Part 28
The moment I reach Billy's front door Sean comes out of the apartment. "Hey, Ria. How was work?"
"Um…" God, I'm so nervous, I can´t think straight. "It was okay, I guess."
"Okay, I´m leaving. So I'll see you tomorrow then?"
"Sure."
I enter Billy´s home quietly. No one is in the living room right now; I guess the others are already gone. A muffled sound from the kitchen gets my attention. "Come on, little slut," I hear Billy say and hope that I'm too late. Has he already touched Liz?
"Hey baby," I announce myself from the living room and then swing the kitchen door open. Billy is pressing Liz against the wall, her arms are tied behind her back, but thank God, she's still fully clothed. "You couldn't wait for me, huh?" I try to sound saucy as I cross the room to stand right next to them. A quick glance at Liz reveals that she's relieved to see me.
"Come on, you don´t really want somebody who's probably already had half of the Bandits, do you?" I whisper into his ear, desperately hoping that it would make him let Liz off the hook.
Billy looks between Liz and me for several seconds. "Right, baby, I guess you´re much more fun."
"That´s what I wanted to hear," I say and force a smile at him. "But first let me take a shower. I'm kind of smelly from work."
"Take her to the bathroom with you, she needs to pee again." He leaves the kitchen then without looking back and I take a deep, shaking breath.
"Okay, come on," I whisper and guide her to the bathroom with me. Her whole body is quivering. The moment I lock the bathroom door behind us Liz starts to cry harshly.
"Oh, my God, Maria."
I wrap my arms around her and try to calm her down. "Shhh, it´s okay, Liz. I'm here and I won't leave without you. Turn around, I´m gonna untie you while we're in here."
"I told Max that you´re here," I tell her.
She whirls around quickly. "But he´s not coming here, right?" she asks a little too loudly, eyes wide open, and I press my hand over her mouth.
"Shhh, not so loud or he'll hear us. No, I told him that they can't get in here."
"I´m feeling so guilty now, Maria. So, they sent you again to save me?"
I shake my head. "No, they don´t know, they didn´t want me to come here again. But they'll know when Michael wakes up and sees that I´m gone."
"You should have stayed away, Maria. They were right." Liz is looking at the ground now.
"Hey," I lift her head up with two fingers, "you know what would have happened if I hadn't come back, right?"
She nods, ashamed.
"And there is no way I´m gonna let that happen to you, okay? He will leave you alone tonight, I promise." I turn around to turn the faucet in the shower.
"Are you really gonna shower now?" Liz asks, confused.
"Yeah, otherwise Billy will be suspicious, he´s not that dumb."
****
A few minutes later I´m out of the shower and in my clothes again. My hair is still wet, but I don´t care right now.
"I have to tie you back up, okay? But I won´t make it too tight, so that you can untie yourself if it´s necessary."
"What will you do, Maria? How we are supposed to get out of here?"
Yeah, what will you do, Maria? I don´t have a damn clue. It´s not like I can just kiss Billy good night and he will drift off to a peaceful sleep then. He wants to have sex! God, I don´t want him to touch me.
Liz must have noticed my clueless expression. "You don´t have any kind of plan, do you?" She asks, scared.
I shake my head. "No. Not yet!"
"God, Maria!" She hides her face in her hands and starts crying again.
"Don´t cry. I've dealt with him the last few years, and I'll deal with him tonight, too, if it´s necessary." I´m gonna die if I have to really do this, but I have to sound confident for her. "If I don't come back to get you by 3am, then you've gotta untie yourself and get out, okay?"
She shakes her head. "No, I´m not leaving without you as well. He would know you helped me if I left without you and then he'll ..." She can´t get out the last words, but I know what she was going to say. He would kill me.
"Okay, you said he has a gun. Where is it, do you know?"
"No, he took it with him this afternoon and I haven´t seen it again."
I sigh. "Okay. We have to get out there now."
***
I enter the living room after placing Liz back on the chair in the kitchen again and making sure that she could free herself when the time comes. Billy is lying on the couch watching a stupid reality show on MTV. "Did she give you any problems?"
"Nope. Everything went fine. She´s too exhausted to defend herself." I should think about taking some acting classes.
"Good, so get your little ass in my lap now," he orders with a smug grin.
What I am supposed to do now? The only thing I can do is to play along, at least for a while. So I walk over to him and straddle his lap. He immediately starts to kiss me roughly. It takes all my strength and willpower to kiss him back. He would get pissy if I didn't do it the way he wants it. His hands are roaming over my back to press me against his body, his bristly beard is hurting the skin on my face. My head is hurting 'cause I´m desperately trying to think of a way out for Liz and me.
First I have to make sure that he doesn´t have the gun somewhere at his body, so my hands are wandering over all the parts of his body where a gun could be hidden. He´s moaning in response to that and it gives me the creeps and fills me with disgust. There is no sign of any weapon in his clothes. So, it has to be somewhere here in the living room, right? Liz told me he took it out of the kitchen. And there is nothing but a casual bed in his bedroom. No other furniture.
I break the disgusting kiss to talk to him. "Let's go to your bedroom."
"Why, we can do it right here," he pats the sofa with a saucy grin.
I force a smile back at him. "But this thing is so small and," I lean forward to whisper in his ear, so he can´t see my distorted face, "I wanna give you a full body massage, so you have to lay down and strech out for that." I really hope he´s gonna play along with this; he's never been a big fan of any kind of foreplay ever.
"Uhhh, baby, that sounds good. Carrying around that little Bandit-slut really pulled some muscles today." YES!
I stand up then, taking his hands and leading him to the other room. "Ok, strip down to nothing," I request, still hoping he won´t change his mind suddenly.
