WHEN I read about waterboarding, and even when Ian described it to me, how it was done, I had always kind of thought it was mind over matter. I figured I could take short gulps of air, breathe shallow, and not get too much liquid in my lungs. I’d never been so wrong about anything in my life. What was in my head and what actually happened were night-and-day different.
I never fought so hard in my life.
When water poured down my nose, when I was drowned and held down at the same time, I screamed myself hoarse.
My brain said I was drowning. I heaved for oxygen, my throat was raw, my coughing wet, and the terror of it—that I was dying, that I could not hold my breath another second—was a total mindfuck.
They did it over and over, and even when I inhaled to breathe, it felt like the soaked towels were smothering me.
When they finally let me up, I was dumped sideways off the cot and down onto the icy cement, sprawled there in my water- and urine-soaked dress pants. I’d never thought I’d be the type to piss myself, but the panic and adrenaline were too much for my bladder. I rolled over quickly and vomited until there was nothing left but bile, then curled into a fetal position. I wasn’t surprised when I started retching again moments later.
They never even asked me a question.
WOJNO SHOWED up after I was stripped naked, hosed off, and shackled to the ceiling of a small ten by ten cell. There were bars above me, so the only place to see anything but concrete was if I tipped my head back and looked up.
I was having trouble focusing on him, so I knew something funny was running through my system. “What’d they give me?” I asked, my words slurring when I spoke.
“Some lorazepam to calm you down and—”
“No. Before, to knock me out,” I insisted, wanting to know.
“It was hydroxyzine pamoate,” Hartley said as the cell door swung open and he came in. “But don’t worry, Miro, I would never give you anything bad.”
He was wearing a patterned three-piece suit that was a mixture of brown houndstooth and nailhead on a cream background with a six-button vest, paisley tie, and a pale blue shirt. He looked like he should have been on his way to the opera or some other high-class endeavor.
“Oh no?” I said, trying to keep my voice level.
The scalpel Hartley had in his right hand was terrifying.
“No,” he assured me, walking over and stopping beside Wojno. “I’m actually the only one here who doesn’t want to do something despicable to you.”
His hair had been cut since he was in prison, back to the way it had been on the outside: thick blond hair with short sides, the longer top combed back and slightly to the side. He had always looked like he should have been on the cover of a romance novel.
“Like?” I asked.
He came forward, close, and then slowly reached out and put his hand flat on my chest, over my heart.
“Hartley?”
He cleared his throat as his hand slid down my abdomen. “Some of them wanted to rape you.”
I squinted and tipped my head to the side in disbelief, causing him to make a face like he’d smelled something horrible and then shake his head with a tsking noise for good measure.
“I know, can you imagine? Me? Raping anyone or allowing anyone to ever be raped in my presence?” He shuddered. “Horrible.”
At least there wouldn’t be that. “What else?”
“Well, apparently the cot that you were on the first day, when they put the water down you—if we clipped battery cables to it, we could send great currents of electricity through your body.”
“But you didn’t like that idea?” I hoped.
“Your heart,” he said, like we were at dinner somewhere, his voice mild as he reached down and took gentle hold of my flaccid cock. “I don’t want to accidentally put you into cardiac arrest. That would be devastating.”
I worked hard to remain calm even as my skin felt like it was crawling with ants.
“I will not have anything harm the inside of you, only the outside.”
That was not comforting.
He smoothed his hand back up to my abdomen. “Your skin is so smooth, do you know that? And you keep your body in exquisite condition, marshal.”
I stayed quiet as he walked around behind me, trailing his hand over my skin.
“Agent Wojno said you’re good in bed. I asked him.”
My eyes flicked to Wojno, who looked pained.
“I wanted to know what kind of lover you were.”
“Why?”
“Because one can tell quite a bit about another by how he treats the strangers he beds. Don’t you think?”
“I guess,” I answered levelly, even though his hand slid down my spine to my ass and gripped it tight.
“This is so hard and firm,” he whispered, caressing me. “You never let anyone have it?”
I cleared my throat because it was filling with swallowed phlegm again, the lingering effects of waterboarding. “No.”
“Not even Marshal Doyle?”
I was silent.
“Oh, come on,” Hartley said, hand on my shoulder, still behind me. “I know you two are an item. Agent Wojno says he’s going completely out of his mind as we speak.”
I pinned Wojno with my stare. “Why?”
He gestured at Hartley. “You know why.”
“Are you blackmailing him?” I asked Hartley about Wojno, even as I felt the needle in the side of my neck. I should have known he had more goodies in his suit jacket.
“Of course,” he said as he traced a pattern on my back. “Tell him.”
