Mutt stopped to eat a quick burger for dinner, and still made it to Joseph's house before one in the morning. The house was located in a small suburban neighborhood right off the freeway. Mutt parked his motorcycle in the driveway, and went to check the front door. It was locked, so he walked around the house and tested the back door, and then the windows. They were all locked, so he went to the back door and picked the lock.
He let himself into the kitchen, and turned on the light. He shut the door behind him, and went in search of clues. He made it to Joseph's office, turning the lights on in the house as he went. Joseph's desk was littered with books and paperwork, all pertaining to the Seal of Solomon.
Smiling at his luck, Mutt walked towards the desk to collect the papers, but never made it that far. A sharp thwack to the base of his skull made him stumble forward and fall to the ground. Everything faded to black before he saw who'd struck him.
# # #
Mutt woke with a start when cold water was splashed in his face. He automatically tried to bring his hands up to cover his face, but couldn't move his arms. His entire body struggled for a moment, before he realized he was tied up. He shook his head to get the water off his face, and looked down at himself.
He was tied to one of the kitchen chairs with thick rope. The rope wrapped around each booted ankle, keeping his feet snug against the two front chair legs. It wrapped several times around his stomach and upper arms, trapping his arms against his sides, and keeping his lower back pressed against the back of the armless chair.
His hands balled into fists on his thighs while he struggled to get free one more time, but his bindings didn't budge.
"What are you doing in my house?"
The female voice startled Mutt out of his struggling. His head snapped up, causing sharp pain at the base of his skull where he'd been struck. There across the room of the office a young woman stood holding a large carving knife. She wore black pants, and an oversized blue tee shirt that hung down to mid thigh. Her blond hair was gathered into a ponytail, and her eyes were wide with terror.
"What?" Mutt asked, still disoriented from the blow to the head.
She pointed the knife at him threateningly, and said, "What are you doing in my house!"
"Your house?" He looked her up and down. She didn't look old enough to own a house. "This house belongs to Joseph Marlow."
"I know. Now tell me what you're doing in my father's house, before I call the cops."
"Your father?"
"Are you slow?" She asked. "If you know my father's name, this isn't a random burglary, so answer my question. What are you doing here? What were you looking for?"
Mutt wasn't sure how to answer that. He'd already scared the poor girl by breaking into the house, he didn't want to tell her that her father was missing and probably dead. He said, "I was looking for information on the Seal of Solomon, and I had no idea that Joseph had a daughter. I'm real sorry about breaking in. If I'd known, I would have knocked. Do you know Harold Oxley? He's the one who sent me."
"Harold?" She studied him, and the knife slowly lowered to her side. "How do you know Harold?" She brandished the knife again and scowled at him. "And how do I know you're not lying just to get me to trust you?"
Mutt held his hands up in a placating gesture, but because of his ropes, they only got about one inch above his thighs. "I've known Harold Oxley my whole life. He was a good friend to my mom. He's in Israel right now with your father, but…" Mutt paused and decided to go with a half-truth. "…they got separated, and Ox asked me to gather up all the information on The Seal of Solomon to send to him, so he can figure out where your dad might be."
She lowered the knife again. "Separated…" Her eyes got even wider for a millisecond. She put a hand over her mouth and whispered, "You mean something's happened to him."
"It'll be okay," Mutt said in a gentle voice. "We're going to find him. How about you untie me, and you can help me gather up everything for Ox."
She shook her head. "I can't trust you. You're a greaser."
He usually liked it when people called him that, but he didn't want her to be afraid of him. He understood how frightening it was to have a missing family member, and wanted to help her. "What can I do to make you trust me? Every minute we waste here, is a minute we're not helping Ox find your dad."
She considered this and said, "Did you come alone?"
"Yes. No one else is going to show up. It's just me, and you can trust me. My name is Mutt, what's yours?"
She smiled, and Mutt started to smile back, but something in the way she was smiling made him stop.
"Mutt? Like a dog?"
He nodded, still trying to figure out her smile.
