Seventy-two Hours Chapter 10
“It’s my fault…all my fault…I failed them…Joe…Lance…my fault…all my fault,” JC whispered, anguish racing through his being as he lay crumpled on the basement stair’s landing. Just minutes earlier he had struggled to reach the top of the stairs, his legs plagued with cramps so severe that he was certain that he would never be able to make it…his hands drawn behind him and tied tightly and a blindfold over his eyes had made the task a formidable one. The only thing that had kept him moving was the “promise” from the tallest of the kidnappers that if he was successful in climbing the stairs, one of the others would be released…but…apparently…he had been too slow…too hobbled by the pain to complete the task quick enough. And…now…Lance and Joey would remain trapped in the basement…he had not even thought of himself being released. He had only concentrated on getting one of his little brothers out and now…now he had failed them.
“Oh…God…please…help us,” he whispered, feeling as well as hearing heavy footsteps ascending the stairs, not realizing that there was already someone standing over him…having forgot that one of the kidnappers had walked behind him during his strained his way up the stairs.
The whispered words of the young man pricked at Barrett’s heart but not enough so to sway him from what he was doing. Sure, he had had some perverse enjoyment in watching Chasez uncertain, faltered steps, but now…a feeling of uncertainty was creeping upon him. Those feelings quickly dispersed, almost as if they had never been there when Lawrence joined him at the top of the stairs.
“Get him up,” Lawrence said, his voice full of mirth, watching as Barrett bent over then pulled the limp figure up but JC’s legs were not cooperating, not that he had even seemed to notice being pulled to his feet.
At the same time JC wanted to pull away from the hands that were seeking a strong hold on him, but he had little energy to and as a result, Barrett, finding that the young man was not going to be able to or was unwilling to support his own weight, quickly bent his legs, looped his right arm under JC’s rapidly sinking knees and lifted the figure into his arms, which was not an easy feat considering JC’s hands were tied behind his back.
“I can’t believe you actually thought we were going to let one of them go, Mr. Chasez…man, you’ll believe anything…won’t you?” Lawrence said, his voice still holding a quality of amusement…his words almost singsong…his smile, perverse and wicked.
The large man reached out and grasped JC’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing it harshly. JC attempted to pull away from the forceful grip but was unable since it was too strong. With a smirk, Lawrence released his hold roughly causing JC’s head to bounce off Barrett’s shoulder.
Numbly, JC allowed his head to loll upon the shoulder of the man holding him, Lawrence’s words not quite penetrating the fog that had begun to form in his mind but he could hear the mocking tone. And, after receiving no response from JC,
Lawrence shrugged his shoulder as he opened the door and motioned for Barrett to carry JC into the living room then turned to look at Cary and Zach still standing below.
“I guess you’ll need to look after Fatone,” he said with a certain amount of distain replacing the amusement in his voice as he glanced at Joey’s slumped figure. “Just make it quick then get up here.”
Both men gave the older man slight nods, watching as the door was shut.
For several seconds neither man moved or spoke…both just trying to take in all that had been said and done in the span of the last ten or fifteen minutes…both having the beginnings of a change in heart.
“Hate…he never said anything like that to me…” Zach said in a quiet voice full of bewilderment as he continued to stare at the door above them. “I thought it was all about the money, man…that was what he had said when he came up with this scheme last semester. He said that he needed the money…”
“That’s all he told me too, Zach,” Cary quietly agreed, not wanting their exchanged words to be heard by Lance, although he felt that the young man was beyond being able to hear what they were saying anyway. His muted sobs were more than likely masking anything they were saying.
“What are we going to do?” Zach asked, turning to look at the other man, wanting some sort of answer to a loaded question.
For a moment or two Cary shook his head, thoughts and ideas running so rapidly through his mind that he could feel a small headache beginning to form.
“Cary?”
“What?”
Cary slightly started at Zach’s voice and he turned to look at him.
“What do you think we should do?”
