The Cage Read Online Free Page A

balls.
    “To mask the sound,” Carlos answered. “That way, nobody hears him. All they hear is the televisions and shit.”
    “If he was worried about noise,” Jeff said, “then he wouldn’t have shot Alan and Bill.” Jeff couldn’t bring himself to refer to his dead boss by the man’s nickname. Calling him Bumble now seemed wrong somehow. “That fucking shotgun was a lot louder than anything else in this store. And besides, who’s going to hear him, anyway? The parking lot is empty, except for our cars.”
    “Shit,” Clint muttered. “We’re all alone in here. I mean, nobody is gonna notice I’m missing, except for my dog. I don’t get my kids until next weekend.”
    “I told my wife that me and you were going out after work,” Roy replied. “So she won’t miss me until after midnight. What about the rest of you?”
    “I was leaving my girlfriend a message on her voicemail,” Scott said, “right before he came in. She’s expecting me later tonight. I was going to take her out for her birthday.”
    “Okay, that’s good!” Roy’s expression grew excited. “What time is she expecting you?”
    “Not until eleven. She had to work late at the hospital. We were going to hit Fat Daddy’s. Last call isn’t until one.”
    “Shit. Eleven o’clock. That’s two hours from now.” Roy turned to Carlos, Jared and Jeff. “What about you guys?”
    Carlos shrugged. “I got nobody, man. My girl moved out three months ago. Been living alone ever since. Nobody’s expecting me.”
    Jared nodded. “Me neither.”
    Jeff just shook his head.
    “Well,” Roy’s eager expression turned to defeat, “then that’s that, I guess. We’re screwed.”
    The cacophony from the store grew even louder. Jeff listened to competing noise. Subwoofers rumbled with explosions from The Dark Knight . Surround sound systems blasted a battle scene from Independence Day (while dated, the movie still provided an outstanding display of home theatre’s full potential). CNN’s Campbell Brown read the news simultaneously from twenty different televisions. Circle of Fear, Vertigo Sun, Lupara, Fergie, and Redman competed for stereo supremacy in the store’s audio section. The noise reached a confusing, maddening level. Then the warehouse door opened and the sounds grew even louder, blasting into the room with enough force to make Jeff wince.
    The intruder strolled up to the cage and tapped on the wire. Jeff noticed that he no longer had the shotgun or the machete, and assumed that he’d left the weapons lying somewhere in the store. The handguns were still holstered at the killer’s sides.
    “You’re on satellite dish here?”
    Jeff had to strain to hear him over the crush of sound. When none of them answered him, the man un-holstered his pistol and raised it to chest level. He tapped the barrel against the cage.
    “Answer me, or I’ll shoot one of you in the gut or the knee. Doesn’t matter to me, and it takes a very long time to die from such a wound. Time enough for me to finish.”
    “Yes,” Carlos said, raising his voice to be heard over the noise. “We’re on satellite dish. We sell them, and having the televisions hooked to it makes it easier to demonstrate. And some of the televisions have DVD and Blu-ray players hooked up to them, too.”
    “And the audio section? Is that satellite radio?”
    Carlos nodded. “That, along with iPods and compact discs.”
    “What about Wi-fi? Do you have that here?”
    “No,” Carlos said. “The bookstore down the street has it, but it doesn’t reach this far.”
    With his free hands, the man pulled the keys from his pocket.
    “What’s your name?”
    “C-Carlos…”
    “Okay, Carlos. I want you to show me. The rest of you stand back against the wall until Carlos leaves.”
    His eyes didn’t stray from them as he unlocked the cage and opened the door with one hand. He kept the handgun trained on them with his other hand.
    “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    Carlos