SO I ALMOST MARRIED A HIT MAN
By Greg Emerson
thedistresser1963@yahoo.com
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The men used scissors, carefully sliding the blade between my cheek and the tape, after lifting the tape slightly to create a tiny gap.
Travis sliced away at both my cheeks.
This left a mass of tape over my mouth from ear-to-ear, which Travis peeled away gently. I worked my jaws and licked my lips, a routine I was getting good at.
This left the tape clinging to my hair to deal with.
Travis thought of everything, which led me to believe he'd done this sort of thing before. He knew just what to do, which was to take a damp washcloth with some soap and run it all over the tape, to loosen its adhesive.
Once that was done, it was an easy task to pull the mass of duct tape from my auburn hair.
My mouth free, I spoke without bothering to ask for permission.
"I was trussed up like a turkey for nearly an hour, Travis!"
"I know. I'm sorry. Really."
I sat up and looked at both men pointedly.
"I want you both out of my house," I said, evenly but firmly.
Travis shook his head. "I'm afraid we can't-"
"I want you out…of…my…house!" I repeated, louder.
"Lauren, it's not that easy, we just can't-"
"OUT!"
"Lauren, don't make me gag you again."
I was seething. I sucked my upper lip inside my lower lip, my bottom teeth keeping the upper lip inside.
I counted to 10, like they always say you should do when you're angry.
I would have needed to count to 100. I was still pissed.
I fought back tears.
"This is SO unfair!" I said, nearly breaking down again.
"I know," Travis said. "I know it is."
I pleaded with him. "Then why are you doing this to me? I thought you cared about me."
He sighed. "It can't be avoided. We need your house. You live here. It's unavoidable that you suffer a little collateral damage."
I looked at him incredulously.
"Collateral damage? Is that what I am?"
"No…I mean, collateral damage is happening to you. There's a difference."
I shook my head in dismay.
"I'm so sick of you parsing words, Travis. Quit trying to sugarcoat this. You used me and discarded me, end of story. You betrayed me. You're despicable."
I turned my attention to Brick.
"And YOU-shame on you, Brick. You just sit there and let a man treat a woman like this. Do you have a wife or girlfriend? Or even a sister?"
Brick said nothing.
"Well? DO you?"
Travis said, "OK. You're entitled to vent, Lauren. I'm a bad person. I get it. But I have a job to do. We can discuss this later."
I looked at Travis like he was insane. He wasn't insane, however-just extremely focused and determined. Sometimes that made him appear insane at times.
"No, we're discussing this now, Travis. Now. You don't need me here. Let me go. I'll stay at my sister's, or at Holly's. You can have the whole house to yourselves. Knock yourself out."
"You'll go to the police," he said, as if stating fact.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not like you. I don't screw people over. Despite all you've done to me, I wouldn't squeal on your little…mission."
"I wish like hell I could believe that," Travis said.
"Well, it's true. Let me go. Please."
Travis's eyes fixed on mine. I gazed into those blue peepers and saw a man who wasn't about to be swayed by anything I had to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
By 1:00, we were all in the kitchen.
I was munching on an apple, seated between the two men for security purposes. I was unbound, so they wanted me between them.
"I'm bored senseless," I said between bites of apple. Travis had denied my leave request, which didn't surprise me at all. "Can't I watch TV, or read?"
He seemed to be contemplating it.
"There's a TV in my bedroom. You could tape me or tie me up but let me have the remote. I'm sure you could figure something out in that regard."
I was making more sense to him, it appeared, because his face was disarming.
He nodded his approval. "OK. But you have to be gagged."
I groaned.
"Sorry, babe. But I'm not leaving you alone in any room without gagging you."
My eyes narrowed. "You enjoy that, don't you?"
He played innocent. "What do you mean?"
"Gagging me. You like doing that, don't you?"
He shifted in his seat. "It's not that I enjoy it. It's just something that needs to be done."
"Oh, bullshit," I retorted. "You like doing it. You like keeping me quiet. The question is…why? You always liked talking to me before."
Travis frowned. "Lauren, this is crazy talk."
"Oh, I don't think so," I said. "When we dated you never discouraged me from talking. But ever since yesterday at 6:00 I've been gagged more than I haven't."
He spoke slowly for emphasis. "That's because…the situation was different, Lauren. When we dated, I wasn't working on a job like this."
I chuckled ruefully at his logic.
