Stirred (46 page)

But I didn’t care about where I was, or what was happening to me.

All I cared about was my daughter.

My daughter and my friends.

I heard a door creak open, strained my neck to see.

Luther walked in, tracking through the sand, and stopped next to the gurney, staring down at me.

“You’re still bleeding a little, Jack, but I took the liberty of placing some pads down there.”

“Where is she, you bastard?”

He scratched the back of his head. “Originally, Phin and Harry were in these chairs. They were going to torture each other to death while you watched. The fiery ash would have rained down on them. You would have begged me to stop. It would have been quite beautiful.”

An ash landed on his arm, and he watched it eat a tiny hole through his shirt.

I clenched my teeth. “Where’s my daughter?”

“She’s gone, Jack. Maybe someday, when you’re ready, I’ll tell you what happened to her. But you aren’t ready yet.”

I was exhausted, emotionally drained, and hurt in a dozen places, but I pulled on those straps with more force than I’d ever used on anything.

They didn’t budge.

“Anger isn’t the reaction I’m after,” Luther said. “You need to get past that.”

“What exactly is it you want, Luther?”

Luther put his face close to mine, his dark eyes drilling into me.

“I want a partner.”

I didn’t respond, wondering what the hell he was getting at.

“I’ve embraced a side of myself that few even acknowledge exists,” he continued. “A dark, black side. Over the years, I’ve met others who possess this darkness. Alex Kork was one of them. Tell me, what did you think of Alex?”

“She was psychotic. Like you.”

He nodded. “But she had a spark to her, didn’t she? I visited her in prison. We had a…
connection
. A connection that went deeper than anything physical, anything emotional. I think I can also have that connection with you.”

I closed my eyes. It was half-past crazy in loony town, and I’d had enough. There had been too many nut jobs, with too many delusional fantasies. I wondered if I was some sort of maniac magnet.

Luther touched my eyelids, peeled them open. “Morality is an artificial construct. It is, admittedly, necessary for society, and for civilization to prosper. But even in the most civilized nations, murder and torture flourish. Man’s inhumanity to his fellow man isn’t the mark of a backwards society. It’s the pinnacle of what society has to offer those who are superior.”

“Yeah, I’ve read Nietzsche, too.”

“But Nietzsche chickened out.” Luther released my eyes. “He didn’t have the balls to directly state what he was hinting at. Some men are meant to hunt and kill others for their own amusement.”

“And you honestly think this is something I have in common with you?”

“You already hunt people, Jack. You’ve been doing it your whole career. But you always stop yourself once you get to the fun part. I’ve been trying to show you how to fully embrace the inner you. The predator.”

“Alex was crazy. But you’re flat-out batshit nuts, Luther.”

“You’re lost, Jack. Lost and you don’t even realize it. Just like Dante. I was lost once as well. Even after I embraced my true self, I still needed direction. I learned a lot from others. Others like Alex. I met them. I studied them. I studied your very cases, learned all about the people you chased. I cherry-picked the things that worked, and then, as you can see, improved upon them. Hunters tend to have short attention spans and monovision. But I see things large-scale. I have scope. I don’t mind delaying gratification for a while if it means a bigger payoff.”

“Batshit nuts,” I said.

“I felt as you do, once. But something helped me see the light.” He smiled, and it was an ugly thing. “Pain, Jack. Pain is cleansing. Pain is clarifying. Pain is pure. It strips away everything. Dignity. Artifice. Morality. Pain allowed me to be born again, to become truly free.” His voice lowered. “And it will do the same for you.”

I shook my head. “No, it won’t.”

“Yes, it will. It’s just a question of how badly and how long I’ll have to hurt you. When I said something helped me see the light, would you like to know what I’m referring to?”

I didn’t. I just glared at him.

He patted the contraption I was strapped to.

“My time spent in this chair changed me forever, Jack. I was just like you. Holding back the darkness inside of me. Just open yourself up to the possibility that you have no idea how depraved you truly are. This chair is going to change you.”

“No, Luther. It may kill me, but it won’t change me.”

He scowled. “Listen very carefully, Jack. If you’re counting on the possibility of death to get you out of this, you could not be more wrong. You think I would ever let you die? Everything you’ve been through here, I’ve been poised at every turn, ready to step in and rescue you. Ready to save you. You aren’t going to die, Jack. Though you will wish for it. In fact, your desire for death will become all-consuming. It’s the not dying that will bring about the change in you.”

I felt a sickness rising up inside of me.

Born out of the fear of imminent pain.

“You’re like a horse, Jack. Wild and untamed. Full of potential. But you’re not broken. I have to tear you down to nothing and rebuild you. Your strength, what I love about you, will endure. Will become even harder. Your weakness and failings will be utterly annihilated. If it takes days, that’s okay. If it takes weeks. Months. I’ve got all the time in the world, and no one knows you’re here. I’ll bring in Harry, Herb, and Phin, let you watch them suffer. I can even make you hurt them. Kill them. We all have breaking points, Jack. Even you.”

I stared, defiant. “You may break me, but I’ll never become what you are.”

“You already are what I am. The faster you accept that, the easier it will be. When you come out on the other end of this, for the first time, you’ll know true joy. You’ve been miserable all your life, haven’t you?”

