a little kidnapping and some life-changing discussions we can both anchor him down in our futures.”
I really didn’t want to think of a future with Farmington in it. And despite a few heartfelt moments, I still didn’t trust Posey or her motives and could only see disaster for both of us. But what other choice did I have? My academic career was on the verge of collapse and I was not cut out for professional office life. I’d been locked once before into a boring job with a pregnant fiancée, thinking I’d lost my chance to chase my dream before a miscarriage and a rotten economy set me free. I wasn’t going to waste this second chance.
So I slugged the rest of my coffee back, held out my hand for Posey and said, “I can’t even attempt a kidnapping without getting disoriented and tired, but if you help me we might be able to—”
“There’s this guy I want you to meet,” she said. “His name is Rickard. He’s a security guard at the school and has helped me out a few times with Titus and shares your distaste for Parker. Kind of creepy and intense, but he has access to places we might need in the future. He’s good with weapons and stuff and…well, he’s kind of sweet.”
I nodded and mentally planned my victory celebration.
“I just texted him,” she said. “But it’s probably best if I’m not here when you talk to him. He’s…he’s easily…he’s skittish around me.”
“Whatever,” I said.
Twenty minutes after Posey left, Rickard still hadn’t shown up so I figured I’d been had and left. I stopped at the bathroom on the way out and that’s the last thing I remembered before blacking out.
I WOKE up with my hands taped together and a ball gag in my mouth. The bench I was on was moving and for a brief second I thought I was still at McDonald’s and my head was spinning. When I sat up I saw I was in the backseat of my own car with another man driving. My brain immediately went to bad places and I assumed I was on the sodomy express as punishment for my strip club antics. When the driver turned to face me after noticing I was awake, he slammed on the brakes. He reached back and pulled a snap near the side of my face and the ball gag fell loose.
“Fuck, man,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody knocked out so easily.”
“I wasn’t drugged?”
“You were barely hit. I got a little carried away and kinda misunderstood what Posey was thinking. Fucking AutoCorrect, right?”
“Huh,” I muttered.
“Thought you might be on drugs or something. Maybe a heart condition. Never seen anybody go down like—”
“I get it. I’m a fucking bobble head. Whatever. You’re Rickard, right? Why are you driving my car?”
“Got a body in mine.”
I waited for him to laugh it off. He didn’t. Maybe sodomy was a best-case scenario.
“Nobody recognizes yours,” he continued. “Decent gas mileage too.”
“Where are we going? And can you cut this tape off my hands?”
Rickard pulled the car off to the side of the road and I looked out the window to see where we were. It was one of the more nondescript sections of highway I’d seen in the city, so I assumed we were still close to downtown and, as such, I hadn’t been out for long. Rickard opened the passenger door opposite me and threw me a small pocketknife.
“You can get in the front seat if you want,” he said. “Your car and all.”
As we passed each other I noticed he had a thin mustache and was wearing all black: a thick fisherman’s sweater and a large stocking cap. Instead of a security guard, he looked like a cartoon burglar or a hipster dock worker.
He got back into the driver’s seat and waited for my decision. I flipped open the knife and noticed it was sticky along the edge. Red and sticky. Maybe it was jelly. He could be the sort to butter and jelly his toast with a pocketknife. I cut my hands free and got into the front passenger’s seat. I thought about running, but he didn’t seem threatening really. Creepy, but not threatening.
I handed him his knife back and said, “Sticky.”
“Told you I had a body in my car,” he said.
So that was it then. The only question remained was whether I was going to be a victim or accomplice. When my seat belt was snapped and my door shut, Rickard pulled my car back onto the freeway and drove south I think. We were into Ohio before I began really wondering where we were going.
“Am I going to need to put plastic in my trunk?” I asked.
He ignored me so I went back inside my head to figure out where I was mentally, physically, and emotionally. I wasn’t able to get a very good bead on the other two, but a few short minutes later, physically, I was in the parking lot of a storage facility that looked like it had been attacked by a gang with baseball bats and spray paint and then abandoned.
“Here,” Rickard said, “is where shit gets interesting.”
I couldn’t help but note that could easily mean the physical location of the storage facility, and the current point in the narration that was my life. I just had to hope his definition of interesting was on the same page as my definition of interesting.
The only storage facility I’d ever visited at that point in my life was one of those sterile, over-lit, aluminum frame places with a vaguely nautical theme that existed to house the excess furniture of wealthy couples, degenerate spouses between marriages, wealthy college students on their third colleges, and the occasional homeless person from a well-to-do but emotionally bankrupt family.
This storage facility seemed to exist only as a modular and easy to clean meth lab complex. Instead of long rows of storage cabinets like I’d seen in other facilities on television and from the expressway, this facility was a weedy concrete garden sprouting small metal sheds in even intervals. The entire complex was fenced off with razor wire and that seemed to be the sturdiest structure in the area. Rickard drove my car around to the back parking lot where we had a good view down the rows of sheds to the entrance gate and cut the engine. Outside the temperature was on its way down as the sun ended its brief appearance, replaced by the dark, rolling gray clouds that are the trademark of Detroit winters.
“This is your hideout?” I asked.
“In one of these lockers is a suitcase containing exactly 25 uncirculated packs of 100 two dollar bills that represent payment from a publisher for a book Parker Farmington wrote, with me, based on my life.”
“Why would anybody care about the life of a security guard?” I asked, regretting it immediately.
“Security guard is but one of many faces my true identity takes. More will be revealed as we grow together on our journeys.”
My WTF meter was off the charts but I suspected my own quirks were enough to creep out others so I gave him the benefit of the doubt temporarily.
“So we’re stealing the money?”
“You want Farmington, fine, I’ll help you snag the twee little buffoon, but the bills are mine.”
“Twenty-five hundred bucks seems a bit skimpy to be getting so worked up over.”
“The publisher is an odd fellow, loves the number 2, loves $2 bills, but doesn’t care anything about numismatics.”
“So he pays in cash? Whatever, right?”
“If we’re to be paired, our focus must be in sync.”
“I’m focused. I’m ready.”
“A man who cares more about the denomination of a bill than the bill itself is a fool. Are you a fool?”
I