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Chapter Twelve


“What do you need rope for?” Nick asked as they walked across the miniscule parking lot into the La Motte General Store at the intersection Avery called ‘downtown’. He was still antsy from having not taken a full 3-mile run that morning, although Avery was still complaining she could barely feel her calves.

“The boat,” Avery answered after thinking for a beat of how to answer.

“It already has rope,” he pointed out. They were on their way up these rickety steps. The general store looked like a big old house more than a store, Nick thought, but he didn’t say that outloud.

Avery shrugged, “It’s old. It could break. We need to replace the rope.” She reached for the door and pulled it open. A little bell jingled, announcing their arrival.

Nick stepped in and looked around. It looked like a house on the inside, too, he thought. The walls were lined with book shelves that should’ve been used for books or DVDs or something but were instead full of homemade preserves and such. There were tables and barrels everywhere with little index cards handwritten to describe the item and pricing they stood before. There was a counter by the door, but nobody was there. Avery stepped past the counter, into a second room. This one had makeshift “aisles”, which were basically just shelving units pressed back to back to form three short aisles. Nick followed her between them to the far wall and on that wall was a variety of ropes hanging from dowels on the wall. A handwritten sign announced that the rope was cut-your-own and cost by the yard.

Avery had decided that it was smart to take Marty’s advice, if for nothing but at least a back-up idea, just in case. She ran her fingers over the various rope and wondered how many yards she’d need to tie Nick, which thickness would contain him, and how she could ever grow the balls to actually tie him up in the first place.

She glanced over at Nick. “How, um, how strong… do you think… the rope should be?” Nothing like acting the captive for advice on their own containment.

Nick, who’d wandered a couple feet away, shaking his head at the smallness of the store, turned back and inspected the rope. “I dunno. It’s not like the water’s real rough or it’s a really big boat or nothin’ --” he grabbed a thin clothesline sort of rope. “This would probably do it.”

Avery was fairly certain that even she could break that rope if she needed to. “Well, I mean,” she said slowly, “I mean, the water gets rough sometimes. Just. It wasn’t just when we were out there yesterday. But normally. Normally…” she paused. “I mean sometimes there’s storms and stuff. Floods. That sort of thing. And the boat is -- it’s gotten away before.” She cleared her throat. “We need, uh, a strong… strong rope. Don’t you think?”

Nick looked at the rope again. “I guess,” he answered.

Avery ran her hands over the rope he’d selected slowly, “I mean. I could probably snap this one with my hands, couldn’t you?”

“Why would you wanna snap it with your hands?”

“I’m just saying if we could snap it with our hands then the water probably could during a storm,” she shrugged. “What one do you think you couldn’t snap… with your hands?”

Nick gave her a funny look.

“I mean just because that’s probably a real good, strong rope,” she said quickly. Then, because he was still giving her that look, “You obviously work out, so I assume if you couldn’t snap it then it’d be strong enough for what I need.” Avery smiled.

Nick looked torn for a moment between confusion about what the hell she was talking about and letting her stroke his ego. He quickly went with the ego boost, though, and she sighed in relief as he started reaching for all the different ropes and feeling them, trying to decide the probability of his being able to snap them with his bare hands.

When they’d selected the right rope, Avery went to find someone to cut a few yards of it for them while Nick waited. Back in the first room, Avery found the old man who ran the La Motte General Store, a bald gentleman with sunspots on his scalp and dark brown pants held up by suspenders. “Mr. Jones,” she greeted him, smiling, “You’re still… workin’ here?”

She’d almost asked alive. Mr. Jones had seemed about a thousand years old the last time she’d seen him, too. Seemed like he’d always been old, even when she was a little kid.

He squinted at her, “Avery Montgomery,” he said in surprise, his old voice rippled with a slight French-Canadian accent. “I haven’t seen you around this part in years,” he commented.

“It’s been awhile,” she nodded.

He stared at her.

“There’s a rope back here I need several yards of,” she explained.

Mr. Jones nodded and led the way back through the store to the ropes. Nick was standing there, still holding the tail of the one they’d chosen. He raised his eyebrows at Mr. Jones as the two of them approached. Mr. Jones raised his right back, “Why, you didn’t tell me you had a male friend with you,” Mr. Jones said to Avery.

“Yeah, this is my - uh - my fiance,” Avery said, trying to remember what they’d told Billy.

Nick nodded, “Apparently I’m a Chad.”

She rolled her eyes at him behind Mr. Jones’ back. Nick shrugged.

