Here’s a new episode in the new series, FIRST CHAPTERS. It’s the first exciting chapters in each book in the Micah Reed series!
To get this book, click here. To see all posts in the First Chapter series, click here.
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THE PILLOWCASE OVER Micah Reed’s head smelled of sweat and some kind of facial cleanser. Acne product, maybe. He couldn’t tell for sure, and it didn’t matter, because he had more pressing problems. The ropes binding his hands and feet were problem number one, since his top priority was leaving this room alive.
The man who’d put him here had other plans. The jerk had snatched Micah off the street as he was about to walk into an AA meeting.
“Micah,” the man said, and Micah could see a vague outline through the white fabric of the pillowcase. “Are you ready to talk yet?”
The back of Micah’s head throbbed. He’d been knocked down with something, but he hadn’t seen it coming. Only a thwack, and then a sudden pair of arms wrapping around his stomach.
He decided to play tough. “Take this pillowcase off my head and we’ll see. It stinks like sweat.”
The man ripped off the pillowcase, and it took Micah a few blinks to adjust to the light in the room. He was in a garage with a single bulb hanging from a cord on the ceiling. Big oil stain on the floor under the man’s feet. The light swung gently back and forth, casting the man’s shadows left and then right. Cork boards decorated the walls, with tools arranged on pegs. Standard suburban Denver garage, with typical scarred-up snowboard hanging from wall hooks.
“I’m Seth.”
This person standing before Micah was a little younger than him, maybe mid-twenties. Big spacer earrings making his lobes dangle as his head moved. And his head moved a lot, because he was fuming, like he’d never been this pissed off before. Micah couldn’t say for sure because he’d only met the guy today.
“Where is my cocaine?” Seth said, and his eyes darted to his left. Nose ring glinted in the light.
Micah followed the look to a portable workbench, where Seth had laid out a collection of instruments such as screwdrivers and hammers. “Are you going to poke my eyes out or smash my hand if I don’t tell you? It’ll be easier if you can set my hand on the bench. You might want to think about how you’re going to undo these ropes.” Micah lifted his hands, and realized they weren’t bound with ropes, but orange extension cords tied in knots. Same with his feet.
Extension cords? Wasn’t the most professional kidnapping he’d ever seen. This Seth kid either didn’t know what he was doing, or he’d acquired Micah through some impulsive snatch and grab. Regardless, Micah could get out of these easily, if he could find a way to distract the pierced cyborg.
But as Micah was thinking of ways to divert Seth’s attention, the kid snatched a screwdriver, flipped it so the point faced down, then jammed it into Micah’s thigh. Searing pain burst from the two-inch hole halfway between his knee and his hip. Seth twisted the screwdriver on the way out, and an arc of blood squirted into the air as he withdrew it.
“You think I’m fucking around?” Seth said.
Micah took a couple seconds to catch his breath as stars dotted his vision. His leg vibrated while the pain radiated through his thigh. A trickle of blood darkened his jeans and slowly grew from a spot to a circle, and pain throbbed up and down his leg like cars on a track. “No, I can see you’re serious.”
Seth hunkered down in front of Micah, fiddling with the screwdriver, spinning it in his hands. He licked his lips, and Micah heard a tongue stud clink against Seth’s teeth. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
Micah took in a deep breath. The true story went like this: Micah met some girl at the grocery store. Her name was Allison. Allison was adorable in that misfit/hipster kind of way, with her shabby chic clothes and sculpted hair. Eyelashes a mile long. They bonded while standing in a long checkout line because she rolled her eyes at the cover of a trashy magazine with an exposé describing one celebrity cheating on her husband with another celebrity. Micah and Allison discussed the trappings of fame, and he liked the way she wrinkled her nose while she was thinking. He got her phone number. Later, he called her, and they went out on a couple of dates, which was a bad idea for several reasons. One of them was that Micah was only four months sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, and dating early in recovery is generally frowned upon. Another reason was that Allison was a drug mule for some dangerous organization, and she usually kept a few bricks of cocaine near her at all times. Micah didn’t know this second fact, of course. He’d been too dumbfounded by the prospect of making a real, human connection, something he hadn’t done in years. Those initial dates led to sleepovers, and one evening last week, some cops decided to raid her house in the middle of the night. Allison flushed all of the cocaine, barely in time. Micah slipped out the back window before they found him because he had a dicey history with cops. To prevent making his present and future dicey, he avoided police contact like bee stings. But then it started going around certain circles that Allison’s dealer was going to execute her for losing such a ginormous amount of cocaine, so Micah told some key people that he was the one who had flushed it. He didn’t want to see cute hipster Allison take a bullet in the back of the head.
And that’s how Micah found himself in Seth’s garage, with a screwdriver hole in his thigh.
“I’m waiting,” Seth said.
Micah shrugged. “Cops came. I dumped it like a teenager caught masturbating. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
Seth sighed as he dropped the screwdriver on the workbench and picked up a hammer. “I think you’re full of shit. I’ve been straight up with you, and you can’t do the same for me, so now we’re moving on to stage two.”
“I’ll save you some time. There’s not anything else to tell. You can cut on me and jab me with more of your Home Depot collection, but it’s not going to change my story.”
Micah glanced at the spreading circle of blood on his jeans. He didn’t think he would bleed out anytime soon, but he needed to close up that wound somehow within a few minutes. There had to be a way to hurry this along.
“Allison has always been a good runner,” Seth said. “Getting mixed up with you is a mistake that doesn’t make any sense. You, Micah Reed, are something of a mystery. It was hard to dig up info on you. Why is that?”
Micah made sure that Seth’s eyes were on his face so he could test the extension cords binding his legs. They were a little loose, so he started working his feet back and forth. “I don’t know. I don’t live on the internet like most people, I guess.”
Seth held the hammer above Micah’s head and gave it a couple of test taps. Micah held firm.
Seth frowned. “So maybe dissecting you into little pieces won’t make you tell me what I want to know. So how about this? I’ll go to where you work for that bounty hunter Mueller…”
Micah’s ears perked up at the mention of his boss and AA sponsor Frank. He tried to seem disinterested, but the fact that Seth could find this out about him was a problem.
“…And I’ll smash up his office, then get my boys to string up Mueller and bleed him like a pig. Would that help you remember where my cocaine is?”
Seemed Micah now had a choice of either sacrificing Frank, or giving up Allison. Frank could take care of himself, but Micah didn’t want to involve him in something so dumb.
Seth seemed to be growing impatient with Micah’s silent treatment, so he raised his weapon. As he was about to bring it down, Micah burst from the chair and wrapped his bound hands around the hammer, just above Seth’s. He used all of his inertia to push the butt of the hammer at Seth’s face, which smashed his nose and drove him back into the wall as tools clattered to the ground around them.
Micah kicked off the extension cords around his feet but his hands were too tightly bound to free them right now. Instead, he set his sights on a door leading out of the garage into a backyard, and got a grip on the doorknob as Seth lurched to his feet.
As Micah threw open the door and rushed for the yard’s back fence, Seth appeared in the doorway. “Run, you piece of shit!” Seth said. “If I catch you, I’ll kill your whole family!”
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