Them

Boris was just nodding off, something he didn't do very often, being in the basement of a strange house, chained to a cot with a bunch of armed criminals and crazies around him, when raised voices woke him up. He jolted awake with a start and looked around. None of the captors was present. He glanced over at Lauren, but the detective was staring at nothing, as if she’d mentally checked out of the situation. This was the kind of blank stare Stone had hated. Whenever Stone would go on one of her delusional tangents back in the hospital, the detective would keep a neutral expression. On the occasions she was making sense, she would keep her answers as brief as possible. But this silent, stony stare was a definite indicator that the detective did not want to engage in what was going on around her. Neither did he. However, he was confused by the shouting above him. It sounded like all three of the guys were arguing about something. Not just arguing, but they sounded genuinely concerned. Concerned about what, though? Despite their voices being raised, they weren’t clear enough to make out any of the words. Suddenly, the door at the top of the stairs opened, and two of them came flying down the steps. “We can’t,” exclaimed one of them. “Why can’t we?” asked the guy he had come to know as Harry. “Because our fingerprints are all over this place and they’ve seen us,” the guy named Charlie said, pointing toward him and Lauren. “Just because they have our prints and know what we look like doesn’t mean we have to be found,” Harry insisted. “Oh, come on, bro, be real.” “No, you be real. There’s nothing about our appearance that stands out. We look like your average Joes. Even if they gave our description to a sketch artist and it was plastered all over the world, what do you suppose the odds are of anyone linking us to those drawings?” “What about our fingerprints?” “We won’t do any more jobs like this. It’s not as lucrative, but we’ll just have to become law-abiding citizens from here on out.” “You don't get it. There are genealogy sites. Having our prints and knowing what we look like is one thing, but being able to put names to the DNA in our prints is another.” “You watch too much TV. Besides, we don’t know whether we could or would be identified that way. But just to be safe, we’ll change our names. If we just stay out of trouble and avoid the police, we should be fine. Maybe we can even go to another country.” “Oh, come on, we don’t have that much money, Harry.” “Maybe not to live lavishly, but I’d rather live poorly elsewhere than locked up here.” Boris listened as the guys exchanged both pessimistic and optimistic points of view, but he still didn’t understand what was going on. If they were so worried about being discovered, why did they leave their prints all over the house, and why did they let themselves be seen in the first place? He could only guess that they might have intended to kill them at first, but then either decided against it or were forbidden from doing it somehow. And then the answer was slowly revealed to him. “Maybe she’ll be back,” said Harry. “Oh, come on, bro. All her shit is gone." "But why would she just take off like that?” “Because she doesn’t want to pay us anymore, that's why." "Now that we know who she is, she’s supposed to be rich, remember?” “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she wants to part with as much of it as she can get away with. Besides, she got that money years ago. Maybe she doesn’t have much left anymore.” “Where the hell do you think she went?” asked Harry. “I don’t know, but I’m gonna do my damnedest to find out.” “Don’t!” Harry exclaimed. “Taking her down could be taking ourselves down as well. I say let’s just get the fuck out of here. We don’t know that she’s not calling the cops right now.” “Oh, right. Someone with her past and who’s now wanted for kidnapping and torture is going to call the cops?" "Have you forgotten that people can use VPNs and Tor browsers? How do you think we were hired by the bitch in the first place?” “What the hell do we do with them?” Harry asked, motioning toward Boris and Lauren. Charlie turned and looked at them as if realizing for the first time that they were even there. Boris felt his heart rate speed up. He realized this was what it must feel like to be a criminal about to be sentenced in court and not knowing if you were going to get life or death. “Fuck them. Let’s just go,” said Charlie. “But it’s only the 24th,” Harry protested. “She said the owners wouldn’t be back until the end of the month.” “Well, that’s not our problem.” “Are you serious, man? They'll die down here. We didn’t set out to kill anyone.” “But we’re not actually killing anyone.” Boris began to feel himself panic, and he could sense the detective was doing the same next to him. Charlie raced upstairs. “You do what you want. I’m packing my shit and getting out of here.” Harry followed Charlie up the stairs, and the conversation resumed on the main floor, becoming muffled and unintelligible. Boris and the detective looked at each other, fear and desperation evident in their eyes. Now that no one was there to stop him, Boris began to struggle wildly against his restraints as he listened to the heavy footsteps moving quickly above him, and then eventually the front door slamming shut, and a vehicle engine starting up. They had to free themselves. They just had to.