Blue Rubicon (17 page)

Too eager.

“Let me finish. He’d put everything on to a
thumbdrive, the one you couldn’t find in my house so you torched the place
instead. Don’t worry, it’s safe. I also had copies made along with all my
notes. They’re in a safe place and ready to be sent to anybody and everybody if
anything happens to me.”

He looked annoyed.

“Carter was an idiot,” I said, glad he
couldn’t hear my lie. “He didn’t tell anyone, once you guys knew that he was
done for. I set up a little insurance policy to take you all down.

“And about the fire, Rob. Can I call you
Rob? Thanks. All right, about the fire. You left some blood behind after I shot
you.”

“Bullshit. That sample was dealt with.”

“That one may have been, but I took my own.
CFS ran it already.”

He was getting nervous. Now for the grand
finale.

“Did you know, Rob, that the person who left
that blood behind was also responsible for a rape and murder twenty-two yea-”

I really needed to stop getting myself
knocked out.

* * *

A clock would have been nice, or a watch,
something to tell me what time it was. Rob—I figured he and I were on a first
name basis by now, even if it just infuriated him—was no longer in the room and
I was alone once more. Thoughts of escape filled my addled head but nothing was
feasible. I had no means to pick the lock on the handcuffs, there was nothing I
could use on the chair to pry them open and the chair itself, while I probably
would’ve been able to break it, wasn’t going anywhere. The sound of me breaking
the chair would have made my escape very short-lived. There was another option,
but it was something I didn’t want to think about.

Since getting out of there wasn’t an
option, I might as well see what else I could find out.

“Hello.” My voice bounced back at me from
the bare walls of a barren room. “Hello.” Louder this time, the echo
intensified. Acoustics had not been considered when they built this place.

It was a few minutes and a few more
‘hello’s later that someone came to keep me company. It was Rob again, looking
more pissed off than ever.

“You little shit,” he said, his face frozen
in pure anger. “What the fuck did you do with it?”

“With what?”

“You fucking know what. Where is the
goddamned data stick? And who else knows about this?”

I smiled an infuriating smile. “You already
know where it is. It’s in a safe place. And everyone knows, from Barack to Santa
Claus. It’s global news.”

Another strike to the face. This one I saw
coming and I had time to angle my face just enough to deflect some of the
energy.

“I sent two guys to tear apart your hotel
room. They called me from the room, said they couldn’t find anything. That was
two hours ago. They should’ve been back by now.”

“Is that worry for your flock I sense, or
for your own hide?”

“Fuck you,” he said, turning away from me.
His back was to me now, making what he said next even more sinister. “There are
ways to get you to talk, Munroe. Shall we get started?”

When he turned around he had a small Swiss
Army knife in his hand, the blade extended. It was the type often carried on
keychains, but as is always said: size doesn’t matter, it’s how you use it.

My mind was racing, thoughts of what might
happen next filling the void between my brain and my eyes. I saw the pain, the
blood, the fear and I tried to push it away. I had to be strong—with any luck
he was bluffing. He walked toward me, closing the gap in two large and
deliberate strides then reached out with both hands, the knife in his right,
straight for my throat.

I tried not to tense, to flinch, to sweat,
to change my breathing. The breathing I could control, sweating would happen
whether I wanted it to or not. His free hand took hold of my shirt collar and
he used the knife to make a small cut in the top of the fabric. He put the
knife on my lap, aware I could do nothing, and took my shirt in both hands then
tore it in a fashion that made me think of Hulk Hogan.

My chest was bare, the shirt dangling
lifelessly from my shoulders.

“What should we start with first? The
location of the data stick, or who else knows?”

“Do I get to choose?” I said, my voice
breaking only slightly.

“No.” He smiled and in that crooked
expression I saw no fear, no emotion. The sweat began to flow. “Who else
knows?”

“Can I just get the time first? I’m just
wondering how long I’ve been here for.”

He put the inch-and-a-half long blade
against my chest and dragged it slowly from near my right shoulder down toward
my sternum. The blade was sharp, thankfully, and the pain wasn’t as bad as I’d
expected. Blood trickled from the wound.

“Try again,” he said, the blood-stained
blade held in front of his face.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s see. You know, obviously.”
He brandished the knife toward me. “I know. That last guy that was in here,
before you, he knows. The one who killed Carter, knows too. I like his car.
Maybe I can buy it at auction after I seize it from him.”

This time it wasn’t a slow movement, it was
a slash. A straight line of blood dripped from the new wound that stretched
across the chest. The pain was stronger this time, the cut deeper.

“The property Sergeant, William Morris, I
think he knows. He was there when I took the warrant out of property. The one
Carter tried to get endorsed to search this place.”

Another slice, abdomen this time. I gritted
my teeth and pushed past the pain. This was not going to be an easy process. If
I didn’t talk, he’d cut me. If I talked, it kept him busy for a few seconds
before he cut me. Talking bought me time, but it might have made the torture
worse. Would he give me less if I stayed silent?

“The judge knows too. How much do you pay
him?”

Right bicep, shallow this time. The
shallowness of the cut was because of the angle he was slashing at, it had
nothing to do with him trying to be nice.

I stayed silent. Strategy number two.

The silence lasted for about thirty seconds
until he brought the knife to my chest again. “Bite your tongue all you want,
it won’t work.” He pressed the knife against the skin and glowered in my eyes.
It was my last chance, but I didn’t speak.

This one hurt the most. A deep cut from the
center of my chest, across my left pec down to my side. The blood was flowing
strong, running in vertical lines down my sweat-soaked body.

