Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4) (29 page)

Money can compensate for a lot, which was why I imagined his men had stuck around all this time, but even money had its hard limits. And fear only buys you loyalty until people feel you're no longer the threat you used to be, and he was getting old.

I laughed, and he gave me a sharp look. This was not the reaction he wanted. Well, too fucking bad.

“When I became head of the IMA, I knew I had my work cut out for me. Under Richardson's reign, the organization had grown soft. A bloody Old Boys' Club where people reminisced about the good old times as they grew fat off their proceeds.”

Callaghan blew out a curl of smoke.

“I had to find a way to make us feared again.”

He moved unexpectedly, grinding the filter into my shoulder. I heard the hiss before I felt the agony. The odor of charred hair and burning skin filled my nostrils. I jerked my arms back instinctively, and the guards, either sympathetic or else too shocked to stop me, permitted this small rebellion.

With a cry, Christina stomped on the foot of the guard holding her, wrenching her soldiers in an unsuccessful attempt to break his hold. The guard hooked his arm around her neck, choking her into submission by putting pressure on her windpipe.

Seeing that gave me some relief, because it meant she wasn't broken; she still had a bit of fight left in her. Unfortunately, that little stunt also put her right on the bastard's radar.

Callaghan sauntered back towards the center of the room, so certain that his voice would carry. None of us could afford not to listen and he knew it, he
fucking
knew it
.

“Bravado is so superficial. It's so easy to chip away, to reveal the terror that lies beneath.” He closed his fingers around her arms. “Fear of pain? Fear of loss of control? It's all there, mapped out in the very neural fibers comprising the emotional responses of the brain.”

He dug his fingers into the gash in her shoulder, and she twisted like a hooked fish. “As useful as you are, I can't risk having a viper roaming around at this crucial time, not when she hasn't been defanged.”

He released her and she shuddered violently.

“You should have joined me when you had the chance,” he said. “Pity that you decided to burn your bridges so … explosively, don't you think?”

She lifted her head. “I'd shoot you again.”

“Such a pity you won't have occasion to try.”

“I won't need to,” she said. “You'll think of me when the cold seeps into your bones and makes all your old wounds ache. You'll think of me and when you do, you'll remember who crippled you for life every time you have to take the elevator instead of going up the stairs. You thought I only shot you with one bullet, you sick fuck, but there were actually two. One to the knee, and one — ” with a tossing motion she indicated her head “ — right here.”

That gave him pause. I could see him looking at her, trying to decide if this brief show of spirit was worth crushing. Apparently it was. He pulled out his knife.

“No,” I shouted, unable to help myself. “Don't you fucking dare. You lay a hand on her and I'll — ”

What? What would I do? Glare impotently in his direction like a fucking patsy?

Callaghan ignored me and dug his spidery fingers into her jaw. She flinched and sank her teeth into the fleshy web between his thumb and index finger, hard. Hard enough that his blood seeped down the back of his hand, drizzling to the floor.

“Want to have a second go-round, do you?”

“I'll kill you!” She lunged forward — the guard had let go of her, taking a step back — knocking her head against his hard enough that I could hear the sound from where I stood. And then, breathing hard, she spat blood, his blood, into his face. “Unchain me. I'll end you now and God himself will absolve me.”

Callaghan was no longer smiling. He brought the knife to her face and pressed the sharp end of the blade to her lower lip. She tried to back away, but his hand was knotted in her hair. “Look around,” he said. “This is a godless place, Christina Parker. There is no place for your prayers or your conviction. Whenever will you learn that you can't win?”

She spoke into the blade. “When I
die
.”

Oh sweetheart, you shouldn't have said that.

“When you die,” Callaghan repeated, amused.

He pressed until he cut skin, and she whimpered in pain and fear as blood, this time her blood, trailed down her chin to mix with his. He licked the blade thoughtfully, watching me watch him, so I knew this was as much for my benefit as hers.

“I'm sure that can be arranged.”

I had a sudden flash of insight what things would have been like, if he had been her captor instead of me. He would have shattered her mind. Broken her body. Warped and twisted her beyond recognition.

He would have destroyed her.

I felt him watching me. I tightened my jaw and let myself reveal nothing. He seemed disappointed. Without a mind for the blood coating the blade, he tucked the knife back into his pocket. A trophy.

You sick fuck
.

Callaghan foisted Christina off on one of the other guards. She went as limp as a puppet with the strings cut. Playing dead. A natural defense mechanism.

Too bad it hadn't worked.

Callaghan made a dismissive gesture, moving back towards the building. His limp barely showed at all. He was showing restraint in front of his men, trying to keep the scent of his blood out of the water.

“Take them away. They've served their purpose.”

The guards exchanged looks. A braver one ventured, “Sir, what should we
do
with them?”

Callaghan looked back over his shoulder briefly.

“Unchain them and toss them in the silo.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Submersion

Christina

While watching various spy thrillers with my father as a young girl, I had always wondered why the bad guys inevitably went with a long and complicated plan for the hero's demise.
Why draw things out?
I asked myself.
Why give them the chance?

