“Whatever,” she said, and walked back to where she had been sitting in the middle section of the trailer.
I went right back to work, pounding on the sole of my shoe with all my strength. I paused after a couple of minutes and looked; the dent had gotten much deeper, and there were signs of stress at the edges. The point of the nail had gone into the metal, and a few more minutes could very well see a small hole; I went back at it with a will. After two more minutes, the tone of the thumping seemed to change, and I pulled out the stake and had another look.
There was a small hole all the way through, just large enough to see daylight under the trailer. With a little more time and effort, I was sure I could punch through, enlarge the hole, and be on my way.
I wiggled the point of the stake back into the opening as far as I could and pounded even harder. I could feel it sinking slowly through, and then suddenly I pounded and the stake dropped several inches. I stopped pounding and began to work the wood back and forth, stretching the metal back, making the hole as big as possible. I worked it and worried it and jammed the stake sideways and even put my shoe back on and kicked at it, and for twenty minutes the metal of the trailer fought back, but at last I had a way out.
I paused for a moment, looking at the hole I had made. I was exhausted and sore and soaked with sweat, but I was one step away from freedom.
“I’m outta here,” I called to Samantha. “This is your last chance to get away.”
“Bye-bye,” she called back. “Have a nice trip.” It seemed a little bit callous after all we had gone through together, but it was probably all I would get from her.
“Okay,” I said, and I climbed into the locker, pushing my legs down into the hole I had made. My feet touched ground and I wiggled the rest of me downward. It was a very tight fit, and I felt first my pants and then my shirt catch on the metal edges and tear. I held my arms up above my head and kept wiggling and in just a moment I was through, sitting on the warm and wet dirt of the Everglades. I could feel it soak through my pants, but it felt wonderful, much better than the floor of the trailer.
I took a deep breath; I was free. Around me was the trailer’s concrete-block foundation, holding it several feet off the ground. There were two gaps in it, one of them close by and opposite the trailer’s door. I rolled onto my stomach and crawled toward it. And just as my head poked out into the light of day and I began to think I was going to get away, a massive hand came down and grabbed me by the hair. “That’s far enough, asshole,” a voice snarled at me, and I felt myself lifted almost straight up with only a short pause to bang my head against the trailer. Through the bright lights bursting in my already painful head I could see my old friend, the bouncer with the shaved head. He threw me up against the side of the trailer and, as he had when he knocked me out in the refrigerator, he pinned me with a forearm across my throat.
Behind him I could see that the trailer sat in a small clearing, surrounded by the lush vegetation of the Everglades. A canal ran along one side, and mosquitoes hummed and homed in on us happily. Somewhere a bird called. And from a path at the near end of the clearing came Kukarov, the club manager, followed by two other nasty-looking men, one of them carrying the insulated lunch bucket and the other a leather tool pouch.
“Well, piggy,” Kukarov said with a truly awful smile. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have a dentist’s appointment,” I said. “I really can’t miss it.”
“Yes, you can,” Kukarov said, and the bouncer slapped me, hard. On top of the growing collection of head pains I already had, it hurt far more than it should have.
People who know me well will tell you that Dexter never loses his temper, but enough was enough. I swung my foot up, fast and hard, and kicked the bouncer in the crotch with enough force to make him let go of me and bend over, and he began to make small retching noises. And since that had been so easy and rewarding I turned to face Kukarov with my hands raised to fighting position.
But he was holding a pistol, and pointing it directly between my eyes. It was a very large and expensive pistol, a .357 Magnum by the look of it. The hammer was pulled back, and the only thing darker than the hole at the end of the barrel was the expression in his eyes.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Try it.”
It was an interesting suggestion, but I decided against it, and raised my hands up high. He watched me for a moment and then, backing away a few steps without taking his eyes off me, he called to the others. “Tie him up,” he said. “Smack him around a little, but don’t damage the meat. We can use a male piggy.”
One of them grabbed me and pulled my arms behind me, hard enough to hurt, and the other one started pulling duct tape off a roll. He had just gotten a few loops around my wrists when I heard what might be the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my life—the squeal of a bullhorn, followed by Deborah’s voice coming through it.
“This is the police,” she said. “You are surrounded. Drop your weapons and lie facedown on the ground.”
The two helpers flinched away from me and looked at Kukarov with their mouths hanging open. The bouncer was still leaning on his knees and retching. Kukarov snarled. “I’ll kill this asshole!” he shouted, and I could see his finger tighten on the trigger as he raised the pistol.
A single shot split the air and the front half of Kukarov’s head disappeared. He whipped away sideways as if pulled by a rope and fell in a heap on the ground.
The two other cannibals dove to the ground in unison, and even the bouncer flopped over onto his face, and I watched as Deborah charged out of the vegetation at the edge of the clearing and ran toward me, followed by at least a dozen police officers, including a bunch of heavily armed and armored guys from SRT, the Special Response Team, and Detective Weems, the ebony giant from the Miccosukee Tribal Police.
“Dexter,” Deborah called. She grabbed me by the arms and looked into my face for a moment. “Dex,” she said again, and it was gratifying to see a little anxiety on her face. She patted my arms and almost smiled, a very rare display for her. Of course, since it was Debs, she had to spoil the effect immediately. “Where’s Samantha?” she said.
I looked at my sister. My head was pounding, my pants were torn, my throat and my face hurt from the bouncer’s rough treatment, I was embarrassed by what I had recently done, my hands were still taped behind me—and I was thirsty. I had been beaten, kidnapped, drugged, beaten again, and threatened with a very large revolver, all without a single complaint—but Debs could only think about Samantha, who was well fed and sitting inside in air-conditioned comfort—sitting there willingly, even eagerly, whining about minor discomforts while I tried and failed to dodge all the slings and arrows and, I could not fail to notice, an increasing number of mosquitoes that I could not swat with my hands taped behind me.
But of course, Deborah was family, and anyway I couldn’t use my hands, so slapping her was out of the question. “I’m fine, sis,” I said. “Thank you for asking.”
As always, it was wasted on Deborah. She grabbed my arms and shook me. “Where is she?” she said. “Where is Samantha?”
I sighed and gave it up. “Inside the trailer,” I said. “She’s fine.” Deborah looked at me for a second and then whirled away around the trailer to the door. Weems followed her and I heard a loud crunching noise as he apparently pulled the door off its hinges. A moment later he wandered past, the door dangling by its knob from one enormous hand. Debs came right after him with an arm around Samantha, leading her away to the car and murmuring, “I’ve got you, you’re all right now,” to a plainly pissed-off Samantha, who was hunched over and muttering, “Leave me alone.”
I looked around the little clearing. A handful of cops in SRT outfits were cuffing Kukarov’s guys, none too gently. Things were definitely winding down—except for a new and frantic burst of activity from the nine million mosquitoes that had found my unprotected head. I tried to swat them away—impossible, of course, with my hands taped behind me. I shook my head to scare them away, but it didn’t work, and it hurt so much that it wasn’t worth it even if it did. I tried to wave my elbows at them—also impossible, and I thought I heard the mosquitoes laughing at me and licking their chops as they called all their friends to the feast.
“Could somebody please undo my hands?” I said.
THIRTY-ONE