The patio was packed tonight. Four residents and a visitor—a middle-aged woman busy preparing a plate of cheese and crackers for her father. Or grandfather. Helen hoped to be long gone before she reached that golden age of ambiguity, and given the likely response to Wilson’s kidnapping, she stood a good chance of skipping the nursing-home stage altogether. If they caught up to her before she could convince the agency to protect her, she’d end up in a gently heated barrel of lye. Turned into a DNA slurry over the course of several days and unceremoniously poured down a drain. Still sounded marginally better than melting into a bed here over the course of several years.
The other residents were spread out along the spacious patio, having parked themselves in chairs facing west. None of them were particularly well positioned to witness what was about to happen to one of their elderly compatriots.
Wilson sat at the far-left edge of the patio in his wheelchair, drink dangling precariously over the right armrest. She had to squint to see him, the deep-orange sun still glaringly bright as it touched the top of the distant trees. Helen reached into the tote bag and readied one of the blue syringes, keeping it hidden inside until she was directly behind him.
She lightly jabbed Wilson’s upper-left shoulder with the syringe and injected its contents before sidestepping to the right. He muttered an obscenity and turned his head to examine the site of the injection, missing her entirely. She took the drink from his right hand and downed it in one gulp, tossing the plastic cup in his lap. Jack Daniel’s from the bar, if she had to guess, and slightly watered down. Still hit the spot. He glanced at the cup, then her, an entirely bewildered look on his face. For a brief moment, she had second thoughts about the kidnapping. A senile Donald Wilson would be useless.
“What the hell?” he said, his eyes quickly shifting back to the cup.
“You spilled your drink,” she said.
“I think something stung me,” he said, touching his left shoulder.
Wilson appeared to have recovered from his initial confusion.
“I have a bottle in my bag,” she said, reaching into the tote that hung from her shoulder. “Jack Daniel’s. They told me my dad was out here. I thought you were him for a second. Care for a refill?”
“Sure,” he said, lifting the cup a few inches.
She prepared an eight-inch strip of duct tape, gripping it by both ends.
“My dad drinks it straight. Sometimes right out of the bottle,” she said. “I don’t have any mixers.”
“Your dad sounds like my kind of guy,” said Wilson. “What’s his name? Maybe I know him.”
“Beautiful,” she said, nodding toward the blood-orange orb sinking behind the trees.
“Sure is,” he said, shifting his attention to the sunset.
She pressed the tape over his mouth and smoothed the edges firmly over both cheeks. Wilson’s body tensed, his eyes going wide. Helen grabbed his left hand and yanked it across his body, slipping one loop of a zip-tie handcuff over it and cinching the loop tight around his wrist. She forced the other hand through the other loop and pulled it tight. Maybe it was the early effects of ketamine. Maybe it was shock. But Wilson barely protested as she secured the plastic cuffs to the right arm of the chair with a short length of cord.
Helen glanced over her shoulder and confirmed that everyone still appeared laser focused on the sunset—and not the man she’d just prepped for abduction right in front of them. Amazing how the human brain worked. She popped the brake on Wilson’s wheelchair and turned it ninety degrees right, ready to maneuver him toward the walkway in the center of the patio. He stiffened, straightening his torso in an attempt to slide out of the chair. She reached around the back of the chair and grabbed his man parts through the fabric of his trousers.
“I’ll rip these right off,” she hissed in his ear. “Understand?”
No response, so she squeezed tighter. “Understand? Yes or no?”
He nodded, eyes shut tight—and she wheeled him off the patio. Several minutes later, they arrived at her car, nobody the wiser from what she could tell by scanning the parking lot and building windows. Helen positioned the wheelchair a few feet in front of the trunk, ready to tip him inside after injecting him with one of the yellow syringes. She had a long drive ahead of her, which included a lengthy surveillance-detection route, just in case someone had been assigned to watch over Wilson. She popped the trunk and turned to grab him, pausing at the unexpectedly wretched sight. His hands trembled, a confused and slightly unfocused look in his eyes. The drugs had probably started to kick in.