Book Six, Chapter 58: Patio Furniture

On-Screen

“You should have paid the ransom,” Emmett said. “You didn’t even need that money. You had a meal ticket to last a lifetime,” he said, looking over at me as I abandoned my hiding spot. “Now I’m starting to suspect that your secret might be a little more involved than a hidden identity.”

They stared each other down intensely.

“How are you alive?” Daphne asked. She was sure to seem intrigued, but she tried to hide her fear as best she could, even with her Moxie leeched away.

Now they had to reenact their meet-and-greet in-character.

“It doesn’t matter,” Emmett said. “Suffice to say, you may have the stomach to kill another person, but you don’t have the wisdom to make sure they’re dead.”

There was plenty of footage that I saw on the Dailies to explain the survival of the blackmailers. The script wouldn’t call for a full explanation here. The audience would already know the answer.

“I was just defending myself,” Daphne said, putting on a mocking tone like she were some sort of victim.

Emmett nodded, laughing at her performance.

“We’re pretty good at that, too,” he said. He breathed deeply and pursed his lips, like he regretted what he was about to do. “Go take care of the witnesses,” he said.

It wasn’t clear who he was talking to, but only one of his gang listened. Yes, our window to team up with the blackmailers had long passed.

It was Ed who came after me, of course. It had to be Ed. He was six foot five at least, with enough Grit to survive an apparent drowning and enough Mettle to toss a slot machine out of his way.

I’d had worse odds.

My only shot at beating him in a fist fight would be to dust off my one and only Keepsake, an ashtray with the enemy trope Desperation attached, which would allow me to convert my Moxie and Savvy into combat stats.

It was a one-time use, and I had saved it ever since Permanent Vacancy.

I would certainly have considered using it if only I had been able to find my hoodie, which had been lost to me for the entire storyline. I only just realized that its disappearance wasn’t Carousel’s doing. It probably had something to do with my duplicitous wife.

Ed walked slowly. He didn’t need to run.

He was a pretty dangerous guy.

But he wasn’t the most dangerous thing on the roof.

“Riley!” Daphne screamed, feigning concern and doing a pretty good job of it as the other three blackmailers closed in on her.

“Riley!” Kimberly also cried out, almost at the same time, but hers was much more genuine. She ran across the roof toward me and was between me and Ed before he got close.

The wind and the rain were back now that the dialogue was less important. The gales were so strong that I felt that if I jumped in the air, I would get blown off the building.

That was what I was counting on.

“Stay away,” Kimberly said, brandishing the axe, posting up between me and Ed as he moved forward.

She was too far away, a little off her mark. It was okay. Funny enough, when we had planned this, it was back when we thought the blackmailers were the only enemies.

Kimberly swung her axe, hoping that it might slow him down, but all he did was smile and walk forward without a concern in the world.

“I mean it,” Kimberly said. She took another swing, and it almost came close enough to him to draw blood, but not quite. It even cut his jacket, but those were maroon anyway, so if it drew blood, I wasn’t sure.

Kimberly backed toward me as Ed advanced.

I willed her not to get too close.

She went in for one more strike, but Ed wasn’t even the slightest bit afraid. He grabbed the axe from her, and they struggled for a moment, but even with all of her Mettle from her scrunchy trope, he yanked the axe from her.

She turned tail and ran toward me.

Ed still didn’t run at all. He didn’t feel the need to run, and I was thankful for that. I needed Kimberly to get out of the way.

The patio furniture to my left was making all kinds of noise. Even though it was stacked together tightly, the furniture rattled and raged against their restraints as the wind blew.

They were nice pieces, but at the end of the day, most of the set was made of plastic or wood, the kind of things that could catch the wind really easily. They rattled against the chains and ropes that bound them, including one large chain net that was tied over everything. Other individual ropes were tied to each piece of furniture.

They weren’t going anywhere.

Not without help.

I knew that Carousel had captured footage of the patio furniture flailing in the wind all night long. I hadn’t used the Insert Shot on it. I was just relying on the fact that a few shots of the furniture would be included with Kimberly’s Contract Negotiations trope, and as I fast-forwarded through the Dailies earlier, I had seen some.

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The truth was, I didn’t need a lot of narrative weight for what I had planned.

Because, as dangerous as Ed was, there wasn’t much in a movie that was more dangerous than what I had planned.

I turned to my left and quickly untied an entire stack of beach umbrellas. I had to untie the main chain net holding the furniture in place to do it. I thought I was going to have to start grabbing them and throwing them out, which would have been clumsy and awkward, but there was no need. The wind picked up on them immediately.

The umbrellas and most of the patio furniture started to blow against their restraints after I had weakened them, and suddenly they were no longer neatly stacked on the roof, but instead were rendered almost airborne as they were blown end over end across the roof.

The tables and chairs tumbled, and many of them ended up hanging off the side of the building by whatever chains or ropes were attached to them.

The furniture was easy enough to dodge, at least for Daphne and three of the blackmailers. Most of it didn’t even get that far.

But there was one blackmailer who couldn’t dodge a damn thing. We weren’t in a chase scene, so the trope that would fill the gap in his Hustle wasn’t active.

He tried bashing a table or two out of the way as they rolled toward him, and he was successful at it.

Just as I had planned, the unfurled beach umbrellas were his real challenge. They were designed in such a way that they picked up a lot of energy from the wind, and they were moving quickly, tumbling end over end, their long metal poles suddenly becoming quite the hazard.

The cook had to drop to the deck to dodge one of the rogue umbrellas.