Sealed with a Lie (21 page)

Dad’s eyes narrow; a muscle at his jaw jumps, then another. But he says not one word.

“Fine. We’ll have some fun with Kari and Charlie first.
Then
the crew can have your wife, and you’ll watch it all.”

Mom starts to shake again.

In another lifetime, maybe I’d feel sorry for her. But not in this one. Charlie and I are probably going to die—painfully and horribly—because of her and my dad. Because of who they are and what they’ve done.

I ignore the doubts creeping into my head . . . the ones that ask, in all reasonableness, whether it isn’t understandable that my dad stopped to save my mom from bad injuries before continuing his mission. The doubts that say the loss of Rafe’s kids is the target’s fault, not my parents’.

Rafe is half-right and half-wrong. In work for the Agency, a mission trumps everything. Even injuries to a fellow agent, wife or not.

But in all honesty, who could have predicted that the target—whoever it is they’re talking about—would go after Rafe’s kids?

I don’t have much of a chance to philosophize about any of this, though. Because Rafe comes to the door of our cube and looks straight at me.

“I won’t enjoy this,” he says. “In fact, I won’t personally be here to watch. I’m not that kind of man.” He swings toward my parents. “But you, Cal and Irine,
will
watch. And in the meantime you’ll tell us, in the hopes of saving your daughter’s life, where that list of all the KGB2 agents can be found. Oh, yes—I know about that. And I’d find it quite useful.”

He smiles serenely and turns back to me. He slides a plastic card into the slot of the keypad next to my cube
and gestures to the guards standing nearby. He continues to speak over his shoulder to Mom and Dad.

“However, because you’re seasoned agents who’ve been trained to withstand torture, I expect that Kari will have some broken ribs first. If that doesn’t work, we’ll break some fingers and toes, or bring the starving rats. You do know what can be done to a girl with rats, don’t you?”

Fear rockets from my stomach to my mouth. It has a sour, metallic taste. I have no time to swallow it before the two guards wrench open the door and come for me.

I don’t shrink from the guards, as they expect. I lunge at them, my feet and fists flying. I clock one squarely in the temple and he staggers back, then goes down.

The other one has more chops. He blocks my kicks and manages to grab my left wrist. I smash my right elbow into his jaw, knocking his head back, but he won’t let go. I smash my elbow into his nose next, and blood sprays over both of us as he curses.

It’s in my eyes and I’m distracted, trying to wipe it with my sleeve, when Rafe gets me with a stun gun. It drops me in electrified agony, and I black out.

When I awake, cold water’s being thrown in my face and I know I’m totally screwed. I’m hanging by my bound wrists from a hook in a larger cell by myself. No, Charlie’s huddled in the corner, his hands tied at the wrists. My parents are opposite, in separate cells.

The tops of my big toes just barely brush the floor. Though my hands and wrists have gone numb, all the blood has rushed from my arms, and my shoulders scream in agony.

A guard in a black ski mask throws another cup of freezing water into my face. I choke and sputter. His eyes are small, black, and devoid of expression. He appears bored, as if he does stuff like this on a routine basis. I find that terrifying.

Rafe’s voice comes over the speaker system. He’s no longer in the passageway.

“So, Calvin. We’ll start with you. How much do you think the Agency would pay for that list of the KGB2 agents?”

“I have no idea,” my dad says.

“Wrong answer.” Rafe sighs. “Virgil, you may begin. For every wrong answer, you know what to do.”

The guard to my right flexes his hand. Then before I can brace myself, he punches me hard in the stomach.

The impact—and the pain—knocks the breath out of me.

Given my position, I can’t double over, so I writhe, drawing my knees upward, and fight for air. My one consolation is that I didn’t shriek.

Charlie, poor Charlie. He almost passes out, I think. Then he crabwalks backward from where he was sitting. He backs into the far corner of the cell, hugs himself, and rocks back and forth. His eyes are the size of dinner plates.

“You coward,” my dad spits. “Beating up on a girl half your size.”

There’s no shame in the guard’s eyes. If anything, he looks even more bored.