"You know what? I do trust you. But you probably shouldn't have trusted me." She pulled the rubber band out of her hair, and it fell neatly into place, as if it hadn't been in the ponytail for long. She pulled the oversized tee-shirt over her head, revealing a form fitting black shirt cinched at the waist with a black belt.
"What's going on?" Mutt asked nervously.
The smile she gave him was cruel. "What's going on?" She pulled a pair of black leather gloves out of her pockets, and put them on. "You really are innocent aren't you? That's cute. More like a puppy than a dog."
Her grip on the knife had been desperate earlier, but now it shifted to a more comfortable and familiar hold. She moved towards him and said, "Since no one is coming for you, I can take my time getting information out of you. And since you're only an errand boy, I'll have no reason to keep you around once you've squealed."
Berating himself for giving her so much information, he plastered a smile on his face, and said with false bravado, "I don't squeal sister. But you're welcome to try."
She grinned and gently touched the tip of her knife to Mutt's kneecap. "I do so love a challenge."
They both heard the sound of a gun cocking, and turned to see Indy standing in the doorway to the office. "Yeah?" Indy said, "Try getting your kid to graduate high school."
Relief flooded through Mutt. He grinned at Indy. "Hey Daddy-O. Good timing."
Ignoring his son, Indy kept his eyes on the girl. "Step away from him right now, and I'll think about not shooting you."
Glaring, she held her hands up in the air, with the knife still clutched in her right fist, and stepped away from Mutt.
"Good," Indy said, moving father into the room. "Now set the knife down on the floor gently, and come stand by the door."
She set the knife down, and moved towards the door while Indy moved towards his son, both of them making sure not to get within touching distance of the other while they crossed the room in opposite directions. Once the woman was three feet from the door, Indy said, "That's far enough."
Keeping his eyes and gun aimed at her, Indy knelt down and picked up the carving knife. He moved behind the chair Mutt was tied to, and darted his eyes down for a millisecond to see the ropes. He set to work cutting the rope while keeping his gun and eyes mostly on the woman.
While Indy was working on getting Mutt free, the kid's relief started to fade. "Wait a minute," he craned his neck back and said, "Why are you here?"
"Shush," Indy said without looking down.
Frowning, Mutt faced forward, and tried not to let his growing unease show.
A few seconds later, Marion walked up to the doorway of the study holding a gun of her own. "All clear," she said to Indy, startling both Mutt and the woman.
Once Indy saw that Marion had her gun pointed at the woman, he put his gun in its holster, and made short work of cutting the rest of the ropes off Mutt.
"Mom?" Mutt said, not quite sure why both his parents had shown up.
"Thank goodness you're okay," she said.
Indy pushed the ropes off, and pulled at Mutt's upper arm to get him to stand. Once Mutt was standing, he kicked the rest of the ropes off his feet. Indy held him at arm's length, with a hand on each of Mutt's shoulders. "Did she hurt you kid?"
Seeing the worry in Indy's face made Mutt feel both loved and guilty at the same time. He lowered his head, and put a hand up to the base of his head. "She hit me with something. Knocked me out cold. I don't know how long I was out."
Indy physically turned the boy around, and gently explored the back of the kid's head with his fingertips until he felt the lump. Mutt hissed and flinched at the touch. Once Indy was done checking it out, he turned Mutt back around. Indy held up two fingers for Mutt to see. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Two. I'm fine, really. No blurry vision, no nausea, and I'm not dizzy. I'll be fine."
Indy pulled the kid into a tight hug, and said to Marion, "He's got a good size goose egg, but no bleeding." Indy let go so he could look at his son. "You hurt anywhere else?"
Still a little surprised by the fierce hug, Mutt shook his head.
Marion glared at the younger woman who'd hurt her son, but the woman was too busy glaring at Indy to notice. Marion took two steps, and hit the woman on the back of the head with the butt of her gun. The woman fell to the floor unconscious.
Shocked by what his mother had just done, Mutt's eyes opened wide, and his mouth popped open in a silent 'Oh'.
"Darling, we need her awake to answer questions," Indy said.
"Yes, I know Dear. Sorry," Marion said with an unapologetic smile on her face.