“Nice to meet’cha Chad,” Mr. Jones said. He pulled a pair of wire frame glasses from his pocket and slipped them onto his nose carefully before pulling a pair of hedge clippers from the shelf beneath the ropes. “‘bout how long are you needin’ this rope to be, missy?” he asked Avery.

She shrugged, “Ten yards maybe,” she replied, looking at Nick.

“Ten yards? Jesus,” Nick exclaimed, “You tying a little canoe or a friggin’ hippopotamus?”

“A canoe,” she said hurriedly, “But… but this way we have some extra incase… anything else needs tying.”

“This is for a canoe? Your grandfather’s boat?” Mr. Jones asked, measuring out the rope’s length, “Awful heavy rope for that little dingy of your grandfather’s.”

“I just want to be safe,” Avery answered.

Mr. Jones used the hedge clippers to cut the rope at the ten yard length and looped it until they had a pile of rope. “Anything else you kids need?” he asked.

“You got any Twinkies?” Nick asked.

“You don’t need Twinkies,” Avery snapped.

Mr. Jones shook his head, “I don’t carry none them Twinkies. Used to ‘fore the Hostess went belly up, then ‘bout every person on the island went crazy as a bat in the belfry trying to get ‘em.”

“They reopened,” Nick said.

Mr. Jones didn’t seem to hear him.

Nick followed Avery and Mr. Jones back up to the register, where the old man rang up the few items they’d picked up. “You come back now ya’hear?” Mr. Jones called as they left the store with a jingle of the door.

In the parking lot, Billy was just getting out of his truck as they stepped out of the door. “Shit,” Avery muttered.

Nick glanced at her, then back at Billy.

“Well hey,” Billy called, ambling towards them.

Avery took a deep breath, “Hi.”

Nick waved. He was carrying the rope.

Billy laughed, “Oh tying something up are we?” he asked, then he nudged Nick, “That how you finally got Avery to settle down?”

“We’re in a hurry, Billy,” Avery said, turning to the car. “C’mon Nick.”

“Oh so yer the one doin’ the tyin’,” Billy snickered, “Makes more sense, you always was a controlling woman.” He headed up the steps to the general store.

Avery got in the car and slammed the door shut, staring at Nick to hurry up. Nick glanced back at Billy. “We call it the dirty cowboy,” Nick said with a wink and just a bit of a drawl, “Where I’m from, woman like that don’t come ‘round them parts much... I’ll play horsey all night if she wanna ride me that long, you know what I’m sayin’? Like the rodeo up in there, if you know what I’m sayin’... but ‘stead of a buckin’ bronco I’m a -- well, it rhymes at least.” Then, before Billy could recuperate, he scurried to get in the car, too. Billy stared, a kind of stunned look on his face.

“What’d you say to him?” Avery demanded.

“Just that we were tying up the boat,” Nick answered. “Oh and I think Chad’s from Texas or somethin’ now.”





It turned out her name was Megan and she was indeed still at the hotel when Marty got back the night before after sending out the ransom note. She was in the bathroom in a tub full of water so hot the steam was coming under the door jam. Marty was sitting in bed with the news on, waiting for information on the ransom note to be reported, but nothing was being said on any of the media outlets. He sighed in frustration and turned the TV off. Surely they wouldn’t be hesitating to collect him, could they? Even as annoying as Avery made him sound, surely he was worth something to them.

He got up and wandered over to where Megan’s purse sat on the dresser by the TV. He glanced at the bathroom door, pulled just to a close. He could hear her splashing in the bath tub. He slowly unzipped the bag so it wouldn’t make a noise and reached inside, pulling out her cellphone, swiping his thumb over it to awaken the screen. He tapped open the internet browser.

“Marty?” Megan’s voice carried from the bathroom.

He paused, his fingers hovering over the keys to enter in the URL for the email account he’d created for the ransom note. He cleared his throat, “Yeah?”

“Is there an extra towel out there? There isn’t any in here.”

He stared at the towels stacked up on the shelf over the little hanger rack by the door. “No,” he replied. “Let me walk down to the front desk and get some,” he offered and he grabbed the little stack and bolted into the hallway, thankful for an excuse to leave the room a moment. He ducked into the vending machine room and put the towels down on an end table in there while he looked up the email inbox on her phone. He was pleased to see a response from the Cincinnati PD and clicked it open quickly. Less pleased when it loaded and he’d skim read through the offer. “A hundred thousand, what the fuck do they think I am, a fuckin’ charity?” He punched the vending machine.

No deal. Make a much better offer by tomorrow at this time or I may just get sick of having this guy hangin’ around.

