine. I wantedto do an interview with Mr. Morgan. We tried to find a time he could see me. I couldn’t believe it—she bought the whole story. She told me he’d be in Mexico on business from the twentieth through the twenty-second of July. I made an appointment for August 1, then hung up fast. I was worried somebody was tracing the call.
    “On July twentieth I staked out the house all day. Sure enough, Morgan left with his suitcase at ten in the morning and didn’t come back that night. There was a security car parked in the driveway and I figured one of the goons was inside the house. But I’d planned on that. At ten it started to rain. Just like now.” He nodded toward the window. “I remember hiding in the bushes, real glad about the overcast. I had about a hundred feet of exposed yard to cover and the security boys would’ve spotted me for sure in the moonlight. I managed to get to the house without anybody seeing me and hide beneath this holly tree while I caught my breath.
    “Then it was dues time, Frank. I leaned