Kathy Intercepted, Part 1 By Merz Kathy joins Julie to carry on with a difficult day This story takes up immediately after the end of Kathy Interrupted. Its roots, however, reach back to the 2003 series, Kathy's Christmas Carol. Go back if you like this one, but this and the next one stand alone. *************** About the time Betty and I had been heading for the showers that morning, her sister in law, Julie Hunt, was reaching for the ringing phone. Perhaps because she was so deeply relaxed lounging in bed with one powerful arm holding her husband against her chest while the other held the phone, perhaps because her voice is naturally soft and throaty, the caller assumed he was talking to her husband Joseph. Julie realized the misunderstanding and could think of no reason to correct and many to encourage it. She signaled to Joseph to listen to as much as he could without making a sound or interfering with her discussion and continued on until the caller rang off. "Jesus Christ! We need to get the police on this right away!" Dr. Joseph Hunt exclaimed as his wife shrugged him off and began pulling on her clothes. "No, that isn't who you need." Julie spoke softly but with such intensity that the doctor seemed to wilt in surprise. She continued, "You know that only a woman can do this job. Police officers all look like police. Even the undercover ones look like police, or else they've gotten away from being police and are mostly just good as spies if they met with these ass holes. You know that I was a soldier and some soldiers are trained to look less dangerous than they are, and then suddenly destroy the enemy when they get close enough. But we don't have any soldiers at all, and we sure couldn't get any like that in time." "Well then who do you think we do need? We can't just sit here." He tried to burn through her calm intensity so he could resist the strong resolve he sensed driving her. "So you were a soldier, are you suggesting you go in?" "Not just me, I wasn't that kind of soldier. Besides, now I'm a firefighter and not a soldier at all. Maybe if I got them and thought about them hurting Ernie I would destroy them, but then I'd be so mad I'd make mistakes so I wouldn't be good at it. You know the woman we need sells dresses, even if you can't make yourself even say her name. She could do it and not make any mistakes. You're just afraid that she might ask a blind woman to help her, but she's the one who could do it, and you can't think about risking your sister for that. I'll have to be there. Maybe we can pass one of us off as Betty." I wasn't present and just have to imagine the doctor's red face turning even more red as he heard advice he believed despite his every instinct and prejudice. When I heard of this conversation my respect for Julie soared. Of course she would have to be there. But she was dragging me into it specifically to have a hand on my collar until she was close enough and then to conveniently let slip the leash so I could deal with the people who hurt and kidnapped her brother in law. She knows me better than I had imagined. And that was how I landed in this mess in the first place. My name is Kathy Davidson and as Julie says, I sell dresses in addition to skirts, sweaters, blouses and pants. I sell to a female clientele who in earlier times would have paraded in the pelts of lions and wolves they had challenged and killed. Now we live in more civilized times so they seek my help in dressing more subtly, unless it is time to reveal themselves as the powerful predators they are. I sell clothes suitable for that as well. I enjoy my work, and I'm good at it. I enjoy the company of the blind woman Julie mentioned, my dearest friend Betty, and was sitting down for breakfast with her before going to my shop for a happy day of selling when my morning took its first sudden twist and tumble. She is foremost among the predators I cater to, but the most adept at concealing that part of her nature. Barely seated at the desk in my shop I glanced at my desk clock in surprise when Carmen announced, "Ms Hunt is here to see you. Ms Julie Hunt." It was an hour before opening time, so she must have been waiting outside when Carmen first looked out the front window. "We got no time for chit chat." The short, powerful woman hustled into my office and planted herself in the chair across from me. "I just got off a plane to pick you up so the two of us can do some work together. Joseph and I got a call this morning that his brother Ernie was kidnapped and Joseph is supposed to bail him out. Just listen. They said he should pull together every credit card we have, the title to our car, and all the financial info they'd need to clean out our accounts, and then get here on the first plane. They had already reserved a seat for him but he had to pay for it. They said we should leave our back door unlocked and I was supposed to make myself scarce, I guess so somebody could clean out our house while we - well, they think Joseph - are here handing over the ransom. And Joseph is supposed to pick up Betty and bring her along to meet with them." She rose and paced back in forth in front of my desk a few times. From under her jacket she pulled a thick commercial envelope. "Here's the loot. I'm meeting