Wojno took a breath. “I told him you were being transferred to Phoenix.”
“No,” Hartley husked as he shifted to stand at my side.
I was having trouble focusing, and my head fell forward so that I was looking at Hartley’s Cole Haan Brogue Medallion Double Monkstrap brown shoes. “Huh,” I grunted.
“What?” Hartley asked, sounding interested.
“Those are like the ones you wore in court that time.”
“Yes,” he replied delightedly. “They are. I wore them for you, as we share an interest in tasteful footwear.”
I tried to nod, but I couldn’t lift my head. “Yeah, we do.”
“That pair of Jo Ghost boots you had on when I took you were lovely.”
“Thanks,” I slurred out.
“How do you feel?”
“How do you want me to feel?”
“I want you numb before I have you beaten.”
“Why? And why the waterboarding?”
“You were a bit high-handed with me upon occasion, so, like a dog, you have to learn your place.”
“So… beating,” I murmured.
“Yes.”
“But you don’t want me to feel it.”
“Of course not.”
I scoffed. “That makes no sense.”
“To you.”
“To anybody.”
He stepped forward again, and I felt the pressure of his lips on my shoulder before his teeth. I saw his pristine shoe between my two bare, dirty feet. The large drop of blood that appeared a moment later contrasted beautifully with the deep brown tan color.
“Did you feel that cut?”
“No.” I answered truthfully because I suspected that without the drugs, whatever he was doing would hurt.
“That’s excellent, because I need something of yours.”
“Like?”
“A token, really, but it must be wholly your own.”
I coughed.
“Try not to move,” he cautioned me.
“You’re gonna get your shoes dirty,” I mentioned as the droplets began to rain down and Wojno retched hard.
“I don’t mind,” Hartley assured me as a door opened and another man walked in with a tray of surgical tools. “I just need a saw for a moment.”
It got quieter in the room as the floor blurred, going in and out of focus. I felt detached from my own body, only loosely tethered. “Am I dying now?”
“Oh, not at all, I promise you.”
He was a surgeon, after all. “Okay.”
“Did that hurt?” He was checking on me.
“I feel… pressure.”
“Excellent,” he said before he repeated whatever he was doing.
The sound of Wojno puking was the last thing I heard.
I WAS stiff when I woke up, and my head felt like it was wrapped in gauze. Everything was muffled and I was on my stomach on the cot, head turned to the right, arms and legs back in the straps.
“Try not to move,” Wojno said, and the metal frame of the cot creaked as he perched on the edge beside me. His hand moved in my hair, and even though it was him, the guy who’d betrayed me, it was comforting, and my eyes fluttered shut. “You lost a lot of blood when he operated.”
“Operated?”
“It was fast. Are you in pain?”
“Where?”
“Rib cage?”
I couldn’t tell. “Something’s in my arm,” I managed to get out even though my tongue felt like it was swollen too big for my mouth.
“Yeah, you’ve got antibiotics in one arm and glucose in the other. He really doesn’t want you to die.”
“Until he’s done,” I concluded.
“Yeah… until then.”
“Did he cut my back?”
“He cut into your back.”
“For what?”
“I don’t—he made sure you stopped bleeding. He used that surgical glue.”
It was hard to think. “He’s… biting me.”
“Yes.”
“Did he have me beaten?”
“Yes.”
“I bet I look like tenderized meat.”
“You peed blood earlier.”
“Well, you take enough kidney punches and that’ll happen.”
“Yes,” he agreed sadly. “God, I hope the bites don’t scar.”
I chuckled. “They won’t have time. I’ll be dead before they do.”
He sounded like he was about to cry. “I don’t—things could—”
“Just don’t let me be dead and missing, all right? Don’t do that to Ian.”
His breath caught. “You’re in love with him.”
“No,” I lied. Because we were not friends and I would not have him tell Hartley, who would go after Ian as well. “But he’s my partner. Hartley’s got it wrong. We’re not together.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Please, whatever happens, make sure you find me and tell him or make sure he finds me. I don’t wanna be missing.”
“Okay,” he whispered.
I rested for a few minutes. Just that much talking and I was ready to pass out.
“You didn’t ask me why.”
I knew why. He was being blackmailed.
“I’m the one who told Hartley’s friend when he was coming to the hospital. I’m the one who got her killed by getting him out.”
Of course he had. He was the leak.
“Okay.”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
He needed to confess.
“Yeah, tell me.”
“I covered up a case when I was a cop in Chicago.”
“Go on,” I got out, wanting to stay awake, afraid to fall asleep and him not be there to talk to when I woke up again. It was terrifying to imagine being there alone.