"I still think you enjoy it. Gives you a feeling of power, maybe?"
I smirked at him.
"Believe what you want. We need to go back to work."
"What about my TV privileges?"
Travis took me up on my suggestion.
I was stretched out on my bed, sitting up. Travis taped my wrists in front of me and attached them to my taped ankles, as he did before. He slipped the remote into my right hand.
"Happy now?"
I nodded, because I couldn't speak. Travis had again tied the terry cloth robe between my teeth for a quick yet effective gag.
If I was going to be bound and gagged, this was the way to go. I was relatively comfortable in my bonds. The gag wasn't awful. And I had TV.
Only one catch: Saturday afternoon TV SUCKS.
I did more channel flipping, it seemed, than actual viewing. I watched snippets of everything from "The Brady Bunch" to "Gunsmoke" to the Food Network, which I decided not to watch for too long because that channel always makes me hungry.
I finally settled on an old movie on Turner Classics called "Touch of Evil," starring Orson Welles. Much of it took place in Mexico.
As I watched, I let my mind wander to Travis and me.
I grew melancholy as I thought of how much fun we had as boyfriend and girlfriend. Knowing what I knew presently, it didn't seem possible that he could have been both men with me. Travis the boyfriend was SO much better than Travis the paid contractor.
Then I started blaming myself, feeling foolish for falling for a phony, as alliterative as that sounds.
How could I have been so stupid?
Well, one thing was certain: I had a "bad relationship" story that would trump anything any of my girlfriends could spin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As I feared the night before, I was spending most of the day gagged. I was getting used to it a little bit, but I was no more happy about it. At least I was getting to talk more than I thought I would, frankly. But it still wasn't enough. It seemed that everytime I was getting comfortable speaking, Travis gagged me.
The movie ended around 3:30. I sighed and turned the TV off. Another good idea turned bad. But the movie was alright, I must admit.
I looked around my room. It was a neatly kept room, very feminine, with pale pink painted walls and everything in place. I liked my room.
I looked at the walk-in closet, which I treasured. No self-respecting woman should be without a walk-in closet. Makes you feel like a movie star or any other rich person.
I sighed softly, thinking of my closet and what it looked like inside.
Suddenly my eyes widened and my heart skipped a beat.
I kept my old cell phone in there!
Travis, always thinking, had unplugged my land line phone in my bedroom and hid the cord somewhere, making sure I wouldn't be able to call for help. He confiscated my primary cell phone and was posting updates on my Facebook page to discourage my friends from trying to contact me or from coming over.
He had closed all my curtains and even answered my e-mails, posing as me. He hid my purse, in case I had something in there I could make use of, if I ever got to it.
He even took my car keys, as if I was going to make it that far. But, like I said, always thinking.
He took every precaution to keep me from contacting the outside world, or to keep the outside world from contacting me.
But he didn't know about my spare cell phone.
Now, whether it was charged was a whole other story.
I tried to think of when I used it last.
Got it-it was two weeks ago, when I was at my mother's house and was showing her the difference between my new phone and my old one.
And bonus-I think I had turned it off before putting it back into my purse, because who needs two cell phones working at the same time?
I grinned around my gag. The spare phone was probably plenty charged.
I just needed to get to it.
My heart began to race as I thought that maybe escape, or help, was within my grasp.
I scooted to the side of the bed and swung my legs off it. I thought about turning the TV back on to drown out any noise I might make, but then I wouldn't be able to hear anyone coming, either.
As gently as I could, I lowered myself until my bare feet touched carpet.
Slowly I raised myself to a standing position, my hands before me, taped and attached to my ankles.
The closet was about eight feet away. I'd have to hop it.
I moved painstakingly slowly, but unlike when I was hogtaped, this was by design. Slow equaled quiet.
I took short, gentle hops, stopping and listening after each one. This would take a while, I surmised, because each hop was only netting me about three inches of distance.
I did the math in my head: eight feet equals 96 inches. Three inches per hop equals 32 hops to get to the closet. Each hop was about 10-12 seconds apart.
So 32 hops times 10-12 seconds meant it would take me roughly five to six minutes to traverse the eight feet.
That's a long time when you don't want to be found out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I pressed on, hopping ever so quietly and resisting the urge to get greedy and take longer hops. I stuck to my little three-inch hops. The men were quiet but they were downstairs, again ignoring me, which this time was to my benefit.
Eventually, I made it to the closet.
The door was an accordion styled number which slid on a track on the bottom.
