TORMENT (2 page)

It was raining. Not hard. But enough to make the
oceanside
view gray from top to bottom.
Decidedly un-romantic.
But this was the spot. They had spent several long summer nights at this spot, watching heat lightning and talking about space travel, alternate dimensions and other geeky topics that interested him. He knew Mia was humoring him most of the time. But she listened.

When he dropped to one knee, she listened harder than ever.

He heard no cheer. No hoopla. Just a whispered, yes, and a tight embrace—the kind that says, I will love you until death do us part.

Happily Ever After.

Not quite.

A year had passed since the proposal, eight months more since he’d been deployed, delaying the wedding. At least ten days since he swerved off the road under a barrage of gunfire and a near death run-in with an IED in northern Afghanistan. The assailants took him from the ruined convoy and killed his team. Wounded and blindfolded, he spent the next few days delirious, hungry and in motion.
Always in motion.
As the air grew colder he realized they were heading north. By the time they reached their destination, his wounds had just begun to mend, but his heart had broken. He knew he’d never see home or Mia again.

The pressure of the blade on his finger ripped him back to the present. He looked into the eyes of his captor, then back to the finger. If there was any chance, any chance at all he could see Mia again, he had to take it. Pain pinched his finger as the blade began to slice. “Okay! All right! I’ll say whatever you want me to.”

The blade came away.

Brenton looked at his hand. Two fingers lay separated, but the ring finger wriggled at his command—still attached, though bleeding. “What do you want to know?”

“Only for you to confirm our intelligence.”

Brenton nodded.
“Anything.”

His captor walked behind him. A click echoed through the cold air. “What is your name and rank?”

“Staff Sergeant Matthew Brenton, U.S. Marine Corps.”

“Please confirm the following.” Brenton heard the unmistakable tone that added, “
or
I’ll take the finger.” Confirm
anything
the man says.

“You intended to cross the Afghani border on a mission to infiltrate Russia?”

“I did.”

“You are a sniper, yes?”

Brenton squinted. This couldn’t be happening. “Yes.”

“One of your country’s best?”

“Yes.”

“Elite?”

“Yes.”

“Is it true that your government—the United States government—sent you here, to Moscow, with orders to assassinate President Misha Alexandrov?”

Brenton’s eyes widened with a shock near that of losing a finger. “What?”

“Answer the question!” The voice of his captor was closer to a growl and the sound of metal on stone revealed he had picked up the knife again.

“Yes! Yes, it’s true.”

“What...is true?”

Brenton’s head sagged. He was committing treason on a gross scale, not only admitting to something awful, but an outright act of war. “My orders...were to assassinate President Misha Alexandrov.”

His captor walked in front of him again. He held the knife in one hand and a mini-tape recorder in the other. He clicked the stop button on the recorder. “Thank you.”

“Please don’t kill me,” Brenton said, followed by a guttural sob.

The masked man surged forward with the knife, swiping it down, tearing through sinews. Brenton screamed. “Don’t kill me! God, please, don’t kill me!”

He sobbed and shook as the man stepped back. Brenton’s vision narrowed as he stared at the stone floor. The knife fell at his feet.

“I am a man of my word,” said his captor, allowing his Russian accent to tinge his voice for the first time. “You are free to go.”

Brenton saw the booted feet of the man pivot and walk from the cell, leaving the door open behind him. Brenton sobbed. Spit from his mouth rolled onto his beard and froze to the thickly crusted surface. He fell from the chair to his knees, looking at his freed hands, numb and incomplete—but free. Sobs turned to laughs as Brenton picked up the knife and his detached fingers. If he packed them in ice, maybe they could be reattached?

Loud chopping rotor blades shook the cell, building in pitch as they sliced through the arctic air. Brenton stumbled out of the cell, through a short hallway and into the brightness of a clear day, the sun striking a gleaming white, foot thick, layer of snow. A black helicopter lifted up and peeled away from a cleared helipad. As it flew away, the helo dove down and disappeared below a precipice.

Brenton rubbed his eyes, trying desperately to focus them in the harsh light and absolute cold that crystallized the moisture around his eyes. Then he saw it...the edge of the precipice upon which his cell—a stone shanty attached to a small log cabin—stood. There were no trees. No rocks. No life. Brenton spun around, scanning his surroundings. He saw the same thing in every direction. He’d been marooned on the top of some stone spire in the middle of nowhere.

He clenched his fists and felt a wash of pain from the bloody stumps where his two fingers used to be. He looked at the hand, at the empty ring finger, and refused to give up. He ran for the edge, pushing his bare feet through the snow, one pain-filled step at a time. Reaching the precipice, Brenton fell to his knees and clenched his hands in the snow. The cliff descended at least one hundred feet and ended with a line of boulders and jagged edges. He won his freedom from the cell, but he was more of a prisoner than ever.

He would die here.