them, not Joseph, and I'm bringing you instead of Betty." She fished in the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a folded bit of paper that she offered to me. "This is a check for five thousand. You and me, we have to be sure this is business and not something personal between us, because we can't get into that again, me being married to Joey - Joseph - and all. Business is lousy all over. You can use the dough. We don't have any time to talk it over or anything. If you're coming, you gotta come right now." In the years I had known her I had never heard such a cascade of words from Julie. "Let me see if I have this straight. Whoever these people are they have some contact with your town, but wanted you to fly here. That would be as effective as their searching you for weapons on this end since you couldn't bring much through airport security. I doubt Ernie would be involved in anything criminal so he might just have been picked up as a convenient hostage to put things in motion. Why they would want Betty brought along I can't imagine, but she may have received a similar demand for ransom. I happen to know she left her apartment about five this morning so she may have missed a call at home. What did your husband have to say about this plan?" "Didn't like it, but so what? I told him he could suck my dick if he didn't have any better ideas. You have a gun or anything here we can bring along?" "Your what? This must have come as a surprise request for him." "Sorry. Hanging around the firehouse, my mouth is getting pretty filthy. The guys are always saying that, and I picked it up as a way to shut them up when they start ragging on me." "About guns, I wouldn't want such things around. And I don't keep an arsenal with me without reason." I dug into my shoulder bag to see what might be rattling around. "Would you like my brass knuckles? I don't think your fingers are too thick for these. And this lock blade knife can clip to your waistband where you can get at it in a hurry. I'll keep the blackjack, and I'm afraid that's about the assortment on hand." I picked up the desk phone and punched the button that rang the sales desk. "Carmen, would you please bring me the parer from the lunch room and the beret from the Title Nine mannequin display? Thanks, love." From my desk drawer I took a few paper clips and used a folding pliers to do some crimping before concealing them at my hem inside my belt, and I took out a four-inch hatpin. Long enough for the purpose if one had the time for an accurate jab, and a useful distraction even if it missed the heart, brain or eye. Carmen came in to deliver the little knife with a four-inch blade that I slipped up the sleeve of my jacket, and the requested hat. I attached a hastily fashioned cockade to it with the pin and stood up. "Ready when you are, I suppose. As I understand it, you want me to go with you and fetch Ernie Hunt out of some danger from someplace in town. Fill me in as you drive." I fitted the hat on my head as I started toward the door. "Carmen, would please process this in our 86 file?" I handed over the check and we were off. We hadn't reached the front door when Joey Hunt raced in, Betty following with an unnecessary hand on his arm since she knows the layout of my shop well enough to have acted the guide instead of the follower. While his wife evidently keeps a pair of sweat pants and clogs near the bed, Joseph Hunt had hurriedly pulled on blue jeans and loafers without socks. While Julie's powerful arms were concealed from my admiring eyes, his arms and wiry physique were pretty much out for inspection in a t-shirt. I have never had much of a taste for wiry. "Are you going to do this?" Betty demanded. "Joseph says it sounds dangerous for you and for Ernie, too. Do you think you can get away tricking these people this way, whoever they are?" "Apparently somebody needs to collect your other brother, and I am willing to try." Betty took a deep breath and then held up her right hand, palm out. I placed my left hand on it as on a mirror, overtopping her fingertips but the edges of her strong fingers making an outline around my more slender ones. "Then bring him back safe, with as little violence as possible. Remember, I know what it's like to have blood on my hands," she murmured. "This might be another chance to atone." Blood on her hands? What the hell did she know about blood? In her whole life she had killed one man. I have a recurring dream where I'm standing in a lake of blood that laps up to my chin. I avoid drowning because I am standing on the corpses I have stacked up over the years. It never seems quite a nightmare, but what I did from that point on might spill enough more to put me under. "Betty, she knows about blood. She knows all about blood and we're asking her to go where she could find more. It won't be good for her." Julie speaks softly, and it had taken me a while to learn to detect the emotions that swim below the surface of her words. Of those who heard those three simple sentences, only Betty and I were aware she gave them the weight of the most tragic aria any operatic diva has ever sung. I fought the urge to sing a few lines from one I had been practicing alone in my loft. If I had neighbors they would likely