Vivian’s Window

Carwyn walked, more like marched to his rental car. He didn’t even know what time it was. And then, without even having been aware of unlocking the car, settling into the driver’s seat or starting the ignition, he was on the road.
 He had received new directions and was headed, so he discovered after a twenty minute drive, to an old abandoned warehouse in a forgotten part of the city. He arrived about fifteen minutes early, but there were already three large men waiting for him, standing beside a dark grey Mercedes station wagon. Carwyn put his car in park, but did not shut off the engine.
 One of the men brought his hand up to his throat and made a back and forth slashing motion. Carwyn assumed that the gesture meant that he was to turn off his car, but he thought about playing dumb. All three men had guns, and Carwyn did not know where Vivian was being kept, so he decided to comply. Once the rental car’s engine was off, the silence seemed to creep into Carywn’s bones. The silence was eerie, if not downright scary.
 Now that it was quiet, one of the men yelled at Carwyn to get out of the car with his hands in the air. The man had a thick accent. Why had he thought that this was a good idea? Carwyn got out of his shitty little rental with his arms and hands raised to the heavens, almost as if he was beseechingly reaching out for some divine intervention. God wasn’t watching on this night.
 One of the men had a pistol trained on Carwyn. The other two walked quickly over to Carwyn’s car. One retrieved the two briefcases. The other leaned into the driver’s side and plucked the keys from the ignition. He placed them in his pocket. The man who had taken the briefcases out of the car walked around to Carwyn and, without saying a word, handed them both to him. Smart. If Carwyn was carrying the briefcases, he couldn’t really do anything else with his hands, couldn’t do anything stupid.  
 “Walk,” said one of the men. Carwyn started walking, with one of the men on his left side and the other on his right. The man with the gun led the way into to warehouse. Carwyn felt like a death row inmate making that long walk, his final walk, to the execution chamber. Carwyn couldn’t remember what he had eaten for dinner just a few short hours before, so it surely must not have been all that great of a last meal.
 After walking for what really did seem like a mile or two, the man with the gun stopped in front of a small table then walked around to the other side.
 “Place the money on the table.”
 Carwyn, was overtly nervous. He had no idea how he would possibly get out of this mess. He placed the briefcases on the table, then he stuck his hands in his pockets so he could feel the knives he had purchased earlier.  
 “Hands out of your pockets, now,” ordered one of the men.
 Carwyn noticed for the first time an office on the second floor. There were no windows; they had probably long ago been smashed.
 “Open the cases,” said the man with the gun.
 Carywn didn’t know what to do. If he opened the cases, that would mean sudden death. What were his alternatives, though? Fight? There were the Molotov cocktails and he had his lighter in his pocket. And he had his knives. Well, here goes nothing… he thought.
 “What are you waiting for?”
 “Nothing, sorry.”
 But the brief delay had elicited more than impatience. It had aroused suspicion.
 Carwyn could almost feel the laser sight on him and the mood in the room changed, became almost palpably violent. He looked down and sure enough there was a red dot glowing on his chest, right about where his heart was hammering behind his sternum. He couldn’t see the one wavering on his forehead –where his brain was trying to process, to think, to plan, to arrive at some miraculous idea for saving his skin.
 Carwyn knew opening the cases gave him no chance, so he had to act. Just before he reached into his pockets for his knives, Carwyn thought of something that might buy him just a whisper of an opportunity.