64

THE MEN SHOVED ALLIE INTO A METAL CHAIR THAT CHILLED HER WET SKIN through her clothes. They tied her hands behind her. Then they bound her ankles to the legs of the chair. They worked silently and efficiently, as if they’d done this a dozen times before. Maybe they had.

She was in a machine shop—or at least she hoped that’s what it was. Drills, saws, and other tools hung from the walls or sat on a well-used work table in front of her. Three assault rifles and a box of bullets stood in a corner by the door. Allie forced herself not to wonder why they were there. Naked fluorescent bulbs buzzed overhead, bathing the room in an unnatural white light. The floor was gray concrete, marred by dark splotches around the chair and table.

Ed and Mitch were there too. They sat against the wall with their hands and feet duct taped together. Guards stood on either side of them.

The men who had brought her in left and a muscular, heavily tattooed man wearing a ski mask stepped forward out of the shadows. He had plastic gloves on his hands and was playing with a pair of pliers. He grinned and his teeth glinted. “Good evening,” he said in heavily accented English. “It has been long time since I had opportunity to entertain a lady.”

He stroked her hair and slipped his hand down her neck to her shoulder. His hand was cold and strong. She shuddered and shrank away as far as she could.

He held up the pliers. “Maybe we do this easy way.” His fingers traced her collarbone, then stopped. He held up the pliers and clicked them together. “Or maybe we do it hard way.” He chuckled in her ear and she could feel his hot breath. “Or maybe we do both. What you think?”

She wished she could die right then and get it over with. But she couldn’t. All she could do was take whatever this animal wanted to do to her until he killed her. Knowing that gave her a sudden reckless defiance.

She turned and spat, hitting him right in the left eye.

He jerked his head back and shouted in a foreign language. Then he backhanded her so hard that the chair fell over. Her skull crashed into the concrete floor and she saw black spots. Her head rang like the inside of a bell and the room swam.

“Hey, don’t you want to know what I think?” Ed’s voice called out, cutting through the fog in her mind. “I think you’d scream like a little girl if I ever got hold of you.”

The masked man roared with laughter. “Your turn comes, brave boy. Now you watch. Maybe you not so brave when you sit in chair.”

He bent over Allie and grabbed her shirt.

A staccato male voice spoke from somewhere nearby, issuing what sounded like a command, though she didn’t understand the language.

Her tormenter turned his head and answered over his shoulder.

Another peremptory statement from the unseen speaker.

The torturer grunted. Then he reluctantly released Allie’s shirt and picked up the chair and her, setting them upright as easily as if the seat had been empty.

He walked over to the table and Allie got a look at the man whose voice she had heard. The second man was Asian, in his mid-thirties, and had sharp features made sharper by a look of disapproval.

The man in the ski mask returned carrying a syringe. He grabbed Allie’s arm and jabbed the needle into a blood vessel inside her elbow. It hurt and a drop of blood ran down her arm after he pulled the needle out, but the pain was distant and somehow disconnected from her, as if she was remembering it.

Within seconds, she felt the drug. Her brain, already dulled by blows from the torturer’s fist and the floor, lost focus. Her thoughts wandered away from each other and she could not gather them back. She wished Connor would rescue her, but he hated her. She wished her father were there, then remembered he was dead. She was so alone. Her chin dropped down to her chest and she nearly started crying.

“Allison Whitman, why did you come here?” asked an authoritative voice.

She felt an instant urge to answer, and the words spilled out of her before she knew it. “To see what was going on, what you were doing.”

“What did you think was going on?”

“I didn’t know. That’s why I came.”

“Who sent you?”

“No one.”

“Did Devil to Pay, Inc. send you?”

Warning bells went off and she knew she needed to be careful, but she couldn’t quite remember how or why. She looked down and said nothing.

She heard a sigh, followed by footsteps. A hand grabbed her chin and jerked her head up, making the room spin. The second man’s face filled her vision. He stared down at her with hard black eyes. “Allison, we know about Connor Norman and Clayton Investigations. Did they send you?”

She clenched her jaws together and said nothing. She knew that answering his questions would mean betraying Connor, and she would not do that. Not again.

Without the slightest change in his expression, he slapped her across the mouth. “Did they send you?”

She tasted blood, but kept her mouth shut. Looking into his eyes, she knew all at once that he couldn’t make her talk. Neither could his friend in the mask. They might be able to make her scream, but that was all. Something had clicked into place deep inside her, something strong.

She might die in that chair, but she would not break. She knew it. She smiled, and he knew it too.

He let go of her chin and walked away. He nodded toward the masked man as he went. The two men talked in a foreign language again. Then the second man walked out.

As soon as he was gone, the torturer looked at her with a gleam in his masked eyes and started walking toward her. He flexed his arms, making his tattoos come alive.

As he approached her, she heard a buzzing sound. It started faintly, like a fly trapped in her skull. But it grew louder fast, and in a few seconds it was an overwhelming roar. At first, she thought the noise was inside her head, but everyone in the room suddenly started shouting. The tattooed torturer seemed to forget about her. He grabbed a rifle and dashed outside.

The roar rose to teeth-rattling volume. Then a high jack-hammer sound started. Something exploded outside, and the shock wave buckled in one of the walls and peeled the roof back like the lid of a can of sardines.

Allie looked up just as something flashed across the night sky. It looked like a winged shark made of polished steel.

Then the wall collapsed and the building came down on top of her.