have complained at my early efforts but it was coming along nicely. Instead of singing I fought for an even, dispassionate tone. "Joseph, I suggest you and Betty go to my loft. She has a key and can tell you how to find it. You'll both be safe there if you don't trip over anything. You had best open some pathways between major landmarks so Betty can move around. She knows where everything is." The rental car selected by the kidnappers was an economy model so we two women felt cramped, our shoulders nearly touching. Julie's thick hands could have torn off the steering wheel she clutched. Together we could have torn apart the light metal enclosing us. The shared knowledge went unspoken as we concentrated on fitting into the image of errand girls rather than predators. Driving across town I got more background: while Joseph drove them to the airport Julie, hunched down out of sight, had used the CB radio in her car to contact a colleague, ask him to reserve a rental car identical to whatever they - or her husband in the minds of the kidnappers - were to pick up at the airport at this end, and then have somebody watch their house in case anyone did show up to rob them while they were on this errand. It took more negotiating to get the second commuter plane ticket for the flight, but they had made the connections on the timetable laid out for them. Then Julie raced to my shop, trying to reach me on her mobile phone as she drove, while her husband tracked down Betty at her office in order to get her to a place of safety. The address Julie had collected lay a couple of miles from my loft in an even more rundown industrial district. She parked and we approached the small, peeling concrete block building that matched our destination. She displayed as little surprise as I felt when two men stepped out of the doorway, looked carefully up and down the empty street, and then pulled pistols from behind their backs and gestured us inside. The squat building was divided into two rooms, with half a dozen more armed men in the room that we entered. Through the doorway a dim figure stood in the shadows, observing. Silent figures stepped up behind us and stripped our jackets off and then took away the knife at Julie's waist. A nod from the shadowed figure prompted one of our captors to take off my beret, study it's long pin closely, and then toss it aside as well. So much for arming ourselves against surprises. "I don't see Betty Hunt." A breathy voice came from the shadows. "I don't see her brother." "I'm the one you guys talked to. I came like I said, not Joseph. Maybe you need to listen better." Julie's voice was tense, her words clipped. My heart skipped when she tensed and then shook out her bulging upper arms and shoulders. "You asked for the key to getting money for Ernie. Come and get it." She pulled the thick sealed envelope from the waistband at the rear of her pants and held it out. She was, of course, keying herself up for the explosion she had seen coming from the outset. When we two had embarked she seemed determined to let me take the lead but her attitude now clearly indicated she had prepared herself to carry on with or without me. In her state of controlled excitement she communicated quite clearly to anyone who knew her that she was a bomb set with a hair trigger detonator. It would take very little to ignite as much mayhem among our escorts as their weaponry allowed until she inevitably fell. She eased off her clogs and I noted how strong even her bare feet looked as they gripped the floor. "We'll take that, but I only got one of the bitches I was after. The other will follow along now we got this one." Our observer drew a long labored breath, increasing the tension in the room. He gestured and one of the gunmen stepped toward Julie to accept her payment. In my mind I saw in detail how the next few moments would unwind. Julie's power and skill would cause serious damage to those standing nearest her, joints giving way to kicks, bones and throats collapsing from her blows. But they weren't grouped very tightly around her and weren't the type to face her physical challenge in anything like a fair manner. So someone would get in a lucky shot and the end would come quickly for her, despite her best effort. If I dove into the melee I might increase the carnage on the other side, but with the same ending. My intervention had to lead in a different direction. All these little weapons waving about had to be made to focus on me rather than Julie. "I don't know that I'd count your birds too quickly. Perhaps you'll end up with only one in the bag. The one you evidently recognize." I took a step further into the room, leaving Julie with a looser guard as the thugs shifted position and stretched their circle around us. I prayed that Julie would gather my meaning and seek an exit rather than a dramatic finale. "I fancy I'm worth two of the little runt if it came to it. I mean just watch this." Lacking any better idea I jumped a couple of feet into the air and landed with a loud clatter of wooden heels plus a fine soprano shriek, then immediately froze like a statue, hoping my antic would draw attention rather than bullets. The effect met my every desire. All eyes were on me for just the instant it took