Indy rolled his eyes at her, and said, "Well this gives me time to have a heart to heart with our son."
"Indy…" she said with a concerned frown.
"No, Marion. It's past due. We talked about this, and you agreed."
"Past due?" Mutt asked, nervously taking a step towards his mother, and away from Indy. "What's past due?"
Indy grabbed the collar of Mutt's leather jacket to hold him in place, and waited for his wife to respond.
Marion looked at her son, and then back at Indy. Nodding reluctantly, she stuck her gun in her pocket, and gestured to the woman on the floor. "Indy, Dear, if you'll take her into the kitchen for me, I'll tie her up while the two of you get things settled."
Indy let go of Mutt, and went to pick up the unconscious woman. Marion walked up to her son and pulled him into a hug. He hugged back and said nervously, "What's going on Mom?"
She squeezed him hard once, and then patted his back before letting go. She took his chin in her hand to make him look at her and said, "You should know that I'm one hundred percent in agreement with your father on this. Don't mistake my unhappiness for disagreement. You've been pushing the limits since the day you found out he was your father, and today you went too far."
Mutt shook his head and backed up a step to get out of her grip. "What do you mean I went too far?"
"You lied to us!"
"What? I did not!"
Marion put her hands on her hips. "Did you really expect us to believe you opened that letter on accident?"
Mutt's automatic response was anger. "It was an accident!"
"And then you came here without even talking to us first." Marion's voice was heavy with disappointment.
"I was trying to do you guys a favor!" Mutt yelled. "I left you a note, and I'm not missing school! How is any of that going too far!"
Indy came in sporting a grim expression, and made a beeline for his son. Upon seeing his father's expression, Mutt backed up a few steps, and bumped into the desk. Getting into the kid's personal space, Indy glared and said, "What did I tell you about raising your voice to your mother?"
Mutt swallowed hard and whispered, "Not to?"
The older man grabbed Mutt's wrist, and pulled him over to the chair he'd recently been tied to. Indy sat, and hauled the younger man face down over his lap. Mutt let out a surprised grunt when his stomach made contact with his father's thighs, and his hands automatically went to the floor in front of him. Indy wrapped an arm around the kid's middle to keep him down, and started raining down swats on his backside.
Reality came crashing down on Mutt, wiping out all the illusions he'd had about his father not following through on the spanking threats he'd made over the past three months. Mutt put one hand on Indy's knee, and pushed up while twisting his upper body to look back, and blurted out the words, "You were serious about spanking?"
Indy paused in the swatting. "You thought I wasn't?" he asked while pushing Mutt's hand off his knee. He pressed on the boy's upper back to get him back down into position, while keeping an arm wrapped around his middle.
"Of course not! It's ridiculous!" Mutt shouted.
"We'll see about that," Indy said and laid down some rapid fire swats.
Mutt started to seriously struggle. He lifted his upper body again, and put both his hands on Indy's thigh to shove himself up while also trying to get his feet flat on the ground.
Indy had to stop spanking so he could put both his arms around Mutt's waist to keep him down.
"Henry Walton Williams!" Marion scolded. Both men froze in place and looked over at her. She shook her finger at Mutt and said, "You stop that right now, young man. We are your parents, and we both think you deserve this spanking. If you don't respect us enough to stay in place until it's done, then I'm ashamed of you."
Mutt's face was bright red with a mix of anger, embarrassment, and shame. He broke eye contact with his mother, and focused on the oriental rug under the chair. He'd been twelve the last time he'd been in this position, and it seemed ludicrous to be in it again now that he was twenty. He struggled with his pride and his conscious for a few seconds, before slowly lowering his upper body back down. He put his hands back on the floor, stretched his legs out behind him, and kept his head down.
Indy loosened his grip, and nodded to his wife.
"That's better," Marion said quietly. "I'll be in the kitchen."
Indy sighed. "Look kid, I don't want to do this, but you haven't left me much of a choice." He started swatting hard and fast again.
Mutt remained completely silent. He held his body stiff with anger and resentment as the blows kept coming. He did not think this punishment was deserved, and he certainly didn't think it was appropriate for his age. He'd decided to cooperate, because he wanted to prove to both of his parents that a spanking wouldn't affect him at all. He tried to distract himself by thinking about getting his own apartment in the very near future.
