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An exclamation reduced to vowel sounds, quickly muffled.
The shrill zippering of flex-cuffs being tightened. Then another set. Two more zippering sounds—ankles, not wrists? A bit more shuffling and commotion.
It really wasn’t fair.
The connecting door banged open, struck the wall, and wobbled back, stunned on its hinges.
Then Paddy flew in, his prone body describing a low arc through the air. He struck the carpet at the foot of Evan’s bed and emitted a sea-lion bark as his breath left him.
Evan finally unlaced his hands from the base of his neck and sat up, the memory-foam mattress adjusting pleasingly beneath him.
Paddy squirmed on the floor, fighting for oxygen. He’d been hog-tied, wrists behind his back, ankles secured, the two sets of flex-cuffs connected with what seemed to be his belt. His pants had come down several inches, revealing white-and-blue-plaid boxer shorts with a frayed waistband.
After a dramatic pause, Candy entered, buttoning up her LAPD uniform shirt. “Hi, honey,” she said. “How was your day?”
“Looking up now,” Evan said.
“Given the det cord, I figured I should bring the thumb to you. Though there’s still time to remove it if you’d prefer.”
The whites of Paddy’s eyes were pronounced, and not just from having the wind knocked out of him.
“Tempting,” Evan said.
Despite their dissimilarities, Evan had an operational comfort with Candy from their shared background as Orphans; they spoke the same language with different accents.
Paddy struggled for breath. He writhed some more.
Evan walked over to him, dug the toe of his boot into his ribs, and flipped him onto his side. Paddy’s fingers stuck out at the base of his back like an abbreviated rooster tail, the digits whitening from lack of circulation.
Crouching, Evan guided Paddy’s bloodless thumb to the sensor square on the rubber-coated ankle bracelet. The steel locking mechanism released, and he guided it free of the leg.
“What should we do with this?” he asked.
Candy shrugged. “Find it a new home?”
“What should we use as the security print?”
Candy thought a moment, then tugged off one of Paddy’s shoes and the sock, and imprinted his big toe on the bracelet’s sensor. She handed the collar back to Evan, and he snapped it around the bare ankle.
Paddy made a low whining noise, his face purpling. Mucus moistened his upper lip.
“You wiped the databases next door?” Evan asked.
“With a military-grade USB eraser,” Candy replied. “Nothing left on there. Cameras are shut off, too.”
Paddy’s lungs finally released, and he sucked in halting breaths.Evan fished in Paddy’s jacket pocket and came up with the swab containing his DNA. Then he found Paddy’s iPhone, made use of the bound man’s thumbprint once more, deleted the photo of his face, and ensured it hadn’t uploaded to the cloud. Heading into the bathroom, he dropped the phone on the floor, shattered it with the heel of his boot, and flushed the pieces.
When he came back out, Candy had drawn aside the curtains and exited onto the balcony, where she was lowering heavy-duty fishing line over the railing. Dusk had started to shade into evening, casting a newspaper gray across the room’s cheery furnishings.
Red splotches covered Paddy’s face, and his lips were guppying.
Evan detoured to peek through the doorway into the connecting room. Chip was zip-tied to the chair, flat on his stomach atop the bed, his head turned so he could draw wheezing breaths. It looked a bit like the chair was humping him to death.
By the time Evan retreated into his own suite, Candy had hauled up what was on the other end of the fishing line—a black polyester plaited-fiber rope. As she began hauling up the second, thicker rope, Evan checked his pillowcase for stray hairs. None to be found.
When he turned, Candy was in the process of securing the thicker rope to the railing. “I couldn’t get any good abseiling equipment on short notice.” She removed a pouch hooked onto the rope, dug into it, and tossed something at Evan. It struck him in the chest, and he caught it off the fall. A pair of gloves—no, two pairs. “So we’re gonna fastrope.”
He layered them both on, tactical gloves followed by a thick leather metalworking pair. Candy was already straddling the railing. Flipping off her LAPD cap, she looked back at him, wind riffling her hair, and winked. Then she dropped out of view.
