Chapter Seven
October 23rd, 11:01 PM
Margot dashed through the woods as fast as she could. It wasn't very fast. Branches and bushes and logs and mud thwarted her every forward move. She couldn't believe she had sent Erin through this mess just hours before. "What a stupid, stupid plan," she thought.
And now she had no idea what was happening. She was pretty sure that the Blue Lynx wasn't dead. Or, that's what she had thought for a while, anyway. She had watched as the motionless dot on her phone had darted around in a small polygon for several minutes and then paused. A minute later, she had received the Emergency Message from Erin. Which wasn't good. But it wasn't the end, either. Because immediately after the message had been received, the dot stopped moving again. And then, after a few minutes, it resumed motion. A slow, clumsy motion that ambled across her screen, and presumably across the drug house, and then stopped. For about an hour now.
What had happened? Was she dead? The sudden stop was not encouraging. But even if Erin was alive, it was obvious that she was in big trouble. Never before had Margot received an Emergency Message. Whatever predicament Blue Lynx was in was unlike any she had ever known as a superheroine. And now here she was, Blue Lynx's tech support, wandering through the forest at night, more or less unarmed, on the cusp of facing extreme peril.
Margot pushed ahead. She couldn't fight. She had sparred with Erin a few times, and it usually ended with Margot flat on her face. How could she possibly beat whoever this was who had, maybe, beaten the Blue Lynx?
Maybe. She kept telling herself this. Maybe. She didn't know what was going on. It could just be that Erin was... Taking a nap. Or pausing to snap many, many photos of the crime scene. Or looking at the night sky.
None of these thoughts were convincing.
Margot saw the lights now. She stood near the place where Erin had stood, gazing from the forest toward the farmhouse, seeing the same truck, the same fence, the same barn. She saw the same dim lights coming through the windows of the house, illuminating the long porch. But she saw something that Erin hadn't seen, too. Another dim light, this one coming from the window in the barn.
She looked at her phone for what must have been the ten thousandth time that night. The dot-- Erin, the Blue Lynx-- was just ahead of her. Motionless. In that barn.
"Shit," Margot whispered to herself. "Fuck, fuck, shit."
But there was no time. No time to think. She knew this. So she patted the taser in her pocket and dashed in front of the treeline, making her away over to the barn. She slalomed in and out of the shadows of the trees until she was within yards of the barn, and then crept over to the wall where the window cast a small square of yellow light on the grass. She pressed her body to the wall, feeling the cool night air and the wet grass on the ground, breathing quickly, her chest heaving up and down. This was kind of exhilarating.
She turned around to face the wall, strafing over to where the window cast its light, plopping herself underneath the pane. And then, with utmost delicacy, she peered over the pane, into the window, into the barn.
She saw Blue Lynx, and she saw two men. The men were standing, grinning at Erin, talking. Erin was hanging. Thick rope had been tied around her wrists, thrown over a rafter, and tied toward a hook in the corner. The contraption left her dangling a foot above the ground. Her ankles too were tied in the same thick rope. Her mouth had been sealed shut with duct tape. She was squirming, darting her eyes, trying to break free. But she could not.
Margot watched as one of the men, a skinny man in overalls and a hat, walked over to Blue Lynx and, after taking some time to caress her butt, removed her utility belt from her waist. The man set the belt on the table and continued to talk. Erin shook, her eyes widened. And the man walked over to Blue Lynx again, once again getting too close for comfort. He held his hand up to Blue Lynx's face, danced it around her mask.
"Oh god," Margot thought.
And then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a beam of light. A car was driving up toward the property. Margot dropped down from the window and looked toward the driveway, watched as a black Lexus sidled up next to the pickup truck. And she watched as the car door opened, and a man came out, and the car door shut. And she saw the man, and recognized him.
It was Brent Hammerson.
On to Chapter Eight
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