“There was a rent boy that used to work for Rego James, you remember him? James?”
“I remember James—he died in witness protection.” Some guy had realized who he was, just some random guy from his past who passed him on the street, and followed him home, broke in, and ended up stabbing James to death with a knife from his kitchen. We could account for our own witnesses in WITSEC, but we didn’t run every name in an entire town when we placed someone. It simply wasn’t possible.
“I didn’t know that part. I used to go to James’s club downtown when I was an off-duty patrolman, and one night I went to see this kid I liked, Billy Donovan, and halfway through the trick, Rego comes busting in with this other kid I’d seen around.”
He took a deep breath, like maybe he was having trouble telling the next part, and began carding his fingers through my hair over and over.
“So he throws the kid I don’t know down beside Billy on the bed and shoots them one after another.”
I could imagine Wojno there, frozen, terrified, with blood splatter all over him.
“And then it hits me that James isn’t alone, and that’s when I first met Hartley.”
The story came together.
“And right before James is about to put one in me, Hartley stops him and tells him I’m a cop. Apparently the first one James killed, the kid who I kept seeing around, was undercover with vice.”
“And what did you do?”
“I moved both bodies, made it look like Adams—that was the cop—and Billy were a thing and Adams shot Billy and then himself.”
“But?”
“But there were cameras in every room of James’s place, and I guess he gave the tape to Hartley for safekeeping.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I dunno. Maybe James had something on him as well.”
Perhaps he did.
“If it ever came out, I’d be finished in the FBI.”
“You’d go to prison,” I told him. “You know that. You were an accessory.”
“Yeah.”
I knew why he’d told me. I was a dead man. There was nothing to fear.
“Why did you bail on me after just the couple of times?” Wojno asked.
Now there was a time to talk about closure—when the person you wanted it with was cuffed naked to a cot. “No,” I answered.
“No, what?” he asked, leaning over me, his lips close to my ear.
“No, we’re not having a talk. Fuck you.”
“I—”
“For the record,” I said, my voice bottoming out, tears welling up in my eyes. “I would get you out of here. I wouldn’t leave you to die here.”
He stood up fast. “There’s nothing I can do. He’d kill me if I tried to set you free.”
“Okay,” I replied, swallowing my tears. “We know where we both stand, then.”
“You’re an idiot. I could give you some comfort.”
“I don’t need any,” I snarled as I heard a door open.
“What’s going on?” Hartley said accusingly, his dress shoes clipping across the cement floor, the leather bottoms rubbing over the grit so it made a loud scratching sound when he stopped beside the cot. “Why are you in here?”
“I wanted to explain things to Miro.”
“He doesn’t need anything from you,” Hartley assured him, “and I need to see him.”
Wojno left quickly. Hartley squatted down beside the cot and tipped his head sideways so we were sort of eye to eye.
“They broke your nose when they beat you, but I reset it, so you shouldn’t have any trouble breathing.”
“Okay.”
“I splinted your ring finger and pinky of your left hand because one of the men broke two of them before I realized what was happening.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying desperately to remain calm. I was close to having a panic attack—I remembered what they were like because I had quite a few when I was younger. It had been years, but the signs were there: the nausea, my racing heart, feeling overheated and freezing at the same time, and the spots in front of my eyes. If I couldn’t catch my breath, I was in real trouble.
“I drank some of your blood yesterday and ate a piece of flesh from your shoulder the night before. I apologize about the divot.”
Jesus. “It happens,” I replied, swallowing down the revulsion and fear.
“Originally my plan was to pull off all your flesh, but it’s much harder than skinning other things and would take far too long.”
My stomach rolled ominously.
“I of course have pentobarbital and thiopental on hand and would have put you into a coma before I did any of that.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You know, I think the lorazepam I’m giving you—”
“What else is that called?”
“Ativan or Orfidal.”
“Ativan,” I repeated, “that’s the word I know.”
“Yes, well, I think I might be giving you too much. You’re a bit too calm. You’re not scared at all, are you?”
“I’m resigned,” I mumbled, even though I wasn’t. If I saw any glimmer of a chance to get out, I would take it in a heartbeat. The problem was, between the beatings and the sedation, I couldn’t really feel my body and wasn’t altogether sure what was working.
“Well, that’s no good. I want to hear some begging.”
“I’ll beg now,” I told him as he straightened his head and curled over me. I felt his lips between my shoulder blades. “Please don’t get rid of my body when you’re done. Leave something for someone to find.”
“Of course,” he assured me as he slipped his hands around my neck and squeezed.
I held on to consciousness as long as I could.