Page 95 of Exposed

“It wouldn’t have helped.”

“It would too. Now we gotta clean it up. It’s not my cabin.”

Mary struggled to stay awake. To try and understand. They were in a cabin. The two men had brought her there.

“It’s not my fault. It’s because her head hit the floor.”

“You hit her too hard! Why didn’t you tell me you had brass knuckles? Who the hell has brass knuckles?”

“How many times you gonna say that? I told you, I didn’t want to take any chances. What if she screamed? Those houses are close together.”

“That’s why I told you to cover her mouth. No one saw us anyway. I was able to drive up the damn driveway and there wasn’t anybody around.”

“I did cover her mouth!”

“Then what were you worried about? She wasn’t going to scream if you had your hand over her mouth.”

“Get off my case, Ray.”

Mary heard the name.Ray. It didn’t mean anything to her. She couldn’t even remember who she remembered. She didn’t know who was in her life. Then she started to remember something. A driveway. A house. She had been in a house for some reason. She hadn’t been alone. She had been with someone.

“We had a plan. I gave you the little one. How could you screw that up?”

Mary heard what he said.The little one. She must be the little one. She was little. She couldn’t remember her height exactly.She knew she was little. That meant there was a bigger one. She didn’t know who the bigger one was. She must’ve been with somebody bigger. She tried to remember who was bigger. The answer was everybody.

“You and your plans! Your plans got us into this mess! Now what are we going to do?”

“I told you I’ll figure it out.”

“You better figure it out fast. Somebody is going to be looking for them. She’s half-dead already.”

Mary realized he meant her. She was half-dead. She felt half-dead. She felt warm and wet. She knew there was blood on her and it was hers. It was hard to breathe through her nose. She couldn’t smell anything. She realized there was blood in her nose. She was congested with blood. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth because of the cloth. She realized she was panting a little, trying to get air.

“We can’t kill them until we figure out what they know and what they told the cops.”

“You want me to go ask her? I have a way with the ladies.” The man chuckled.

Mary shuddered, involuntarily. She realized what he meant. She didn’t want to think about it. She felt a bolt of fear, less muffled. She was a little one. This was very bad. They were going to kill her. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t remember anything. Except that there was a big one. She remembered that she had been with somebody bigger when something had happened. She had been grabbed from behind. It was coming back to her now, in bits and pieces. It was a memory just out of reach.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“Lighten up.”

“Help me get into this laptop. They have everything under password. The phones too. I took the batteries out of their phones.”

“Why do you wanna get in the laptops?”

“I wanna see if they sent that email they were talking about.”

“How did you even get wireless up here? My cell gets no reception.”

“You don’t need wireless to check sent emails. Plus if we got wireless, then anybody could track these laptops. Without wireless, they can’t.”

Mary lost track of which man was speaking, Ray or not-Ray. But what they said made her remember something. A laptop. A phone. She had those things. She could almost visualize them but not quite. And there was an email. Something about an email. It was so hard to think. She couldn’t summon up a single image in her head. She couldn’t form a sentence. Maybe the bigger one was another woman. They had been together. Mary felt the answer just out of her grasp. She could almost see her hands reaching for it, her fingers trying to pull it from thin air.

“You heard ’em. They’re onto us. We can’t finish ’em until we know what they told the cops.”

“Who’s doing the honors?”