“Someone will be dead,” he replied.
Angie tried to judge if the man was willing to die for his vague cause. She knew he would, she just wondered if he’d go down fighting or if Pepin would kill him while he was running.
She tried to manoeuvre herself to make her more comfortable, but her ankles and wrists being bound certainly didn’t help matters any. “I suppose you want me to loosen your ropes so you can escape and punch me?” the man said, keeping his eyes out the window.
“I have a cramp in my back,” she replied, “but no I was just trying to sit more comfortably. If you’re offering to make me more comfortable, without the punch though, I have a romance novel in my purse that I’d like to read.”
The man scoffed. “Those rot your brain.”
“That’s what my husband thinks,” Angie said, smiling.
Well, he still thought it even though she saw him sneaking them himself. They’d curl up together in bed and would read novels, and he’d slowly get closer to her to read over her shoulder. But it was usually during a steamy scene and the fiction in the novel would soon turn into their reality. It certainly wasn’t anything to complain about.
She decided not to tell this man the short anecdote, but it was possible that he would have been interested. When she was kidnapped, kidnappers tended to have a one-track mind. Money. Money and fear. But this one, this one had something else. He already said he didn’t care about money, but maybe it was revenge. She wondered if Pepin actually had a fight ahead of him. Maybe this man had done his research.
Maybe he knew too much.
He couldn’t be one himself, staring into the sunset like that, walking around in broad daylight.
Angie remembered how once Pepin saw the sun through her, they couldn’t get enough of it. He never went out alone, unless he had too. He still preferred doing business at night, sleeping away most of the day when he needed it, but they liked each other’s company in the sunlight.
Angie would spend the day preparing a picnic feast, food that wouldn’t go bad in the heat or direct sunlight. It was that Pepin needed to eat, but eating certainly helped. He would appreciate the taste. She debated putting some of her blood in a thermos as a joke, but decided against it. She didn’t want to walk around with a cut on her arm. So she settled for red wine.
And once she finished she’d lean on the door to his office and waved the basket in the doorway hand. And he’d sigh and stand up, and he’d hold her free hand. They’d walk together to the park, talking and laughing as if they were still learning about each other and yet still completely comfortable with each other.
She’d wrap her arm around his, feeling the sun’s penetration of his cold body.
And yet they’d still pick a shady spot. Angie never found Pepin to be a paranoid man, and even when he picked the shade she didn’t get the sense that it was out of fear, but she worried he hid his discomfort.
“Aren’t you listening?”
The man interrupted her fantasy.
“I’m sorry?” Angie asked.
The man sighed and walked away from the window, stepping closer to her. She felt anxious, not because of his proximity, but because he abandoned his position. She surprised herself by being worried about him. She didn’t want him to win, but she didn’t want him to be massacred with his back turned. Especially not because of her fault.
“I said I can get you a ladies’ magazine if you’d like,” the man said. “I have some lying around.”
“It’s fine,” Angie said. She didn’t want him going too far. She didn’t want to be the reason for his downfall. She wanted it all to be his own. “I have my own romance in my head.”
“Your husband I suppose,” the man said.
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