Alone.

Brenton screamed at the sky, his voice raw and wet. He screamed and screamed, pouring out his anguish to the world. When only his distant echo responded, Brenton held his head in his hands and wept quietly for several minutes, then found his voice. “Christ.” The word, meant as a curse, opened his eyes. He hadn’t thought about God since childhood. But now, with nothing left but pain and despair,
who
else was there to listen to him?

“Are you there?”

Brenton looked at the sky. Soft cumulus clouds drifted over the barren plains, their shadows casting a deep purple shade on the flawless sheet of snow. Holding his breath, he listened for a reply. Surely, if there were a God, he would reply now.

God didn’t speak.

The only sound came from the gentle touchdown of snowflakes landing on the ground—like quiet flicks of static. In that quiet, Brenton found some kind of peace, perhaps supernatural, perhaps a primal connection with nature. His logic said that a man facing death had no choice but to make peace with his past, accept it for what it was, but he couldn’t help wondering if he felt something more.

 He turned his eyes up again. “If you’re really there, God, Allah, whoever you are, I don’t want to freeze to death! I don’t want to starve!”

His voice echoed again, bouncing off the distant cliffs and returning faded and distorted. “Please! Get me down from—”

A pop and shift of snow beneath his knees drew his attention down. Before he could realize what the line slicing across the snow beneath him represented, it slipped away and fell, taking his body with it. As he descended through the frigid air, Brenton didn’t scream, he simply mouthed a final request, “Let me see her again.”

Then his body struck the rocks below. Bones shattered. Brain matter splashed and froze. Guts slid free and melted into the snow. His end had been tortured and horrific, but in death, he had been spared from the horrors yet to come.

2

New Hampshire

Mia Durante descended the stairs two at a time.

“Coming!”
She paused at the bottom, in the foyer, where a pile of winter clothes blocked the door. She glanced out the side window as she moved the clothes. Her younger sister and niece waited at the front door, rubbing their arms against the winter chill.

“You can let yourself in,” she said as she looked at her reflection in the hallway mirror. All signs of her crying had faded. As much as she needed to talk to someone about what happened the previous day, her sister and niece
weren’t
the right people. She wasn’t sure who the right people would be anymore. Matt was her confidante, but now, after what she’d done...

“Um, no, we can’t.” Her sister’s voice contained part annoyance, part sarcasm.

“Why not?”
Mia said, as she reached for the knob and found it immovable. She quickly unlocked the doorknob and then the deadbolt. She swung the door open with a grin. “Sorry.”

Like rabbits fleeing a forest fire, Margo and Liz dashed into the house, hopping and chattering. “When are going to make me a key?” Margo said. “Better yet, when are you going to sell this shithole and buy a real house?”

She and Matt had bought the fixer-upper, a farmhouse built in 1841, against the recommendation of their real estate agent. It was supposed to have been a bonding experience—the two of them solidifying the foundation, cleaning out the rot and evicting the rodent tenants as a symbol of their growing bond. The house would grow with them, every year the three becoming stronger. At first she laughed off the concept as romantic rubbish, but after realizing Matt’s sincere desire to see it through, she signed up for what was sure to be an adventure. Of course, the plan met an impasse when Matt shipped out, and even though he was due back in two months, she’d probably ruined any chance of having a life in this house.

Ignoring her sister and pushing away her concerns, Mia knelt down next to Liz, a seven-year-old with tangled blond hair, and helped her out of her jacket. “Your mother has a horrible mouth.”

Liz nodded with a grin. “Grammy says she used to put soap in her mouth.”

“She did,” Mia said, “but not enough to get it clean.” She stood and handed the winter coat to Margo. “Where is the matriarch anyway?”

“Not coming,” Margo said, “On a date, if you can believe it.”

“Wow,” Mia said. Her mother hadn’t been on a date in the ten years since their father died. It was a big step...one that her mother had apparently not wanted her to know about.

“I know, right? At least one of us might be sleeping with a man tonight.”

Mia stood still for a moment,
then
tried to conceal her frown by turning away. But Margo saw her.

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

Mia waved it off as she walked toward the kitchen and fought against the shaking in her hands. If she let her emotional wall crack she’d confess everything, and Matt needed to hear it first. “Just stop cursing in front of your daughter.”

She entered the kitchen, feeling the hardwood floor flex beneath her with each step. The tin ceiling, wood stove, and brick mantle gave the room a warm, country feel, but the drafty windows meant maintaining a large supply of dry wood at all times. The six foot stack in the mud room was just a small part of several cords she had cut herself before winter set in. With Matt deployed, her father dead and Margo’s ex-boyfriend an ex-boyfriend, she had no one to help her with the physical work around the house. And Margo, with her perfect nails, certainly wasn’t up to the task. After spending the morning hacking and stacking wood, she felt ready for the Durante
girls
weekly pizza party.