Now I knew the answer. Because, in the minds of the villains, the heroes didn't
deserve
to die quickly. They would rather risk the heroes escaping, than end their suffering prematurely. If they did manage to get away, they could always be recaptured and tortured some more. Since escaping from Target Island almost three years ago, I had been living on borrowed time. I thought I'd managed to survive through a bit of skill and a lot of extraordinarily good luck, but now I saw that part of that was because Adrian had wanted us to survive; he wanted us to survive — and
suffer
.

He was killing us only because the threat we posed to his accomplishments now outweighed any pleasure prolonging our suffering might bring him.

I wondered what terrible secret lurked behind the silo's deceptively innocuous moniker. An image of a looming, mechanized tower popped into my head unbidden: a modernized version of the iron maiden, its concrete bowels were studded with spikes.

I clenched my shoulders, repressing a shudder. This wasn't helping. Maybe if I knew what Adrian was planning, I wouldn't feel quite so afraid. But the faces of the guards were grim and one of them had already cuffed me for walking too slowly, despite my injuries. I didn't dare tempt fate by speaking.

Michael walked beside me, as silent as the dead. Adrian had ordered our handcuffs removed, but the guards had left Michael's on. His steps were jerky, reminding me of one of those wind-up toy soldiers. He looked very badly hurt. Had they
ever
removed his handcuffs? Or had he been in chains since we had both been taken in that car?
Poor Michael
.

We stopped, and I looked from Michael to the guards. The one in front was standing before a metal door, whose surface was dulled by splotches of blood-colored rust. It opened with a screech that had me wincing, and wondering:
why was it so rusted if the facility was allegedly new? What happened here?

Do I even want to know?

I scanned the room quickly, looking for dangers. It was a small chamber, but very high, with a domed roof that gave it the shape of a bell jar. There were metal grates on the walls spaced evenly at vertical intervals, although they, too, were rusted over like the door. Streaks of rust bled from the grates, dripping down the white walls in feathery streaks that went all the way to the floor. There was a curious smell here as well. Pungent. Achingly familiar.

I frowned.
Why is this familiar?

“Quit stalling.” The guard behind me shoved me roughly, knocking me off balance. I was dizzy, weak, sore, and I went down like a sack of flour, scraping both my knees on the rough concrete. Beads of blood welled up like small garnets.

I lifted my head. Michael had stepped into the room without prompting, and now the guards were trying to edge away without looking intimidated. The size of the space between them was telling, though.

“Wait! Aren't you going to unlock his cuffs?”

The guards looked at me, and then Michael. He stared them down, and his eyes frightened me because of how empty they were. “Yeah,” he said. “Wouldn't want to upset your boss.”

They were too well schooled to flinch, but I knew what they were thinking. We were a prime example of what happened when Adrian got “upset.”

The one woman in the group swore. “You,” she said, directing the guard nearest to him. “Hold his shoulders.” She walked in front of Michael, pulling a key from her pocket as she grabbed his wrists with what looked to me like excessive force. “It won't make any difference,” she added. “Just so you know.”

There was a click. She caught the cuffs before they could fall, slipping them into a pocket. Michael tensed, like a large cat about to pounce, and the woman took a step back at the same time two guards took a step forward.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now get out.”

For a moment, he was the man in the body armor who had single-handedly taken out a whole squadron of men before collapsing. He could still be terrifying. It was an act, but for a moment, I forgot that.

And so did the guards.

Looking at their faces, they realized that, too — and hated him for it. “You deserve everything you get,” the female guard said. “And then some.”

She slipped out the door before he could respond, and the other guards followed in her wake, with one bringing up the rear with a loaded gun, pointed in our direction in case we tried anything.

The echo of the steel door slamming closed reverberated in the chamber as we were plunged into darkness. I hadn't been expecting the darkness, but then, there were no windows in here. The only source of light came from somewhere near the ceiling.

“Brings back memories, doesn't it?”

Michael's voice came from somewhere to my left. I turned in that direction. “We were lucky last time. On Target Island they still had some motivation to keep us alive — well,” I added, “Adrian did.”

“Because he wanted a scapegoat, a traitor.” He laughed humorlessly. “That became a self-fulfilling prophecy. As far as the men out there are concerned, I'm now exactly what he says I am.”

The walls hummed. The resulting vibration shook the floors beneath my feet, and rattled around in my bones. My foot collided with something soft and I heard a curse. “Sorry,” I whispered.

Michael sighed. It did not sound forgiving.

“It sounds like the walls are moving.”

“You've watched too many movies.”

“Maybe you haven't seen enough,” I shot back. “For all you know, he's going to crush us.”

“He's not a Bond villain. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to build a room like that?”

Michael didn't sound too sure, though. Adrian was building new facilities left and right. He had tried to dip his fingers into telecommunications and human trafficking, and now had money coming in from both. Certainly money hadn't been any object so far, and when it came to human misery, Adrian Callaghan had never spared any expense.

