Legally Binding, Ch. 2

I wasn’t all that surprised when the next day 4:45 came and went without a word from Nadine. In fact, I’d anticipated that possibility: I knew that during our lunchtime encounter she had been taken very far very quickly, and that afterwards her first reaction might be denial. Which is why I was now standing in the parking lot outside her office building. I let a few extra minutes go by then entered.

It was only a five-story building, not far from the restaurant where we’d eaten the day before, and already mostly deserted this late on a Friday afternoon. I checked the directory on the wall for her office number. As I climbed the stairs to the third floor a few people in business attire hurried past me in the opposite direction, eager to get their weekends started, but all was silence when I reached her floor…

Except for a raised and somewhat strident voice coming from behind her office door. I listened for a moment to make sure she was talking on the phone, then turned the doorknob and entered.

It was a smallish office, almost severe in its orderliness and its lack of plants or decoration. One major compensation was the large picture window looking out over the town square with its tiny park and old-fashioned white gazebo/bandstand in the center. The blinds were half-lowered to soften the glare of the late-afternoon sunshine, giving the office a somewhat twilit feel.

Nadine’s desk was at right angles to the door, facing the window, and she was at that moment sitting with her back to me, looking at the computer to her right as she continued her diatribe: “…and you tell that lazy bastard that if I don’t have all the paperwork in front of me by noon on Monday he can forget about the closing until next month.” She tapped a few keys on her computer. “That’s right, I still need the inspection report, the appraisal, the…”

I closed the door behind me just a little more loudly than absolutely necessary. She turned to see who it was and her voice suddenly dried up for a moment. I waited to see how she would react. Her expression was frozen. But then she apparently decided to continue pretending that nothing had happened, giving me a fake-friendly smile and holding up one finger to indicate she would be right with me, before turning back to her computer and continuing her phone conversation.

Which was fine with me. Her reaction had confirmed my guess and the way she was dressed only emphasized it. Today she looked as though she was running for congress as a Republican: hyper-conservative navy blue suit in a heavy, uncomfortable looking fabric, with the skirt coming down to cover her knees; severe, plain white blouse, buttoned up to the neck; hair clipped into a bun at the back of her head and glasses settled firmly on her nose.

I made my way over and sat in one of the client chairs facing her desk, and was amused to see Nadine notice me out of the corner of her eye, shift the phone receiver to the shoulder closest to me and turn even further away towards her computer. Which is why she didn’t see the plastic shopping bag I’d placed on the floor beside me…or what I took out of it and what I was doing.

She had no idea that anything was amiss until I stood, leaned over her desk, took the phone receiver from her shoulder and placed it back in its cradle. She turned to me, startled, then angry: “Hey, I wasn’t fin-”

Which was when I seized her wrists and jerked her out of her chair, pulling her sprawling across her desk and sending papers flying everywhere. She was so shocked that she barely managed an “Oh!” before the edge of her desk knocked the wind out of her. But she was still quite conscious of the fact that I was slipping loops of rope over her wrists and tightening them, and she was able to see that the other ends of the rope were knotted around the front legs of her desk. Her head was hanging over the edge, her arms spread wide and her fingertips a few inches from the rug.

If she’d been thinking fast she might have been able to crawl over the desk and get herself loose somehow but between her shock and her inability to breathe, the moment quickly passed. She did manage to raise her head slightly and gasp, “Wh… Wha…?”

I seized the clipped bun of her hair and pulled her head up to where she could see my face.