He shot the email off quickly, fuming.

Taking a deep breath, Marty headed back to the hotel room and dropped the phone back into Megan’s purse before handing the towels into the bathroom. “I gotta go out,” he said.

“Out?” she asked.

He nodded, “Yeah. I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just out.”

“Okay.” Megan got out of the tub and Marty allowed himself to watch until she’d wrapped a towel around herself, then he ducked back out of the bathroom and quickly threw his things into his bag.

He left in a hurry.

The last thing he wanted was to still be there when the police inevitably traced the IP address that had accessed the email account to her phone. He felt a little bad for her, a little bad for himself, too, because he’d only gotten to sleep with her a couple times but it was enough to know she’d have made a good partner for awhile, at least, much younger and more compliant than headstrong Avery had ever been.

But you win some, you lose some, and she wasn’t worth getting caught for.





Nick was laying on his bed, thinking. Something was bugging him, but he wasn’t sure what it was, just something, something about the day. Probably just the stress from everything, he figured. Avery was cooking dinner in the other room, he could hear the pots and pans making clanging noises. He needed something to distract himself, he figured, so he rolled over and went over to the bookshelf he’d sort of half-perused before, this time seeking out something that would catch his attention to read. Amazing what not having a TV or video games could do for a guy, he thought, suddenly he was going to be like a scholar or something.

It took him a few minutes of staring, reading the spines of the books, pulling a couple out and immediately judging the cover and shoving them back into the ranks. There was a mixture of the sci-fi series he’d spotted before as well as romance books, clearly the tastes of both grandparents were represented here. Several of the covers had those bare chested he-men on the cover, usually wearing just the pants, suspenders and hat of a firefighter. Grandma clearly had a particular taste. Finally, after seeing more pecs than at the gym, he found one that looked like it could be interesting.

The Man I Used To Be it was called, and the cover featured a guy hunkered down behind a big dumpster in an alley as a shadow passed by on the wall. It looked kind of stoogey, the way a Hardy Boys book might look, but he carried it back to his bed anyways and threw himself down, cracking open the cover.

Two chapters in, he had to admit the book wasn’t terrible. It was about a guy who, like him, had witnessed a crime and was afraid of the consequences. He could feel the emotions as he read about them and he felt close to Walter, the protagonist. He was about to start Chapter Three, in which he was certain the police would set Walter up on the witness protection program, just like himself, when Avery yelled his name. He dog-eared the page and tossed the book onto the floor.

She’d made spaghetti and put it into bowls and set the table. Nick sniffed the food with excitement. “Hope you’re hungry,” she said.

“Starving,” he answered, sitting and picking up the fork she’d put next to the still steaming bowl of pasta and sauce. She dropped the pan back onto the stove and sat down, too, as he was shoveling the first bite into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully, his mind still half on Walter and the story he’d been so involved in.

“You’re awful quiet,” Avery commented.

Nick swallowed, “Just eatin’.”

Avery stared down at her pasta. She pushed some of it around a little bit. Her appetite was limited. She stared at the plate, tracing the shapes the pattern made around the edge, her fingernail following the swirls and twists to the very edge of her food, then back out to the rim. Her grandmother had always criticized her for doing that very thing when she was little, she thought. She looked up the fridge behind Nick as he ate eagerly. She’d been thinking about her grandmother since she’d got back from the general store earlier. Mr. Jones had been a friend of her grandmother’s after her grandfather died. Not just a friend, but a friend. Her grandmother had bragged about her handsome boyfriend the last time Avery had spoken to her before she died. It’d been weird seeing him again now. She wondered if Mr. Jones knew how much her grandmother had admired him.

Probably, Avery thought. After all, Grandma had always been a bit on the boy crazy side. She could remember her asking about all of Avery’s boyfriends, making comments about their cuteness when she got to see pictures of them.

Avery raised her eyebrow at Nick, wondering what Grandma would’ve had to say about him.

She would’ve liked Nick’s jaw, she decided, studying him as he chewed. It was a nice jaw. Grandma also had a soft spot for blue eyes and soft blonde hair, both of which Nick had. Yeah, Grandma would’ve liked Nick quite a lot if she’d met him, Avery thought with a nod. She could almost hear her, encouraging her to knock him over, the euphemism she’d used for sex.

Nick looked down and caught the look on Avery’s face. “You okay?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“You,” Nick said, “You look like you got a mouthful of garlic or something, you’re making a face like you’re disgusted about something.”

Avery shook her head, “Just thinking is all.”