Crushing us did seem extravagant, even for him.
And not nearly painful enough
. If he were going to go big, it would be something slow and agonizing and gruesome. I thought again of the spikes, and had to kneel down. Eventually, the dizziness passed and I no longer felt quite as faint, although the throbbing in my eyes had yet to subside. I hadn't had much water, and my stomach was close to empty. The chill of the concrete permeated my thin clothing, draining away my heat, and my wounds ached in its absence.

What felt like a hand brushed against my arm. It was a light touch — he was trying to ascertain where I was, what part of me was facing him — and then his arm went around me. I had to choke back tears.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“What do you think?” His voice wasn't biting, just matter-of-fact. That hurt worse than sarcasm.

I bowed my head, even though he couldn't see it. He was only a faint outline, highlighted in gold from the wavering light above. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's not your fault.” He sounded angry now. Did he think it was his?

“It's not yours, either.”

Michael didn't bother responding, but his arm pulled me closer. The heat radiating from his bare skin was welcome; it helped mitigate some of the chill. I shivered again, and imagined my breath rising up towards the air in a frozen plume.

“It's so cold in here.”

“Maybe he's planning on freezing us.” Michael's voice was too loud in the darkness. Unlike me, he hadn't bothered with whispering.

“Do you really think so?”

“No. But he's planning something. Those doors were nearly rusted shut — ” so he'd noticed that, too “ — and this facility isn't that old.”

“Michael, what are you thinking?”

“I don't know. He might be planning to poison us. The rust could be a result of chemical corrosion from exposure to toxic fumes.” I felt him  make a gesture. “This could be a giant gas chamber.”

I swallowed hard. “But there's a vent.”

“Could be for decontamination. That vent might lead into an air-locked filtration system to keep the toxins from getting into the rest of the building.”

“I don't think so.” It looked like sunlight.

“It's one possibility, anyway,” said Michael.

The humming continued ominously.

“I guess we'll find out soon.”

Michael made a sound too hopeless to be a laugh. “How fatalistic.”

“Well, what other choice do we have?”

“I don't know.” He sounded frustrated.

My eyes went to the blazing light again. “If only we could reach that vent….”

“Tough shit. Unless you've got a twenty-foot ladder shoved up your ass, that's not gonna happen.”

I stared at the vent until my field of vision was filled with a constellation of violet afterimages. It occurred to me that this could be why moths were so drawn to the light: maybe in it, they saw freedom.

A liquid chill came over me, icy and unpleasant. Not just a chill, I realized suddenly, with burning humiliation and horror. My skirt was soaked.

Did I pee myself?

No — there was simply too much of it. My feet, my thighs, my hands  were all partially submerged, and where they made contact, it
burned
. I jumped to a squat that had my muscles screaming as fire licked between my legs. My movements caused a series of sloshing sounds to echo shallowly, and elicited a metallic, briny smell that reminded me of blood.

“What's happening?” I yelped. “What
is
this?”

“It's water.” There was a larger splash beside me, and a curse. “Salt water.
Fuck
, it burns.”

It all came together in my head, with immediate clarity that struck like an arrow to the heart. The large door — the grates — the rust on the walls — even the
smell
. It was the ocean that smell had reminded me of, though I never would have made the connection
here
. Adrian was having salt water flooding in to the room through the grates. Lots of it.
Gallons
of it.

Which meant —

Oh my God
.

I sucked in a breath.

“He's going to drown us.”

Panic clawed at me from the inside like a beast trapped in a cage. I hobbled towards the walls, running my hands over the surface half-blindly. The humming was louder here, I could feel the vibrations through the concrete. During my exploration, my fingertip caught and tore on the edge of one of the metal grates, slick now with the water that was flooding through the slats. I was right, horribly right.

I pulled at the grate, cursing at it, using all the horrible words I knew in Spanish and in English. But the slats were fixed in place, and the metal frame was bolted firmly into the concrete wall. Water continued to pour from it, smugly. I gave a final tug before releasing my aching fingers and slamming my fist against the wall. “We're going to die,” I said hollowly.

“No we're
not
,” Michael growled.

“Unless you've got a twenty-foot ladder…”

“Look.” His movements were furious enough to send water splashing in my direction. “We've gotten out of worse situations. Nobody expected us to survive then, either. But we're still alive.”

I was not consoled in the slightest. Michael always sounded angriest when he was most afraid.

“Just…hold it together. We'll think of something.”

“I am holding it together,” I said. “If I wasn't, I'd be screaming. The water level is rising and it's cold and it's dark, like something out of my nightmares, and it
burns
like a million tiny insects are burrowing under my skin trying to eat me alive, and if we don't think of something soon, I'll be
drowning
.” I let out a shaky breath. “But I'm not screaming, because I'm holding it together — and do you know why?”

“Because you're brave.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Because it would only be giving him what he wants. More suffering. More misery. I refuse to die according to his expectations.”

“Sometimes living can be the best revenge.”

The water was up to my waist. I was burning. I was on fire. I was dying. My self-control had been completely submerged by dark waves of panic. Now, soon, so would I.

Unless you think of something. Quickly.

“Do you have a plan?” I asked.

“I'm thinking.”

He didn't have a plan. We were doomed.

“Do you?”

“No.”

The water lapped against my breasts.

No
, I thought.
No, no, no
.