3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) by Nick Pirog

Hey guys.”
    They don't respond.
    They go to work on the fence and I wait
until all three near the top.
    “ Sorry about
this.”
    I Taser the chain link fence.
    Three screams, then three thuds as they fall
to the green court floor.
    I turn and run.
    “ Don't move.”
    I'm staring into the barrel of a
gun. 
    “ Drop the
Taser.”
    I drop the stun gun.
    “ You guys okay?” he calls
to his buddies.
    “ That motherfucker
electrocuted us.”
    He picks up the stun gun from the ground and
looks at it. Then he pushes it into my chest and I scream.
     
    …
     
    I'm in a car.
    “ You okay?”
    My vision is blurred. “What time is it?” I
ask.
    “ 3:35 a.m.”
    I squint at the voice.
    “ Don't worry, we'll get
you back before your 4 a.m. curfew.”
    I recognize the voice, but the face still
swims in front of me.
    “ Henry Bins,” he says. It
isn't a question.
    My vision is starting to clear. I'm in the
back seat of a car. My chest is burning.
    I try to speak, but only a cough comes
out.
    He hands me a Perrier and I take a small
sip. A chill courses down my arms. 
    “ Mr.
President.”
     
    …
     
    The car light above illuminates Connor
Sullivan's face in roughly the same shadow as the streetlamp had
two weeks earlier. He is wearing jeans and a University of Dayton
sweatshirt. He could be any other guy out for a drive. But he's
not. He's the President of the United States.
    “ Sorry about my guys,” he
says. “No harm was supposed to come to you.”
    I bring my hand to my chest where I was
shocked and know a ruby red burn is in the making.
    I nod.
    “ I know time is of the
essence, that for you time is always of the essence, so I will get
right to the point. I knew the moment I saw your face in that
window that you were going to pose a problem.”
    We lock eyes, relive that moment in
time. 
    I think about his words, that you were
going to pose a problem. Callie Freig had also posed a
problem. And she was dead. So why wasn't I?
    “ I didn't kill that girl,”
he says.
    I would have been more apt to believe if he
told me he could turn off gravity. That if I dropped the Perrier in
my hand, it would float to the ceiling.
    I scoff.
    “ I don't blame you,” he
says with a shake of his head. “If I had the information you had, I
would have no doubt that I killed that woman. Let's see, you heard
a scream, you saw me leaving, you found my cell phone, and you made
the connection between me and Jessica Renoix.”
    I try not to blink. I wonder if my house is
bugged. Or if they know everything I've searched on the Internet.
Or both.
    He takes a breath and says, “I met Jessica
six years ago when she volunteered for my reelection campaign.” He
whistles. “Still remember the day she walked in. Every male from
eighteen to fifty literally stopped and stared. She had that
effect.”
    “ How long did it take for
you to start sleeping with her?”
    “ Not long. A month into
the campaign, the lot of us were staying at a hotel. She
snuck into my room and well, I didn't turn her down.”
    “ I didn't take you for
much of a philanderer.” In fact, he wreaked of the consummate
family man.
    “ Nothing I'm proud of,” he
offers with an upward glance. I'm not sure if he was repenting or
checking the roof of the car for tears.
    “ And you've kept this up
for six years?”
    “ No. It only happened the
one time.”
    I am confused and must look it.
    “ She videotaped it. Came
to me the next day and demanded a hundred thousand
dollars.”
    My eyebrows rise.
    “ I paid her. She
disappeared the next day.”
    “ You paid her?”
    “ If that video got out I
would have been ruined. Paid her a hundred thousand dollars cash
and she took it with a smile and disappeared. Didn't hear a peep
from her for six years. Then I got an email a month ago. She was
back and she wanted more money.”
    “ Did you give it to
her?”
    “ I did. Two weeks
ago.”
    I study his face. I find myself believing
him. But that he was being blackmailed