A/N: Okay. I came to work at 6:30 this morning to finish everything and my pre-vacation frenzy paid off. So here is one last bonus. This time I mean it – make it last until June 11 or so!
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Chapter 3
Charlie cowered behind the hutch and squeezed his eyes shut. He heard a crash from the kitchen and began whispering a mantra. "PleaseLetItBeDon, PleaseLetItBeDon, PleaseLetItBeDon, PleaseLetItBeDon …"
Seconds later he heard the unmistakable WhooshPopPing of a bullet whistling through a silencer, and his mantra changed. "PleaseDon'tLetItBeDon, PleaseDon'tLetItBeDon, PleaseDon'tLetItBeDon, PleaseDon'tLetItBeDon …"
He heard the squeak of the door swinging on its hinges, immediately followed by the thump of a body hitting the floor. He felt a tiny rush of air when it hit, but he didn't open his eyes, and kept whispering his mantra.
He wasn't sure how long passed before he heard Colby's voice again. "Whiz Kid. You can open your eyes now. And don't worry. It's not Don."
Charlie popped one eye open, and jerked back in surprise at the sight of a body lying a few feet away. He opened his other eye, staring at the apparition. "Who is that? Is that dead?"
Colby sighed. "Yep. Meet Albert Michaels. Idiot had the drop on me and missed."
Charlie kept staring. "I don't … um … I don't see any blood …"
"Too messy," Colby answered. "This carpet looks fairly new. So I broke his neck."
That got Charlie's eyes off the strange body long enough to look at Colby. He felt his gaze drawn to Colby's hands. He could kill a man with those? Good to know.
Colby interrupted Charlie's fragmented thoughts. "We can't wait until dark, Charlie. Obviously you're Number 1 on the Hit Parade. Addison is probably waiting to hear from this idiot."
Charlie blinked at him. Colby was sitting on the floor again, leaning on the opposite wall of the dining room. He frowned and raised his voice a little. "Don't freak out on me, Chuck. I need you thinking."
Charlie jerked again at the hated nickname. "Don't call me that. And I am thinking. I'm thinking there's a dead man in my dining room and I'm listening to the man who killed him — with his bare hands, yet — tell me this was the bad guy. I'm thinking one of us is crazy."
"If I wanted to kill you, Charlie, I could have done it a dozen times already." Colby pushed himself up the wall. "We haven't got time for this. For all I know, Addison is watching the house." He stepped up to the table and lifted Charlie's backpack off it, turned it upside down and emptied it. Papers fluttered off the table, books thudded, his lap top actually bounced.
Charlie jumped to his feet, clawing at the rain of papers around him. "Hey!", he started, but Colby threw the empty backpack at him and Charlie dropped the papers again to catch it.
"Fill this up. If you have a gun, put it in there. Extra ammo. Change of clothes. Water. Money. ID. There should be some dehydrated food left at the cabin, but you'd better bring something to eat anyway. Non-perishable. Hurry up. You've got five minutes. Stay away from the windows, and don't turn on any lights. Don't bring your cell. Meet me back here."
Charlie stood in indecision for a few seconds after Colby gave his orders and disappeared again into the kitchen. He looked at the cell that had fallen out of his pack, and thought again about calling Don. Then he looked at the dead man on the floor. He was so grateful that it wasn't Don, and he couldn't risk the next one being his brother. He had to trust Colby.
Sticking to the walls, he hurried upstairs. In his room, he picked some jeans up off the floor and threw them into the pack, snatched a t-shirt out of the dresser. He opened the closet and took out the small handgun safe that Don had talked him into buying along with the Ruger a couple of years ago. State-of-the-art biometrics, the safe only opened when his fingerprints — or his father's, or Don's — were read by the handkey recognition system. While he waited for the scan, he noticed that his hand was shaking. He wondered if it would even work, but soon he heard the click and jerked the safe open, shoved the Ruger and a box of ammo into the bag. His mind registered a pencil on the desk and before he could talk himself out of it he scribbled something in the margin of a journal article he had been reading the night before. He ran for the stairs, but veered at the last second to the bathroom, where he grabbed the first aid kit from the cabinet under the sink. It should have aspirin or something in it, and dead guys in the dining room seemed to give him a headache.
Finally he hit the stairs, taking them three-at-a-time at a dead run. In the dining room he had to jump over Albert Michaels, who was staring up at him, head at an odd angle to the rest of his body. Charlie tried to erase the image from his mind as he raced to the kitchen and filled the rest of the bag with bottled water from the refrigerator, and energy bars from the pantry.
When he pushed back into the dining room, zipping the bag, Colby was waiting.
Charlie looked at him. "Now … Now w-wh-what?"
"First, take a breath. I've got a rental car. It was parked a few blocks away. It's backed up to the kitchen door, now. If Addison is watching, he just let me off the hook. But we can't take any chances, so I popped the trunk. Until we get somewhere safer, or it gets dark or something, you're in the trunk. I backed as close to the door as I could, you should be covered by the open door and the trunk lid. Just slide in, I'll slam the lid and we're off. Give me the pack. I'll keep it up front, so you have more room."
Charlie gaped at him for a moment, started shaking his head. "No. No. I don't think so."
Colby crossed his arms. "There's plenty of air, Charlie. I may have aereated the vehicle some. Probably would cost me. … if I were using the name of an actual person."
Charlie was still shaking his head. He was somewhat surprised his own voice seemed so calm and reasonable. "No, I don't believe I'll be riding in the trunk, Colby. Not a good idea. If that's the only option, I'd rather stay here and take my chances with Addison. Thank you very much for killing this man, though."
Colby's eyes narrowed. "I remember now. Don and I got trapped in a broken elevator for a while a couple of years ago, and he said we were lucky you weren't with us. You're claustrophobic."
Charlie started to walk by Colby. Just imagining himself shut in the trunk of a car was making him feel funny. Like he should lie down on the couch for a while. He was still very reasonable, however, a tiny comfort. He offered the pack to Colby. "Here. Maybe you'll be able to use some of this. I think I'll just wait here. For something."
He thought Colby was reaching out for the pack, but then Charlie felt himself whipped around — he didn't even know how — and Colby's arm was hooked around his neck again, as it had been when he had first surprised him in the kitchen. Still reasonable, he thought, as he abstractly considered that Colby was going to kill him after all … which was preferable to the trunk.
Colby waited until the latereal vascular neck restraint sealed the jugular vein, depriving Charlie's brain of oxygen. He could feel the professor's pulse pounding wildy, and as he started to struggle, Colby tightened the restraint. Seconds that seemed like hours passed, until he finally felt Charlie slump toward the floor. Colby quickly released the hold long enough to shoulder the backpack Charlie had dropped, but re-applied it before he could regain consciousness. He stepped over Michaels' body, dragging Charlie's dead weight over the dead limbs, backed through the swinging door and through the kitchen. Still maintaining the hold, although not as tightly, he open the kitchen door and surveyed the landscape one last time. Then he released Charlie's neck and cradled his entire body.
"Dude is heavier than he looks," he grunted, and staggered the two steps to the open trunk. Taking care with Charlie's head, he dropped him inside. Before he closed the lid, he fussed with the pack's zipper and managed to get it down far enough to grab a bottle of water, which he laid gently in one of Charlie's limp hands.
He took one last look at the unconscious man. "Sorry, Whiz Kid." He slammed the lid, opened the driver's door and threw the pack across the seat, slid in after it.
Eyes constantly scanning the horizon, Colby Granger drove away.
