Chapter Seven
June 17th, 12:10 AM
"It's just so goddamn pathetic, really," Sunny said. She had been going on and on, just loving every second of this, increasing Erin's fury with every horrible and humiliating sentence. "The hotshot sidekick, coming in here, all high and mighty. And then, when she's right in the middle of rubbing it in, BOOM, she's surprised by the very thugs she thought she had knocked out. Oh man. It's just too great. Don't you think so, Erin Steele?"
Erin shook her head, avoiding eye contact with Sunny. Everything seemed hopeless now. She had a moment of ecstasy when she first saw Margot, was so proud to see the Black Bobcat take down those thugs without breaking a sweat. But then, Margot had gotten cocky, had clearly become too impressed with herself, and had let her guard down. Erin could correctly assess the scene because she had been in Margot's place many times before. She knew the feeling of lording over an opponent, how seductive it was... But also how dangerous it could be. Erin had been having a lot of fun with the Spaniel, too, right before she had been knocked out, unmasked, and put on the miserable path to her current predicament.
In other words, karma was a bitch.
And so, too, was Sunny.
"Don't feeling like talking, ERR-in? I don't blame you," the villainness continued. "You probably thought the Black Bitch here was gonna rescue you. A Hollywood ending for the damsel in distress. But this isn't a movie, is it, Miss Steele? Besides, you never send the sidekick in to do the true superheroine work."
Erin could contain herself. "You got lucky," she said. "If it wasn't for your thugs, the Black Bobcat would have..."
"Come on, really?" Sunny interrupted. "You're saying I got lucky because your savior was too stupid to see a couple of guards coming from behind? This barely has anything to DO with me, babe."
Margot was still silent except for occasional groans. The punch to her head had been, in a word, hard. Erin was surprised she hadn't been knocked out. She wouldn't be getting free anytime soon: they had trussed her up with even more rope than they'd used for Erin, and Erin had made absolutely no progress on dealing with her own knots.
"Now, where were we? Weren't we discussing something?" Sunny asked. She placed her hand on her chin. "Boys," she said, turning to the guards, both back on their feet, like the incident with the Black Bobcat had never happened. "What were we talking about before we were so rudely interrupted?"
One of the thugs scratched his head. "I don't remember."
The other snapped his fingers. "I do! The boss. The password. All that stuff."
"Oh yes, of course," Sunny said, again facing Erin. "I was wondering how you'd know that password. The password, which is, of course, BLUE LYNX."
Erin gulped. She didn't want to go down this road. She knew she had already compromised her identity in several ways, tonight. If Sunny pushed in the right places, she might strike gold.
"Wild guess," Erin said, as coolly as possible. "Everyone knows that Hammerson is obsessed with the Blue Lynx. It's all he ever talks about, on TV."
Sunny tapped her toe. "That's true. But you guessed that password without hesitation, first try. An incorrect password immediately sets off an alarm. How were you so goddamn sure about it?"
"Well," Erin said, feeling a bead of sweat forming on her forehead, "I didn't, um, know that I only had one try. And I just went with the first thing I thought of."
"And the first thing you thought of," Sunny said, taking a dramatic pause, like a television prosecutor, "was the Blue Lynx."
Erin blinked. She'd made a mistake. She needed to just shut up. No. She needed to say something, now, and then shut up.
"I, uh, well," Erin mumbled. "Listen, I just... It just made sense. Hammerson's rival is the Blue Lynx, and..."
Sunny licked her lips. "You don't have a special, oh, personal connection with the Blue Lynx, do you, Miss Steele?"
"Like, no!" Erin said, louder than she wanted to. "Of course not!"
"You're not friends with her, are you?"
"No! I've... never met her. I've just seen her on TV."
"Is that so? Because I seem to remember a story where you claimed she rescued you. Remember?" Sunny said, stepping closer to Erin. "When we kidnapped you, the first time?"
"Oh, uh, yeah!" Erin said. "There was that one time."
"That one time that you just conveniently forgot about, just now?"
"No, it's not like that."
"Well, then, Erin Steele," Sunny said, placing her hand on Erin's head, stroking her thick, black hair. "Tell me what it's like."
"It's just," Erin muttered, trying to string together something, anything, even a little bit persuasive, "I didn't count that as 'meeting' her, because we didn't talk, or anything. She just came in, and..."
Sunny wasn't listening. She continued weaving her fingers in and out of Erin's dark, flowing locks. She chuckled to herself. "You have such beautiful hair," she said.
Erin paused. What was she talking about?
Sunny lifted a strand of Erin's hair in the air, watching it glimmer in the faint basement light. "I love this hair. Everything about it. The texture. The luster. Truly gorgeous. Truly... unforgettable."
"What... what are you doing?" Erin asked, meekly.
"Let's go through this, piece by piece. Let's comb out the details, hmm?" Sunny said, dropping the hair back on Erin's head. "Erin Steele. The mayor's daughter. Beautiful. Smart. Athletic." She poked Erin in the bicep. "Surprisingly... muscular. And with a surprisingly high tolerance for pain."
Erin shuddered.
"Mayor Steele has a vendetta against Brent Hammerson. So what does he do? He sends his daughter in to do reconnaissance, right?"
Again, a dramatic pause. Erin held her breath.
"Wrong," Sunny continued. "Totally wrong. Why would the Mayor ever do that? Politically speaking, it would be disastrous. And putting poor little Erin in danger? Asking her to commit multiple crimes? Not even Mayor Steele, dirty as he is, would think to do that."
Sunny was pacing around Erin now, occasionally smacking one hand into the other, outlining a case, the guards watching with increasing interest.
"No, you did this, Erin Steele. You did this because you've got something against Brent. And that something isn't just political. It's personal. You snuck in here-- you went into his office, and through his files-- because, to you, Brent is more than a rival to your dad-- he is, in your mind, a threat to the city."
"Stop this, Sunny!" Erin cried. "You're just rambling! You're not making any sense!"
Sunny waved Erin off, still moving in a circle. "You sneak in here, and you guess Brent's password on the first try. You fend off a gaggle of guards, and you hold your own. After they finally capture you, a superheroine comes to your rescue. But not the Blue Lynx... Her partner, the Black Bobcat. A young woman you have a lot of concern for, apparently."
Erin felt her head throbbing, her stomach jumping, her palms sweating. She felt like she was about to throw up.
"The Black Bobcat was just in the area, apparently. And you, you were just goofing around, apparently. There's a whole lot of strange coincidences here..."
Sunny returned to Erin's hair. She sunk her hand through the dense black thicket, smiled, and brought her fingers down on her captive's skull, gripping it hard.
"I know this hair," Sunny said, kneading Erin's temples with long, sharp fingernails. "THIS is the Blue Lynx's hair. YOU, Erin Steele, are the Blue Lynx!"
On to Chapter Eight
"This is not an imaginary story!!"
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