Indy knew exactly what Mutt was doing. He'd been on the receiving end of this scenario more times than he'd like to admit, and he remembered the anger. He stopped swatting as quickly as he'd started.
"You done?" Mutt asked defiantly.
"Not even close." Indy took his arm off his son's waist long enough to take off his own belt.
When the arm came off his back, Mutt turned his head to see what his dad was doing. Seeing the man pull his belt off, made Mutt's stomach take a dive. Even though he didn't want to admit it, his ass already hurt so much that he could barely keep his reactions to himself.
Indy doubled the belt over, holding it so that the buckle was tucked safely in his hand. He wrapped his free arm back around Mutt's waist and snapped the belt down onto the seat of the kid's jeans. Despite his best efforts, Mutt let out a small grunt in reaction.
Indy nodded to himself and said, "Okay, it's time to talk. Tell me why you think I'm spanking you." He held the belt down at his side, and waited for a response.
Thrown by the question, Mutt said, "What?"
"Tell me why you think I'm spanking you. I want a list. What did you do wrong?"
"Now! You want to talk now?"
"I want to make sure we're both on the same page."
Glaring at the floor, Mutt sneered, "Okay professor, I'll tell you what page we're on. You're spanking me because I tried to do you a favor. Don't worry, it won't happen again."
Mutt heard the whistle of the belt before he felt it. He kept his grunt of pain in, but when the belt snapped down again, and again, he couldn't hold back everything. By the time the sixth smack landed, Mutt's grunts were higher pitched.
Indy paused. "Opening someone else's mail is a federal offence."
"It was an accident!" Mutt bellowed.
Shaking his head, Indy said, "And lying about it is a spankable offence."
Indy snapped the belt down six more times, while Mutt squirmed, and yelled, "We have the same first name! Anyone could make that mistake!"
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Indy asked with some anger in his voice. "Or do you think I believe that you're stupid enough to make that kind of mistake? You're not, so stop lying about it, and maybe we'll be done here before that girl in the kitchen wakes up."
Having forgotten about her, Mutt's eyes darted over to the open door of the office, and he prayed that the girl was still unconscious. "Okay!" He said urgently while trying to keep his voice down. "Okay I did it on purpose." Mutt flinched, expecting more swats, but they didn't come.
"Why?" Indy asked.
"Because you were gonna leave without me again!" Mutt had said it without thinking, but once he realized what he'd admitted, he hung his head.
Indy's eyebrows went up in surprise. He remembered hating it when his father left him behind, and he said with sympathy, "Ah kid, it's only one more month, and then you can come with me every time. Okay?"
Feeling an unexpected lump in his throat, Mutt had to clear it once before he answered. "Yeah, okay."
"But being mad at me for leaving you behind isn't a good reason to open my mail, is it?" Indy asked gently.
The last of his anger went away at Indy's tone of voice, and Mutt was able to admit to himself that opening that letter had been wrong. His voice was strained when he answered. "No."
Indy tightened his grip and started spanking again. He made sure not to bring the belt down on the same spot twice in a row.
"Ow!" Mutt yelped. "Ow! Ow!" His legs twitched with each smack, and he had to grab one of the chair rungs to keep his hand from trying to block the blows. "You're right, okay? Ow! I'm sorry!"
After this round of six, Indy stopped again, and said, "It's okay to be sorry, but what I really want to hear is that you won't do it again."
"I won't! I swear I won't do it again, Dad."
Both surprised and pleased by the rarely used familial title, Indy said in a soothing tone, "Good boy. Now we only need to get one more thing straight between us."
Shifting uncomfortably, Mutt said, "Okay, what?"
"You carried out instructions meant for me without even consulting me first. That's not only dangerous, it's disrespectful."
"But I was trying to help," Mutt whined.
"No you weren't," Indy said, his irritation surfaced. "You were trying to get away with something, and I'm not going to let you pull that kind of crap. You scared your mother and me half to death! This was a dangerous stunt, and it's not going to happen again." He snapped the belt down to make his point.