"Baby, I really like you this way," he says, his voice aroused as he does what I asked of him.
Go to hell, sonofabitch!
"Okay, now, lay down prone. I want to start with you backside," I tell him when he stands in front of me totally naked.
I climb on top of him and start to massage his shoulders first. Quick glances around the room let me know that there is nothing big and heavy which I could use to knock him out. Well, I´m sure if there was something, I wouldn't be strong enough to knock him unconscious with it either.
"Uhh baby, this feels really good," I hear Billy mutters. God, I wish I could just do one of these tricky grips where you can knock someone out with just a little pressure on the right location on the body. But unfortunately, I never learned how to do that.
Come on, think of something, Maria! There has to be something that you can do. Thank God, he´s lying on his stomach. This position isn't so scary. My glance stops at the half open bedroom door then. There is a key in it...
Would that be possible? Could I lock him in here and then get Liz and leave? I don´t know, I'll have to be really quick. But this is the only chance I have. Well, there is another possibility, but that would include having sex with him and waiting until he falls asleep. Not a very good option either. And I don´t know if I could survive doing that ever again.
Okay, I have to lock him in here. But how am I gonna do this? I have to get up, place the key on the other side of the door and lock it. How long will this take? I have to find a good explanation to get up again without making him suspicious.
"Do you have any body lotion?" I asked in a sassy tone.
"What?" He tries to look at me and lifts up his head.
"This massage will go a lot better if I use some body lotion or oil," I explain and bend down to nibble on his earlobe to distract him from any other thoughts.
"There's some in the bathroom, I guess," he groans into the pillow.
"Okay, stay in this position and let me get it," I whisper and get out of the bed. I walk through the room until I reach the door. "You really will enjoy this, baby!" I say to make noise while I pull the key out of the lock.
"Oh yeah," he says and turns around the moment I place the key back into the lock on the other side of the door. My heart stops beating for a second and I look at him in shock. "What the fuck," he hisses and makes a move to get out of the bed.
I wake from my sudden shock, slam the door shut and turn the key, so that he´s trapped in his bedroom now. My hands are shaking almost uncontrolable. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!
"I knew it, you treasonous bitch! You're one of the fucking Bandits!" He hammers at the door loudly and it won´t take long for him to get out. This is an old apartment, the doors aren´t very strong. Suddenly he lets go of the door, maybe to get into his pants.
I finally remember what I have to do and run into the kitchen. "Liz, Liz. We have to get out really quickly," I tell her frantically. I'm opening some drawes to get a knife or anything else that could be used as a weapon in case Billy makes it out of his room to quickly.
"What did you do?", she wants to know while she unties herself.
"I locked him in the bedroom. But the door doesn´t seem very steady to me, he'll be out soon."
Together we run back into the living room and the pounding on the door starts again. "I´m gonna kill you, Maria!" He screams and his voice sounds dangerous.
We reach the front door, but it´s locked. "Shit," I hiss and search aroud the keyboard next to the door to find the right key. "There are so many keys, I don´t know which is the right one," I almost scream at Liz, who is staring at the bedroom door.
"Liz, Liz!" I try to get her attention. "Look around for the gun in here, okay? I have to figure out which key is right and I don´t know if I can do it in time."
She nods at me, scared, and starts to look in every locker, which is in the living room. I´m concentrating on my mission again, but my hands are still shaking so bad that I have a hard time getting the keys into the lock.
The sound of cracking wood splits the air and I turn around quickly; I can see the the bedroom door move. A few more hits on the door and he will be out.
"I can´t find it," Liz says desperately.
"Okay, forget it and come here," I scream at her while I´m still trying to unlock the door.
Suddenly I can turn the key in the lock fully around and the door snaps open. "Thank God!" I whisper and rip it open. I grab Liz' hand and drag her along with me out into the hallway. When we reach the top of the steps, I can hear Billy in his aparmtent again. "He managed to get out, we have to hurry!" I yell at Liz, while pulling her downstairs as fast as I can.
"Make your last wish, DeLuca!" Billy's voice echoes through the whole staircase and I also can hear the sound a weapon makes, when it's being loaded.
Liz and I finally reach the outer door and keep running along the street. She´s running with a slight limp and I guess Billy did that to her. "We have to run faster," I gasp at her, but I know she isn´t able to do it.
All of the sudden, a car pulls up next to us, brakes squealing in protest at the sudden stop. I let out a startled scream, assuming that it's another one of the Hurricanes. "Get in the car," a male voice yells at us through the open passengers' window, but it´s too dark to spot a face.
"It´s Kyle," Liz says with relief and tears the door open. We almost crash into the backseat when a random shot slams into the sheet metal of the car. I quickly close the door behind us and we take off with spinning wheels. I carefully take a glance out of the rear window.
Billy is standing there on the sidewalk with his legs wide apart, the gun in his left hand… making the promise to kill me.
****
After we drive around a few corners, Kyle stops the car on the road side and turns around to look at Liz. "Are you hurt?"
She shakes her head. "No, nothing serious."
Then he glances at me. "What about you?" He asks, his eyes soft and worried – much to my surprise there is no disgust or anger in his voice.
"I´m fine, too."
Kyle nods.
"How did you find us?" I blurt out.
"Kind of haphazardly. Michael called us after he realized you left and we just got in our cars and drove around the streets in the Hurricanes territory in hope that one of us would find you."
He pulls out his cell phone then and dials a number. "It's me. I found them," he replies to the person on the phone.
...
"No, they're fine. Both!"
...
"Okay." He hangs up then and starts the engine again.
***