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Bad Company... , part 22 — Description
Shea fought the ropes for over an hour, with spirited, dogged determination. She flexed and thrusted, twisted and wrothe, bucked, kicked, and struggled...tape-muffled voice a constant litany of growling and grunting gasps of strain. Searching for - or seeking to create - a weak-point in the sinister webwork of stifling strands. Yet for all of that, the ropes hadn't seemed to loosen one bit. Part of it, she'd realized about a half-an-hour before, was that the supple cotton cords had apparently already been pre-stretched... A tactic she'd seen used once before by another "professional" abductor, to rob his victims of a primary possibility for escape from rope bindings. That had been used on her, in fact; and that time, she'd only gotten free with the aid of a handy bit of discarded metal which had luckily been laying close at hand. Luck, she knew only too well, was often an important component in the heroic and timely escape...

Yet luck didn't seem to be on her side at this particular moment. A fact Shea rued deeply as she sagged in the fiendish bonds, uttering another long, lamenting sigh. She decided to take a few moments' break to catch her breath and regather her strength, before getting back to work. It wasn't as if there was much of a time limit pressing on her escape this time...though she hated being in this situation, and her cramped, tingling muscles were demanding a return to mobility as soon as she could manage it...

As she sat there and rested, Shea's ears suddenly perked in surprise, seeming to draw her fallen head up with them, at the sound of someone fumbling at the handle of the back door. She craned her head around to look at that way, heart leaping in instinctive, relieved hope. Had someone seen the coming and going of her two uninvited "guests"? Was someone coming who would release her from this damned chair? But then her eyebrows crawled up her forehead like they were seeking to hide in her hairline, as the door cracked open...and the taller villain's face poked through the gap...

"Nhhhhf..." Shea muffled fearfully, voice a strained near-whimper. She looked away in horror, her heart beginning to pound once more - and this time not with the strain of her escape attempts...

The fearsome brute's voice rang out in a rumbling, slurring croon, "Well...hey'a there kitty... Haven't had any luck gettin' loose, huh?" He staggered a bit as he slipped through the door, catching himself and drawing upright with an obvious effort before starting to advance toward her with an ominous - if wobbling - gait. "Not surprised...ol' Chas can really tie 'em good when he wants to... That's 'is name y'know...Chas. My bestest friend in the whole wide world..." He snickered gruffly, and shook his head. "So you're not gonna get outta that, believe me...ya miserable little fuzz-ear..."

He turned aside just as he reached her and kept walking, angling back toward the sink. The smell of alcohol drifted in his wake as he passed by, going a long way toward explaining his unsteady, unstable bearing. Of course, she knew a guy that size would have needed a lot longer than an hour to get drunk, leading her to conclude that there was probably something more at work on his faculties than mere alcohol. Dimly, Shea knew that why he was befuddled wasn't truly important just then... But her ever-curious, ever-analytical mind was working desperately to find something on which to focus other than the horrified fear that surged through her...swept along on the realization that she was as helpless as before in this brute's presence - and that his partner wasn't there to rein him in...

"Glad you're still here, though...saves me some trouble and time - even if it does take way some'a the fun I wanted to have, too. You're a real pain in the butt, y'know that, little girl? Would'a been fun to take ya down again before I got on with the serious business, but...we don't always get what we want, do we?" He turned and stormed over toward her, scowling hatefully, face twisted up in a sneer. "Do we?!"

Shea couldn't help but flinch back, her heart thundering in her ears, as he jerked to a halt before her. Real fear etched her face then...but there was a spark of defiant fire in the back of her eyes, all the same. She stared up at him, swallowing hard and muffling a soft, slightly-whimpering warning, "Lvvhh mnnh alnnhf..."

He huffed disdainfully then and leaned back, crossing his arms sternly before him. "And why the hell should I, ya miserable, nosy little brat?! Can't stay outta peoples' business, ya think you're sooo much better than the rest'a us...some kinda hero, huh? Wanna-be little detective, huh?" That very deep, very personal rage rippled off him again as he glared at her, eyes red-hot and accusing.

"Whhdhh uhhf dnngh?" Shea asked quietly, looking up at him with lingering fear, but with curiosity stealing back into her eyes as well. Even in the face of this terror, she couldn't resist the lure of a mystery...and this man's obvious and personal hatred was certainly such a mystery to her. Shea's friends had often ribbed her about that uncontrollable, nigh-obsessive curiosity and its tendency to distract her from more glaring concerns...but Shea had never paid them much mind. And just now, she was faintly thankful for its ability to do so.

"What'd you do? What'd you DO?!" He erupted, arms pumping out to the sides in outrage. "Ya got my cousin Donny sent to jail, that's what ya did, ya little snoop! Donny Bartolo? Remember him?!"

And Shea did, without much difficulty. Donny Bartolo was one of the three drug-dealing students she'd helped bust at her previous school - the "right-hand man" to the trio's leader. Bartolo had gotten the harshest sentence, based on his possession of a number of illegal weapons...and his propensity to make use of them. Shea hadn't regretted her actions then, and even in the face of the present dire situation, she didn't now. The captive heroine nodded slowly, giving the raging villain a flat, unapologetic glare.

"That kid was gonna be somebody...and you had to mess it all up... Ya pathetic little meddler..." He was behaving as if she'd "robbed" the young hoodlum of a chance to be a doctor or a philanthropist...not become a gangster... But, as she knew too well, there was little accounting for the "dreams" people held for other members of their family...and the open-minded Shea tried not to pass judgment on such things. Even when they were as bewildering as this...

She focused again on the villain's words as he raved onward, his face screwed down in strained fury, "And then we got this job on you, and I thought, 'Great! Two birds with one stone! Gonna get me some payback for lil' Donny...' " He shook his head disgustedly. "But then ya had to mess things up again, ya little snot... Don't even have any pictures! What kinda wanna-be Sherlock are you?!" He sneered at her derisively as he bent forward and drew up just short of the tip of Shea's nose, booze-laden breath blowing hot across her cheeks. "And then ol' Chas there decided to let ya go... You and me both know you're not gonna lay off Atronox - or us - and for the record Chas wasn't buyin' your story either. But he wanted to give ya a chance at least...be a pro... He's real big on that..."

Snapping back up at the waist, the raving miscreant turned and stepped back toward the counter again. "And y'know...I usually am too. A pro. But with you, I got personal business... And even though Chas's like family...he ain't. And nobody messes with my family and gets away with it. So...time for Donny to get his payback, ya little brat. In spades..."

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On to "Bad Company...", pt23