Julie to smash her hard fist into the ribs of the man who had taken the envelope, and then kick the man behind her flat onto his back before diving cleanly through the filthy window of the place and back into the street. "Fucking idiots!" That scream was followed two gasping seconds later with. "Willis, d'Angelo - get her back dead or alive." Gasp, wheeze. "She means nothing so don't worry about being gentle." The named gunmen hurried out the door after Julie while the two still standing closed on me and pressed their guns to my head. "I think she broke my rib," whined the first of the fallen men to attempt rising. His companion lay still another minute fighting to catch his breath. "Shit. Bring this one, we'll put her in the tunnel now and make mincemeat of the other one when we catch her." He gasped a moment, added, "That other one doesn't matter to me anyway," then disappeared back into the gloom of his room. With two guns still held against me and rude hands clutching my arms I was propelled through the doorway. The blank far wall held another door, this one made of metal with a shiny lock above the knob. The spokesman used two keys to get it open and gestured for his assistants to bring me to the threshold. "This old complex, it has all these service tunnels underneath. You got steam pipes and electrics and everything running from one building to another. We come in one little building, nobody notices 'cause it's a little building and how much could go on in one little building. But then we go underground to all the other buildings to store stuff, sort stuff to fence, the whole nine." He paused for breath while a wan fluorescent tube struggled for life in the ceiling. "I didn't hardly think I'd be lucky enough to get you on my first try." Between sentences he huffed like a leaky steam engine. "You know what you did to me, right? I lost part of a lung, lost half my guts. I can't eat real food anymore, supposed to stay away from booze and I can't even take a crap." Wheeze, sniffle, wheeze. "Plus I hadda start all over in a new town. Hadda let all my rackets go cause if I showed up around my old places either the feds woulda been all over me," wheeze, wheeze, hawk and spit, "or some wise guy woulda plugged me and left me to rot." Huff, puff, wheeze, gurgling swallow. "I figured if I caught the Hunt bitch you wouldn't be far behind, but I got you first and so she'll go easy. Blind freak. I know she's the one who was behind it all. You're just another muscle girl like her." Hawk, spit, wheeze, sniffle. A truly charming companion for a dark warehouse date. "Either way, you're both gonna be a long time dying, begging me to finish you so you don't have to suffer like I did," long breathless inhalation. "Fat chance." I finally recognized the haggard shape as a man named Marlowe, an incompetent crook whom I had encountered but a single time. He had loomed out of Betty's past and practically begged to have someone take assertive action to prevent his causing more difficulty for Betty or anyone else. I had obliged and then put the matter right out of my mind while Betty had remained blissfully ignorant of the details of my involvement. Being reminded of his existence was quite annoying. "You tried to kill me, but just ripped my guts out. I was too tough," wheeze, wheeze. "I won't stop halfway, and when I finally finish you," gasp, sniffle, gasp, "you'll thank me for letting you die," gurgle, sniffle, spit, wheeze. "If I may correct you on two points, I never wanted to kill you. Or rather, I was completely indifferent to whether you lived or died so long as you were no longer in a position to hurt my friend. I should have thought you would be grateful that I left more of you than I took. You might consider that perspective. And second, you can't possibly imagine yourself being able to cope with Betty, you silly sod." My mind reeled with the knowledge that anyone meant to harm my dear friend and I might not be there to prevent it. I seized on his assessment of Betty as a ploy to push her safely out of his reach. "She's not only a good deal stronger and a more schooled fighter than I, she's the brains behind a hundred soldiers like me, and I'm more than you could handle before. If by some fluke you waded through that army what makes you think she would notice crushing you any more than she would swatting a fly? You'd best leave off these games before something worse happens to you." "Games? Games, you fucking bitch." He seemed to tap some hidden spring of vitality as he straightened, his blotchy face going purple. "Playing games in the dark is how you ruined my life, how you turned me into this. Killing you would be too easy. First you get to find out what it feels like to be stuck in the dark, helpless, while everything you care about goes to hell. If you get lucky maybe you'll eventually find the way out and we'll finish you off. Otherwise you'll wander down there until you rot. But your girlfriend out there and that muscle-bitch Hunt will both be long gone by then. I don't care how dangerous you say that blind cunt is, she can't scare me, she's a dead woman. Have a nice trip." A final wailing inhalation and he gestured for two of his gunmen to shove me across the threshold. Final Chapter to Come