For a split second, Cary simply looked at Zach, a thousand emotions flowing through him causing the other man to read him like a book…allowing Zach to realize that he was just as confused as he was about the events that had just taken place. Then, with a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head Cary spoke, ignoring the question, since he had no idea what to do.
“I think we need to look after Mr. Fatone first…and lightly sedate Mr. Bass,” Cary replied, rubbing his hands over his pants before stepping toward Lance. He knelt before the still weeping blonde and grasped the blindfold covering half the young man’s face. Lance attempted to pull away from the hands, but winced underneath the blindfold and moaned when the hands tightly grasped a handful of his hair instead.
“Stop it…be still!” Cary growled, his voice and actions releasing a small portion of the frustration he was feeling.
In response, Lance slowly nodded, his head barely moving since the hand had not released his hair. He let out a sigh of relief when it did and remained still as Cary went back to work on the blindfold, inwardly cursing the fact at how tightly Lawrence had tied the knots.
Finally, after several moments of prying at the knots, he gave one final tug at the cloth ends and the knots crumbled under his fingers allowing him to pull the cloth away revealing Lance’s bloodshot, red-rimmed and swollen eyes.
Lance squinted against the intrusion of light and pulled his head away from Cary’s grasp when he realized who was touching him, grunting angrily at the man looking down at him…giving the bonds holding him against the post a few sharp, angry jerks, knowing that he wasn’t going anywhere, but wanting to let the kidnappers know how infuriated he was. He then glanced to the side and moaned at the sight of Joey’s still figure. In desperation he turned to Cary, giving him a questioning gaze.
“He’ll be okay…” Cary said quietly.
“Larry didn’t hurt him too bad,” Zachary added over his shoulder as he walked away from the pair to the cabinets along a wall where some medical supplies had been stored.
Lance simply glared back at the masked man, his gaze a mixture of fear and anger. Zachary turned to look back at the blond and shook his head at the boldness that Lance was displaying. He then went about the task of searching through one of the cabinets and, after pushing a few items to the side he found what he was after he began preparing a syringe with a mild sedative. He was certain that the medications would calm Lance, but wasn’t too sure if the young blond would lose consciousness. If he did happen to, they would have to watch him very carefully since he had just recovered from his irregular heartbeats. Still falling back on his medical schooling, Zachary made a careful note of what medication he would be administering and its dosage before cleaning up the area.
At the same time, Lance attempted to keep his emotions from running away from him…remembering that he needed to remain in some sort of control in order to help the others as much as he was able in his bound state, but the memory of the taunting words directed at JC haunted him to the core as did Joey’s limp figure just a few feet.
‘Help us, dear God…help us!’ he shouted in his mind while looking at Joey.
Unexpectedly, Cary grasped Lance by the shoulder and the young man instantly tried to pull back but was unable with his body still tightly bound to the support pole. In frustration, Lance grunted his protests into his gag while Cary strengthened his hold, pulling the still resisting body slightly forward to get a better look at Lance’s hands, checking to see that the circulation had not been compromised too badly by the ropes bound about his wrists.
At the same time that Cary was tending to Lance, Zach approached from behind, tapping the syringe and squirting a small amount of the fluid into the air to free any air bubbles from the needle.
Seeing Zachary just steps away prompted Cary to keep the young man in the bent position so as not to give him the chance to know what was coming and, before Lance could even protest from under his gag, Cary pushed his sleeve up, then Zach swiped his arm with an alcohol swab and quickly jabbed the thin needle into his arm.
Seconds later, once the needle had been removed from his arm, Cary pushed Lance back against the pole, his eyes wide in disbelief before slowly clouding over. He moaned faintly into his gag, the effects of the shot almost instantaneous since he was emotionally as well as physically drained. It wasn’t another two or three seconds later, with another small moan, that his head lolled to the side as his body gave into the drugs, sending him into unconsciousness and his now limp body would have fallen over if it had not been for Cary’s hold.
