Nabbed Again

A while later I was awakened by what sounded like gas leaking sporadically from a broken pipe.  It took me a few seconds to realize it was whispering, and it came from the living room.  The door to the small bedroom I occupied was slightly ajar, and I crept silently to the crack and cautiously peered out.  Mindy and Dolly were each facing me, sitting behind a laptop computer whose monitor light bathed their faces in a ghoulish glow.  Their mouths were hanging open in shock, and I wondered briefly if they were viewing porn, perhaps marveling at a man with an equine endowment.

Soon they were whispering again, and I could just barely make out the words Mindy was mouthing.  "Two hundred thousand smackers is no chump change," she said.  "That's a hundred grand each."

"We gotta do what we gotta do," Dolly said.  "It's the right thing."

I was certain what they had to do involved me, so I turned slowly, and silently crossed back to the lone window at the rear of the room.  It had one of those crank locks midway down the center frame, and I quietly turned it to the open position.  It was going to be a tight fit, but I was pretty sure I could squeeze through.  I had just begun to slide the window to the left along its track when the door behind me flew open.  I turned to find Mindy pointing an old shotgun directly at my chest.

"Don't make me use this thing, Darlin'," she said.  "I don't want to, but I will."

To Dolly, who stood right beside her, I said, "I thought you wanted to help me."

"I did, hun, but this is too good a deal to pass up."

Mindy told her to go get rope from the utility room, and when Dolly came back with it she tied my hands behind my back, using the long excess end to secure my ankles with a crude knot.

Mindy gestured for Dolly to come take the shotgun so she could make a call, which she did from the land-line phone in the room.

"Sheriff Buford?" Mindy said.  "Oh, hi, Roy, this is Mindy Dawson.  I got a little present for you over to my place, which is going to make you a very famous man."

Mindy took the shotgun back from Dolly and continued to target me with it.

I said, "I'm toast if your trigger finger suddenly gets twitchy.  Could you point it at the floor?"

"Ain't taking no chances with you, Darlin'," she said, "not after you cleverly escaped from those marshalls.  By the way, you might like to know they ain't dead."

"I'm glad to hear it, but I didn't do anything to them.  They crashed that van all on their own."

"Tell it to the judge," Mindy said.

Dolly said, "I feel bad, hun--really I do--because I like you.  But look at it our way.  For a hundred grand we can write three more books each.  Then maybe we can get some of the recognition we deserve."

"You deserve recognition?"

"Damn right," Dolly said, defiantly.  "Everybody does."

Mindy said, "You're wasting your breath on him.  He doesn't even want to write a book."

Suddenly the small bedroom was pierced by a pulsating red beam, coming through the window, presumably, from the turret lights atop the sheriff's car.