But it was metal and a little noisy to open-and that was under normal conditions. I couldn't imagine how loud it would seem now, when I was trying to escape detection.
Still, I had to try. I had hopped this far.
The doorknob was taller than my hands, but I could remedy that, I was pretty sure.
Biting down on the gag between my teeth, I raised on my tiptoes and lifted my hands as much as the bindings would allow.
I splayed my fingers out as much as possible, reaching for the round, wooden knob. After a few tries, I latched on.
I was losing my balance, though, so I had to let the knob go as I sank back to the balls of my feet.
Undeterred, I tried again.
Again I latched my fingers onto the knob and this time I wasted no time in pulling.
The door made an awful squeak, one that caused me to wince and whimper behind my gag.
I stopped and listened.
Nothing.
Wincing, I slowly slid the door along its track, opening it.
I had to move with it, mini-hopping to my right as the door came open.
I didn't need it opened all the way-just enough to slide my body inside the closet.
Satisfied that I had a large enough opening, I let go of the knob and sank back to the balls of my bare feet.
It was then that I began to breathe again.
I listened again; the men were talking now. Perfect.
I turned myself sideways and slid into the closet. There was no way that I could reach the light string to turn on the bulb near the ceiling, but that was OK; I knew the closet like the back of my hand.
The spare phone was in the top drawer of a cardboard chest of drawers that I bought at Target for $12. I put it together myself, proudly.
I squatted and lifted my bound hands, reaching blindly for the plastic knob.
Got it.
It was an easy task to slide the drawer open-and quiet, because cardboard isn't noisy.
I stood and lowered myself over the drawer, feeling inside for the phone.
The drawer was a "junk drawer" that I put miscellaneous stuff in, but the phone had a unique shape to it. I found it rather easily.
Clutching it for all my worth, I turned sideways again and inched my way out of the closet.
I stopped and listened. The men weren't talking. I waited some more.
I swear I didn't breathe for two whole minutes, until I heard the water running in the kitchen. Were both men in the kitchen? I couldn't chance it; I waited.
Another minute went by, then I heard their voices, coming from the front room.
Sighing in relief, I hopped to the bed and scooted myself so I could sit on the edge of it.
My feet dangling gently, I flipped the phone open. It was turned off-a good sign.
I said a small prayer silently and hit the "ON" button.
To my glee, it powered up. To my horror, I remembered-too late-that it makes noises when it turns on.
Startled at its sounds, I yelped softly behind my gag and shoved the noisy phone under my butt.
My heart pounded like a bass drum at a rock concert.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When it was done making noise, I pulled the phone from under my tush.
It had three bars-plenty of battery power.
Today's 911 systems can trace land lands directly to an address, so help can arrive without the caller having to say a word.
That would have been perfect for me, a gagged woman, but this was a cell phone.
I'd have to try to talk to the 911 operator.
My hands shaking slightly, I set the phone on the bed, flipped open, and took aim with my right forefinger.
It wasn't as easy as you might think to hit the tiny buttons from such a high distance.
My first try, I hit "8" so I had to hit the delete button and try again.
My second try netted me "9" and "2".
Sighing, I deleted again.
It took me five tries before I got so far as 9-1.
Taking a deep breath, I steadied my hand as much as possible and lowered my finger toward the phone.
Then disaster struck.
Inexplicably, my butt slid off the bed and my finger hit the phone's edge, causing it to tumble off the bed and land on the floor with a soft thud.
I gasped and then groaned.
My heart pounding, I listened for the men. Had they heard that? Or was it a harmless sound, audible only to those within my bedroom?
Hearing no urgent trips upstairs, I heaved a sigh of relief.
But the phone was on the floor.
Sighing, I lowered myself until I could reach the phone.
Snapping it up, I raised myself and dropped the phone onto the mattress.
The gag was biting into the corners of my mouth and making everything really dry inside my oral orifice.
Yet somehow I'd have to try talking to the 911 operator.
If I could ever dial 911, that is.
I set out to aim my fingers again when I heard some foot shuffling downstairs, followed by heavy steps on the staircase.
Shit!
Making urgent, anxious sounds from behind my gag, I took hold of the phone and flung it toward the pillows. Then I hopped like mad to the side of the bed and lifted myself onto the mattress, hair in my eyes and heart racing.
I had just rolled onto my back and onto the phone-it dug into my lower back-when Travis entered my room.