“Thought that might happen,” Zachary said as he stood up from his knelt position and walked back the cabinets where he discarded the empty syringe. “We’ll really have to watch him now.”
Cary nodded in agreement as he carefully lifted Lance’s head up, his hand inadvertently pushing tousled and dirty blond hair to the side. Then, holding the young man’s chin in one hand, he pried open one of Lance’s eyes to reveal the level of his unconscious state.
“Yep…he’s out like a light,” he said quietly before lowering his hand to tug the thick tape gag from the young man’s face, wincing in slight sympathy at the sight of the young man’s skin being stretched as the tape’s strong adhesive slowly released its hold.
“He’ll probably stay out for maybe an hour or two…maybe more…”
“Okay. I’ll get him repositioned,” Zach said, pulling out a knife and setting to work at cutting through the ropes holding Lance’s sagging body against the wooden support pole.
“I’m going to put some salve on his wrists and some gauze too,” Cary commented standing up to move across the room to a bag that held a few first aid supplies. “They’re starting to look a little raw. I’ll look after Fatone’s too. That bandage on his hand might need changing. Looks like it may have started bleeding again.” Cary knew that he was rambling, but he needed to be doing something.
“We’ll have to remember Chasez’s too when he’s brought back down here,” he added, hearing the floorboards above them creak and moan with the movements of those on the first floor.
Zach simply nodded in agreement, still busy in working Lance lose from his bonds. It was at that moment, that he was suddenly hit by the realization that he and Cary were using their medical school training to help someone that they were hurting at the same time. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that he had been doing that for the last two days…but seeing the young man before him…his eyes red-rimmed…the terrible struggle that the Chasez kid had put into making his way up the staircase…the memory of Fatone’s anger…
“Are we screwing up?” The words tumbled about in his mind, but he couldn’t risk saying them…there was just too much on the line…the need for money too great to turn from what he was now immersed so deeply in.
Pushing his thoughts to the side, it took only a matter of minutes before he had wrapped Lance’s wrists with a thin layer of gauze before placing him on the mattress so that he was now lying on his side, his hands drawn forward and tied before him…his ankles tied and anchored to the pole that he had been leaning against and a cloth gag tied over his mouth.
In the meantime, Cary had untied Joey and laid him out upon his mattress on his chest so that he could get a better look at the back of the young man’s head. Carefully, he pushed aside hair that had become matted with dried blood from the head wound Joey had received two days ago to reveal the damage that had just been inflicted when Lawrence had grasped Joey’s head by the hair then forcible popping it twice against the wooden pole he had been tied to.
“Man…Larry really got him good,” he said shaking his head at the sight of the large lump that had formed. Cary then bent closer to Joey’s head and gently pried one of his eyes open.
“Oh…boy. We might have a problem here, Zach,” he said, straightening back up. “I wouldn’t be too surprised if he didn’t have a concussion. I mean…if he didn’t have one already from getting hit on the bus two days ago, he’s got one for sure now.”
“That’s just great,” Zach replied as he joined Cary at Joey’s side. “We’ll really need to watch him after he wakes up to see if you’re right.”
“Turn him on his side like Bass and get that gag off him. If he throws up, he’ll aspirate,” Cary added, watching as Zach nodded his head while peeling the layers of tape from Joey’s face. He didn’t want murder added to the list of crimes that he had already committed…things were beginning to get out of hand.
For several moments, the pair worked to make Joey more comfortable, each lost in their own thoughts. Finally Cary spoke.
“You know…I didn’t think it was going to be like this at all. I thought we’d keep them all down here…you know…call for the ransom…then…you know…” his voice trailed off as he continued to work on Joey, never glancing at the other man…knowing that he didn’t have to since he had known Cary long enough to know what was probably going through his mind…his thoughts probably mirroring his own.