“Now, where were we?” he said, his eyes
fixed on mine.

“I think it was something about your
mother,” I said.

This time I got a punch. I could live with
that, and he wasn’t very good with his left. His fist glanced off of my cheek
bone without causing much pain.

“Sister?”

Another shot to the face, this one better
but still weaker than his right.

He looked at me once more, laser eyes
trying to bore through my skull, then he turned and walked away.

I clenched my teeth tight together,
grinding slightly to try to forget about the pain. I thought about Kat and the
kids, searching for the strength I needed to survive. He wouldn’t kill me, at
least not yet. Not until he’d heard what he wanted to hear. And if I had any
say in the matter, that wouldn’t happen.

The longer I stayed silent the longer I
lived, but the more pain I experienced. If I told him what he wanted to hear,
at least it would probably be a quick death.

A win-win situation.

He returned after only a couple of minutes,
the knife still in his hand, blood on its edge.

“That guy with the ‘Stang, the one that you
say killed Carter?”

I nodded.

“I just gave him a new order.” He looked at
me, paused for dramatic effect. “He’s off to find your wife and kids, then
he’ll bring them here.”

I smiled and laughed. The look I got back
said it all. It was a quizzical look, one that if translated into words would
have called me a sick fuck.

“Bring them, the more the merrier. And have
him pick up some chips and dip, maybe some cold ones. We can have a party.”

Unless they wanted to cross the Atlantic,
search Warsaw and drag them back kicking and screaming on an international
flight, my family was safe. In fact, they were untouchable.

He stood a few feet away, out of arm’s
reach, and stared at me once more, like he was trying to read my mind. I stared
back, unflinching, unyielding, unblinking and turned the left corner of my
mouth up, a little smirk.

He came at me fast, too fast for me to
react. His hand came down and the knife sunk deep into my left thigh, past the
blade to where the knife met the casing. I shot my right leg out but he had
already pulled back, my kick missed by at least a foot and a half.

“Fuck you. I’ll get what I want out of you.
I guarantee it.” With that he walked away once more, leaving me alone and
bleeding with a knife standing at attention from its place in my flesh.

* * *

The time continued to pass slowly, or so it
seemed. The pain had lessened but the psychological and physical stress had
taken its toll on my already weakened body. It was all I could to do stay awake
and I found myself drifting off at times. I was left alone for a while, hours I
thought, before my torturer returned.

“Rob, you’ve come back to me,” I said, the
knife still stuck in my flesh. “Or did you just forget your knife?”

“It can stay,” he said, then pointed a
Taser at me. A little red dot danced on my chest.

There was little more than a click and a
puff of confetti as the probes shot out and imbedded themselves in my chest.
The current and the pain started immediately. This wasn’t my first time—first
time being shot with it, but not the first time being Tasered. Last time was in
training, the probes taped to my shirt and the Taser fired. Five seconds of
fifty thousand volts.

The confetti was a trace, a way of
determining where the Taser had been fired from. The probes themselves fired on
an angle. A perfect shot, like this one was, put one probe in the shoulder and
the other in the lower abdomen. That way the current would travel through the
core, stimulate the nervous system—both sensory and motor—and cause severe and
complete involuntary muscle contractions.

It was painful and beyond uncomfortable.
Once again, I saw lights flashing with my eyes closed, something I’d been told
was ‘weird’ when I’d been hit with it in training. The worst pain was in my
wrists as my muscles tried to pull my arms apart. The metal dug in hard,
grinding against the bone.

Five seconds after it started, it was over.
The pain from the Taser was gone, only the pain on my wrists and from the
probes in my chest remained. Police Tasers were designed to fire for five
seconds once activated. A pull of the trigger could stop it early. A second
pull was required to start up another five-second burst.

And that’s what he did. I barely had time
to breathe before my body seized again. The pain I could bear, the muscle
contractions were uncomfortable and the pain in my wrists excruciating, but the
worst part was the sound. The Taser clicked repeatedly as it cycled, and the
sound seemed to be carried from the weapon, down the leads, through the probe
and directly into my head.

The sound was the worst part of this
torture.

Warren would only give me a few seconds to
breathe and relax before he fired again, sending the electricity back through
my body.

With each shot I saw the lights, they
flashed whether my eyes were open or closed. I was slipping, falling farther
into a hole I couldn’t climb out of—the pain becoming too much to handle. We
were on cycle seven.

And that’s when I saw it, saw him. He stood
behind Warren, his hand outstretched toward me, his head still covered in a
hood. The man from my dream, the one who said he’d help me. I tried to reach my
arm out to him after the Taser stopped, and despite the handcuffs, I saw my arm
in front of me, reaching out toward his. He stepped forward, his hand almost
touching mine before the Taser cycled once more.

He was gone.

Warren stopped at ten, took the leads in
his hand and gripped them tightly. They tore as he pulled—straightened out fish
hooks designed to stay in place—and I felt the snap as the skin finally broke
and the probes came free.

My mind played through my only chance of
escape. It was a long shot, a last ditch option. I could take care of Warren,
but I didn’t know how many other people were in here with us.

“Time to sing, Munroe.”

I nodded, and laughed to myself about the
cliché he felt the need to use. It was like I was in a bad detective movie. I
thought for a moment, making it clear that I was thinking, then broke into my
rendition of
Ice Ice Baby
by Vanilla Ice, a song which I still
knew all the words to.

While I serenaded him, Warren took the
endpiece off of the Taser—the piece that housed the leads and probes and the
means to fire them. Now all that was left was a pair of different probes, fixed
ones only about an inch apart.