"Ow!" Mutt squirmed. "That's not fair! You put yourself in danger all the time!"
"Not before I know all the facts I don't," Indy said, slapping the belt down again. He started lecturing, and gave Mutt a swat after each sentence. "You purposely came here without talking to me about it. Not because you thought you could do a better job than me. And not because you were trying to help me out. You did it because you knew I'd tell you not to. That kind of irresponsible behavior will get you killed someday, and it shows me that you still have a lot of growing up to do."
"Ow!" The spanking was bad enough, but the lecture on top of it made Mutt want to die from shame. Even though he didn't want to, he heard truth in what Indy was saying. "I'm sorry! Really, really sorry! It will never happen again!"
Hearing repentance in his son's tone, Indy calmed down. "I'm sure it won't happen again, but you should know that if it does, you're going right back over my knee."
Mutt shook his head. "I'll never do it again! I swear!"
Indy hauled Mutt a little further across his lap, so that the boy's boots came up off the ground a few inches.
As he felt his body being shifted, Mutt looked back over his shoulder and pleaded, "I've learned my lesson! I promise!"
"Almost done." Indy said. He aimed for the crease where butt met thigh, and brought the belt down harder than before for the last six.
"Ah! Ow! Please Dad! Ow! Please stop! Ahhh!"
Indy set the belt on the floor, and waited for the boy to settle his squirming. Once he did, the older man said, "Tell me what you learned, and we'll be done."
Breathing hard, Mutt tried to blurt out the words as quickly as he could. "Don't lie to you. Don't open your mail. And don't go on an adventure meant for you without talking to you first."
Indy shifted the boy back, so his feet touched the ground.
Thinking this meant more spanking, Mutt tensed and pleaded, "Nooo!"
"Easy kid," Indy said, patting the younger man's lower back. "It's over. You gave me the right answer."
Mutt's body went limp upon hearing those words, and he took a few deep breaths to calm himself down, and recover from the pain. Indy took his arm off the kid's waist, and rubbed soothing circles on his back. After a few seconds of silence, Indy patted his son's back and said, "Alright, come on. I'm sure your Mom is anxious to make sure you're okay."
Getting up was awkward, but Mutt managed it. Once he was standing, he tentatively rubbed his butt, and grimaced. He kept his head down, his hands on his ass, and his eyes glued to the carpet. Then he took a few steps back, away from his father.
Indy stood too, and carefully studied his son's posture. "Hey, look at me."
The boy glared over at his father. Mutt's face was bright red both from embarrassment and from being upside down. His eyes were suspiciously shiny, and his hair was disheveled.
Indy said softly, "You can hate me for this all you want. It's my job to make sure you turn out to be an upstanding member of society, and I take that seriously. It's not my job to make you like me."
"Indy?" They both heard Marion's voice, and turned to see her standing at the office door.
Indy waved her in, while Mutt dropped his hands to his sides, and turned his glare back to the carpet.
"I'll be in the kitchen," Indy mumbled, giving his wife a chance to talk to their son alone.
Keeping his eyes on the ground, Mutt groaned and said, "Please tell me that the girl is still unconscious."
"She is." Marion said. She put a tentative hand on her son's arm. "Mutt…" she said, trying to get him to look at her.
He shrugged her off, and took a step back.
She waited a moment before stepping forward, and putting her hand on his arm again. He didn't move away this time, so she stepped into his personal space, and wrapped her arms around his waist in a hug.
He tensed for a moment before bending his head down to rest his forehead on her shoulder. She kept one hand on his back, and stroked the back of his head with the other. A couple of minutes later, Marion whispered, "I was so worried."
"Sorry," Mutt said, and put his arms around her.
She hugged him tighter. "I know," she said. Then quickly added, "Just make sure it doesn't happen again."
"It won't."
"Good." She let him go, and pointed a finger at his chest. "You stay right next to me until we get out of here."
"Okay."
Mutt trailed his mother into the kitchen, and tried not to think about the way his sore skin chaffed against his jeans when he walked.