“Cal,” Rafe says again. “How much?”

“Hell, I don’t—a few million, at least!”

“Better answer. Now, who could authorize, say, a ten-million-dollar wire transfer to my account?”

“It would have to be authorized and countersigned by at least two high-level managers,” my dad says quickly.

“Wrong answer.”

The guard to my left punches me in the ribs.

I do gasp with the pain this time; I can’t help it. His fist feels like a sledgehammer.

“I didn’t ask the procedure, Cal. I asked for specific names. Now, would it be Dave Winslow? Sheila O’Toole? Or perhaps Alan Chung?

“Alan and Sheila,” Dad says quickly.

“Excellent. Now, where exactly can I find the list, Calvin?”

My dad’s voice is weak as he says, “I don’t know.”

My mom winces and sucks in a breath.

Rafe sighs. “Wrong answer.”

The next blow cracks one of my ribs. I hear it, as if from far away, but I feel it in excruciating detail. I still don’t shriek, but I do pant like a dog from the pain, and sweat rolls from my temples down my cheeks and to my neck.

Funny, but the physical pain I feel isn’t as bad as the emotional pain all over again that my dad is betraying me. I think he knows exactly where that list is.

“Where is it, Cal?” Rafe’s voice has become a singsong.

“I don’t know! Please don’t hit her!” There is a certain amount of anguish in his voice—I’ll give him that. But not enough to give up the location of his precious list.

This blow slams into my kidneys. Bile shoots up my throat and out of my mouth. I have no control over it, since I’m keening like an animal. There’s truly no dignity in the face of this level of pain.

I swing back and forth from the force of the blow.

The sick twist of a guard flexes his fingers, then eyes me as if I’m a sack of flour.

Stuff dribbles out of my mouth and down my chin and neck. When I can catch half a breath, I croak, “Rot. In. Hell.”

The guard sneers, thinking I mean him.

Then I add, “Dad.” I tap into my crazy anger at my parents so that I have something to focus on other than agony.

My dad’s face registers shock, then goes utterly blank. Then he shouts, “I take responsibility, Rafe! I’m sorry. So sorry. For what happened to Sarah and Ben.”

A long hiss comes over the speaker system. “Well, isn’t that special, Cal.”

“I screwed up,” my dad admits. “I shouldn’t have let myself get . . . sidetracked.”

My mom’s head rears back. She gazes at him with an emotion I have trouble reading. Shock? No. A sense of betrayal? No. Oh, my God—it’s
contempt
.

Rafe takes a deep breath. “That must be music to Irine’s ears. Thank you, Cal. Unfortunately, at this point, it’s too damn little and too damn late. You had
your chance before, and you didn’t take it.”

Dad groans.

“Where’s the list, Irine?” Rafe sings.

“Let me take Kari’s place!” my mom shouts. “Please, for the love of God!”

“Wrooooong answer . . .”

The guard breaks another of my ribs. I can’t help it this time; I scream.

Charlie rockets out of his corner and jumps on the man, screeching and howling. “Stop it! Stop it!” He beats on him with his powerless, seven-year-old fists.

The guard easily grabs him by the collar and holds him a foot off the ground, Charlie’s legs and arms still swinging like windmills. “Don’t you hit my sister!” he yells.

The guard shakes him until his teeth rattle and tosses him against a wall of the cube. Charlie’s head smacks against it, and he slides down, dazed and cowed.

My mom lets out a sound somewhere between a moan and a whimper.

“Take me instead,” Dad begs. “Don’t do this to my daughter.”

“Oooh, Cal.
Really
wrong answer. Would you like to see—”

The guard punches me in the kidneys again, and I vomit on him, to my satisfaction but also my shame.

He reacts with disgust, like an actual human being might, wiping the stuff off his shirt.

I just hang there, panting.

Rafe continues on the speaker. “Would you like to see the videotape of what the target did to my Sarah? I think
you should. Then you’ll think twice about asking me for mercy.” He pauses. “That’s enough on the body, Anton. Take her down. Let’s start breaking fingers.”