“Yeah…this isn’t right…but…I don’t know what else to do. If we try to get out of this…Larry…”
“He’ll kill us and them,” Zach said, finishing the other’s sentence for him. “Besides…if we try, Cary…” he began, shaking his head in disbelief. “Larry has too much on us…we’d be dead anyway. There’s no…there’s no way out of this.”
Cary nodded his head in agreement. Lawrence was indeed holding several things over all their heads and there didn’t appear to be any way out of the mess that they were in.
Both men had fallen prey to Lawrence’s ploys…his schemes…neither realizing that the apple had not fallen very far from the tree when it came to the group’s leader. Lawrence had unknowingly fallen into his father’s way of life…living from one get rich quick scheme to another, dragging his friends right along with him. Unfortunately, for all those involved, Lawrence had taken his activities one step further than his father in that he was going about his schemes illegally. Where his father had failed repeatedly with his own schemes, not once operating on the wrong side of the law, Lawrence was another matter all together. His schemes had been anything but honest failures…they had only served to lead Lawrence and those involved with him down the paths disruption and destruction that go hand in hand in a life of crime.
Unbeknownst to them, Lawrence considered Zach, Cary and Barrett simply stepping-stones to be trod upon on his way to fortune and fame. Nor did they have knowledge of his true intentions on leaving everyone else behind, empty-handed and holding the bag.
“We really…we can’t get out of this…can we,” Zach said quietly, rocking back on his heels as he finished working on Lance’s limp form.
“Not that I can see…nope,” Cary replied just as quietly, not looking up from his work.
The sudden realization of their powerlessness caused anger to radiate through both men but in differing levels…Cary’s more powerful than Zach’s. Just as Cary was about to speak further about their plight as well as the three young men they had kidnapped, the silence in the room was broken with the basement door opening. Startled and afraid that they had been somehow found out, both men jerked their attention to the staircase above, trying hard to control their emotions so that suspicion could not be raised.
“Are you two almost finished down there?” Barrett called out. “Larry’s getting kind of impatient up here and Chasez is looking a little weird. One of you needs to get up here.”
“Weird?” Cary called out.
“Yeah…he’s not really responding much. He’s kinda just out of it.”
“I’ll go,” Zach said, shakily standing up and walking toward the stairs, taking a deep breath in order to clear his thoughts before once again looking up to Barrett. “Cary needs to stay down here to watch Fatone and Bass. We’re pretty sure Fatone might have a concussion.”
With that said, Barrett just shook his head, watching as Zach quickly climbed the stairs.
“That’s all we need,” he muttered under his breath in irritation, stepping to the side as Zach walked through the doorway. With this new bit of news, Larry would more than likely fly off the handle again. With a shake of his head, Barrett shut the door. At the same time, Cary winced at the sharp sound while glancing at the two still bodies lying before him.
“This is all I need…more time to think,” he muttered before rising to his feet and walking back to the bathroom to retrieve a washcloth. He wet it and wrung it out, all the while looking at himself in the mirror…not liking the person he was staring at. He then looked at the reflection of Joey and Lance lying 20 feet away. Their bound and lifeless figures caused his stomach to tie itself in knots and he whispered, “What have I done?”
No longer able to look at the unconscious young men, he bowed his head and closed his eyes as he leaned heavily on the sink, the washcloth falling from his trembling fingers into the sink.
“What do I do? What do I do?” he whispered in an almost frantic tone as he came to the sudden realization that he no longer wanted to be a part of what was happening, but knowing that there were no choices in the matter. He was entangled in Lawrence’s snare with no way out, save following through with the scheme the somehow breaking ties with the man, or…worse yet if his feelings were to be found out…he could face losing his life.
So lost in his thoughts, Cary nearly didn’t hear a low moan coming from the next room, but a few seconds later, a cough and slightly louder groan caught his attention, startling him. Grabbing the washcloth, he took one more glance in the mirror and shook his head before walking back into the main room of the basement and over to Joey, who was beginning to move sluggishly on his mattress.