“No. You’re gonna stay here and babysit,” said Rake. He reached into the back of his pants and pulled out a gun. He handed it to Meggie, but looked at Abby. “Listen, you rich bitch. She knows how to use this, so don’t do anything stupid.”
“Don’t you need that to scare those people?” Abby asked.
“I don’t need a gun for what I’ve got planned for them. But if I did, I’ve got another one just about like that in my truck.”
“Okay,” Abby said. She noticed Meggie didn’t ask him why she was babysitting Abby, and using a gun to do so.
“I can’t control her. She’s taller than me. And I’m sleepy! You need to tie her up or something,” Meggie said to Rake.
“No. That’s not necessary at all,” said Abby. “I’ll behave myself. Please don’t tie me up. I’m fine. I’ll sit right here and be good.”
“Shut up,” Rake told her.
“Charlie,” Abby said, “please tell them that I won’t do anything. Tell them not to tie me up.”
“Whatever you’ve got planned for those people, I don’t like it,” Charlie said to Rake.
“But you’ll help me,” said Rake. Charlie nodded an almost imperceptible nod. Rake turned to Meggie then. “Go get the duct tape out of my truck.”
“Which kind?”
“The roll of gray tape. Bring it down here.”
She ran up to his truck and was back a couple of minutes later with it. Rake took it from her and said to Abby in a noxiously sweet voice, “Do you need to tinkle before I tape you to your chair?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
She rose from the chair and took a step away from the fire pit. Rake shook his head. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Up the hill a little ways.”
“Do it here if you have to.”
“In front of you all?”
“Yeah. Do it.”
“I can hold it,” she said. She’d wet her pants later in the chair, if it came to that.
“Then sit back down.” The whole time Charlie sat there, staring off in the distance, drinking his beer. Abby’s saga was unfolding before him like a TV show someone had left on in another room.
Rake wrapped the tape around her waist, all the way around the back of the chair, in several layers. He avoided taking it to a sexual level, perhaps because Meggie was feet away, smoking a cigarette, a gun resting in her lap. She looked sad and sick and uncomfortable, but not shocked, not confused. She looked to Abby like a kid who needed to go home and take some Pepto after a long, overstimulating day at an amusement park.
Rake taped Abby’s wrists to the chair’s armrests. There was no fabric to protect them and she couldn’t imagine what kind of torture it would be removing the tape. If it ever got removed. Maybe this would be how they’d find her. A mosquito landed on her cheek and she tried to blow it away.
“Pesky little fucker,” said Rake, brushing at it. “Is that better?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Good. Glad I could be of service.” He applied a little more tape, to be on the safe side. “Another layer of the good stuff,” he said. He held up the roll of tape. “And this is good stuff. You can fix a leaky pipe, a rusty car, hell, you can hold your whole fucking house together with a roll of this.” He tore off a small piece and stuck it over her mouth. She waved her head back and forth emphatically. He yanked off the tape. “What’s the problem now?”
“I can’t breathe. Please. My nose is stuffed up from my allergies.”
“You don’t have allergies.”
“Yes I do.”