I didn’t know how to answer that.

“Admit it, Jack. You despise yourself. Your relationships are all unhealthy. You ever wonder why so many people around you get hurt? Ever stop to think that hurting them is what you really want?”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Yet you keep doing it, over and over. Your friends and family are always getting hurt, or dying. It must be because you want it. And tell me something. When do you feel most alive? Most vibrant? Most worthy? Isn’t it when you’re chasing some psychopath? Closing in on the kill? That’s why you became a cop in the first place, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, or even if I should. Luther was twisting the facts in my life to fit his own warped view.

“You’re bending to the constraints and confines of a society in which you’re an alpha predator, and you need to break free of that. Don’t you want to be happy for once? To sleep peacefully rather than toss and turn all night? You have a will, and the sooner you learn to follow it, the sooner you’ll reach perfection. But enough talk. Let’s get started.”

Luther moved behind the wheeled cart, touching the controls.

“Unfortunately, Phin and Harry burned out the electroshock feature. I have the scene recorded, and I’ll show it to you later. They suffered quite a bit. But that was nothing compared to what I’ll do to you. Happily, the chair you’re in has many other methods for inflicting pain. Why don’t we start with, let’s see…abrasion?”

“I just had natural childbirth, motherfucker. There’s nothing you can do to hurt me.”

Luther smiled his ugly smile. “Oh yes, there is.”

I closed my eyes.

Pictured Phin’s face.

My daughter’s face.

My life.

It hadn’t been a perfect life. That’s for sure. But all of the psychobabble Luther spouted in his half-assed attempt to analyze me was wrong. Dead wrong.

I could admit to being unhappy. I could admit to putting in too much time at the job and not enough time into me. But those were my choices. My mistakes. And slowly but surely, I was learning from them.

I would never be like Luther.

Never.

No matter what he did to me.

Something in the chair beneath me began to hum.

“Are you ready, Jack?”

I opened my eyes.

Bored them right into his.

“We gonna do this, or are you gonna talk me to death, asshole?”

H
e punched in 4-2-2.

Nothing.

Maybe Herb’s idea that the code was the dead woman’s weight was wrong.

4-3-3.

4-3-4.

4-3-5.

Green light!

The deadbolt opened. When he stepped through the doorway and saw what was inside, something within Phin snapped.

He walked over to the birthing table slowly, reverently. There was blood on the stainless steel, a gooey mess of afterbirth attached to a cut umbilical cord. Phin saw the wrist straps, where the woman he loved had been tied down while giving birth to their daughter.

Phin tried to imagine the scene and then tried even harder to push it out of his head.

The sensation of hate welling up in him was so all-consuming, it threatened to overpower him.

He wanted to save Jack.

He wanted to save his little girl.

But most of all, more than anything, he wanted Luther’s neck in his hands.

Phin understood violence. He’d been around it often, both on the giving end and the receiving.

But he’d never craved violence before.

Phin was going to tear that son of a bitch to pieces and smile while doing it.

“Oh…oh man. Phin…you okay, buddy?”

Harry came into the room, propping up a limping Herb. Phin ignored them, putting on a guise of control, searching for the exit to the room. When he found it, he began to run, leaving his friends behind, anxious to find Luther.

He tore through an open doorway, down a long passage draped in semidarkness.

A door stood at the far end, and Phin burst through it.

Saw Jack, strapped to one of those torture chairs.

Saw Luther, at the control panel.

Luther locked eyes with him, and Phin saw something in his eyes.

Fear?

Maybe. But also something else.

Something like resignation.

Phin launched himself at him.

Luther raised the gun.

Fired.

Missed.

Phin almost on him.

Firing again.

Phin feeling a tug in his right shoulder, but momentum kept taking him forward.

He swatted Luther’s gun hand away.

Made a fist.

Put everything he had behind it.

The punch split Luther’s nose like a rotten tomato.

Then Phin tackled him, pinning him to the floor, raining down blows in a frenzy.

Luther tried to raise the gun.

Phin caught his wrist, leaned down, and bit Luther’s arm until he hit bone.

The gun skittered away.

Phin began to hit him again.

“Phin! Stop! You’ll kill him!”

No shit, Jack! That’s the point!

“Phin! Our daughter! He took her!”

Phin had been raising his fist for another blow, his knuckles bloody and on fire, Luther’s face split open in half a dozen places—

—and Phin unclenched his hand.

Our daughter.

Killing Luther wouldn’t make him talk.

Phin turned, stared at the chair Jack was in.

Now
that
would make him talk.

He moved to get off Luther, and then saw Luther’s hand snake down to his belt.

Phin immediately immobilized the hand and watched Luther’s puffy lips form a red grin.

It was a feint.

Luther’s other hand had gone for a knife.

Silver, glinting in the light, a wicked curved blade.

It tore into Phin’s side, piercing his kidney, the pain so unimaginable he couldn’t even breathe.

He fell off Luther, the world swirling and fading away.

T
urning onto all fours, he quickly looks for the fallen Glock. He spots it a few meters away.

He needs to kill Phin, if he isn’t dead already. Or at least immobilize him.

But if Phin escaped, Harry may have as well.

Luther shakes his head, blood and snot and tears spraying off.