I can’t say I like the sound of this much. But I try to focus on the relief I will feel in my arms and shoulders. That’s something, isn’t it? I’m desperate for anything positive to hang on to. I may hate my mom right now, but an old piece of her advice pops into my head:
When you’re in a bad place, darling, take yourself mentally somewhere else.

The truth is that even Tech 101 class sounds wonderful right now, compared to this. I try to take myself there, because I can’t think of anything else.

As Anton pulls me off the hook and dumps me into a chair, I focus also on the fact that I’d rather have broken fingers than
no
fingers. And if it comes right down to it, I’d rather have no fingers than rats inside me. I shudder uncontrollably at the thought.

Anton ties one of my legs to a chair leg. When he goes for the other, I kick him, just for the hell of it, even though I have little energy left.

He backhands me across the face. Awesome—a clear sign that our relationship is lightening up. Anton unties my wrists, squinting at me to see if I’ll hit him. But both of my arms are buzzing like hives of hornets, and I have absolutely no strength in them. So I fantasize about blackening both his eyes instead, because that’s easier than bearing the pain of trying to sit up with broken ribs and pulverized kidneys.

“Comfortable, Kari?” Rafe asks politely over the speaker.

I roll my eyes up toward it and force myself to grin. I have no energy to think up a snappy comeback.

“Now, where were we?” he asks. “Oh, yes. Where’s the KGB2 list?”

Neither of my parents says a word.

Anton grabs my right index finger.

“Tell them, you assholes!” I shriek. “I know you have it! You stole it from the Agency and took it to Russia!”

“Wrong. Answer.” Rafe’s voice is arctic.

Anton bends my finger backward until it snaps in a vicious symphony of pain.

I’ve never even
heard
a sound like the one that comes from deep down inside me.

Then I black out.

Here we go with the ice water in the face again. Passing out has become old hat for me at this point—almost routine. I try to count the number of times it’s happened in the last couple of weeks, distracting myself as Rafe asks the same question again.

Let’s see . . . Evan choked me out at GI. Evan jabbed a needle into my arm in . . . where was that? Paris as well? Or Munich? Murnau? It’s a blur. Now it’s happened here in the belly of the freakin’ USS
Revenge
—what a lame joke, by the way—three times. Wait—is that right? I look down and check my fingers.

Four times, judging by the fact that every finger on my right hand is broken.

The pain is a dull roar at this point, but it localizes and screams with each new break. Still, I’m so exhausted by
it that I can’t even summon the energy to flinch as Rafe asks the question again. “This is becoming very boring, people,” he adds.

As Anton grasps my thumb, a commotion breaks out above us. Heavily booted feet, running. Shots being fired? I’m not sure. Shouting. Banging. More possible gunfire. More shouting.

Fortunately for me, the noise distracts both Rafe and Anton.

I see hope dawning on Charlie’s face as he gazes toward the door. Hope that maybe we’re being rescued.

I’m not sure I can spell “h-o-p-e” at this point, but I inwardly cheer on my brother’s.

Why won’t Rafe do us the courtesy of giving a blow-by-blow “sportscast” of what’s going on over the speakers, since he loves giving commentary so much? Go figure.

It’s a few minutes before we hear clanging right above us—it’s coming from the narrow metal stairs. Several sets of boots.

Charlie jumps up.

My parents exchange glances.

I just hunch over in my stew of pain, barely caring.

The big door flies open, and two figures are marched in by more armed guards, hands bound behind their backs: Evan and Kale.

I’m perversely both thrilled and horrified to see them. Thrilled because it means they tried to come and rescue me and Charlie. Horrified because they’re now going to die with us.

They both spot me at the same time. Kale’s jaw goes
slack with shock. I guess I don’t look too pretty at this point.

While they shove Kale into a cell, Evan goes nuts. “What have you done to her?!” He lunges at one guard, head-butting him, and tries to kick out at another, but they’ve learned their lesson and they’ve got his feet bound so that he only has about a foot of cord between them in order to walk.