Chapter 62

Sandesh woke up with the half-lidded gaze of a man drugged. He blinked repeatedly. Didn’t help. Total darkness. He had a pounding headache. He could feel dried blood on his forehead. It pinched his skin every time he blinked.

The thin materials of his tuxedo shirt and pants weren’t enough. The stone floor was ice cold. Stone cold. He sat up. Promptly slammed his head into the ceiling.

Mother…

That explained the blood on his forehead and the pounding headache. Although either could have come from the fight. He doubted it. He had a feeling that had happened days ago.

But right now, that wasn’t the thing that really had his attention. The manacles did. He raised his hands. He couldn’t see them. Couldn’t see anything. But he heard the clink of metal and felt the cold weight of steel. The pressure grated his wrists and ached against his bare ankles and ice-cold feet.

He looped his hands around the chains and pulled.

Sharp coils of pain, twisted into wrist, skin, bones. He pulled. Again and again. The manacles clanked. Pain jolted up his arms.

Shivering all the way down to his ass bone, he felt along the gritty stone and traced the outline of a ring. It was embedded deep into cement.

He lifted a hand so frigid his knuckles felt arthritic. He traced along the chips and flakes of the stone ceiling. Cold. Rough. Pitted. A stone coffin. Or if you happened to be a prisoner in France during the Middle Ages, an oubliette, a place of forgetting.

Forgotten would not be his fate. No. They’d brought him here to torture him.

They thought he was the one who’d organized the Jordan hit.

That meant pain. Lots of pain. They might even ask him a question or two. But mostly, they’d want to hurt him as badly and for as long as they could.

“You’re quiet.”

Sandesh jumped. His head slapped stone again. Fuck.

The voice had sounded as gritty as sandpaper. He peered into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

“The one you sentenced here.”

A Russian. He’d sentenced a Russian here? Great. The guy was a nutjob. He hoped his hands were manacled too.

“Sorry, buddy. You’ve got the wrong guy.” Maybe the wrong century. How long could someone stay alive down here? Or was he speaking with a ghost?

The man shifted in the dark. Metal scraped against metal. Not a ghost. And chained too. Good.

“Liar. The woman you sent to kill my bosses caused this.”

Sandesh laughed. It was that damn funny. Funny enough to overcome his pounding head, the rough tongue, dried throat, and manacled hands. That damn funny.

“Like I said, wrong guy.” Hell, wrong gender. Still, keeping him talking might get answers. Like where they were. And if this guy was any kind of threat. Or a plant. “But we’ve got time. Tell me about it. How long have you been here?”

The Russian gave a humorless laugh, dull and pitiful. His laughter dissolved into tears. His tears broke into coughing. Gunshot-loud, hacking coughs ricocheted off the stone. The man was close. The space was small. Maybe ten by ten. Sounded like he was across from him.

The man stopped coughing. He wheezed, took a few wet, careful breaths.

Sandesh waited for him to catch his breath. And then softly, soft enough to evoke a response, said, “I’m Sandesh. What’s your name?”

“Dmitri.”

Dmitri. The man had obviously been one of the guards for the sex-slavers. The brothers Justice had called the Brothers Grim. Well, at least one of them deserved to be imprisoned and tortured here. Best not to mention that. “Where are we, Dmitri?”

“Mexico. The woman”—he coughed and made a wheezing sound—“Justice.” He practically twisted the word on his tongue. “I find her name ironic.”

Girl was getting a reputation. “You and a lot of other people.”

He moaned. A deep, pained sound. His every breath was laced with moisture. “I’m dying. It hurts.”

“That’s been going around.”

“Sandesh?” He whispered it. Almost as if it were an entire question and not a name. His breath was labored. He was dying. “Will you kill…him?”

“Who?” Sandesh shifted his legs. The shackles on his ankles clinked.

“The man who begs but never means it. Walid.”

Great. A poetic Russian. What were the chances? “Not sure I’m in a position to make that promise.”

Dmitri coughed again. His coughs sounded more like sobs. “They will bring you out. Strap you…to a chair. The first time…you still have strength. Act then. Don’t do as I did.” He coughed and fell into a long moment of gasps. Sandesh cringed at the wetness.

“I thought to satisfy him and live.” He laughed as if at another person, a dumber person who had done something naively amusing. His laughter erupted into coughs.

He wheezed. It was so dark that sound was the best way to tell the guy was still alive. “Walid tortured you? Himself?”

“Yes. Him. He likes it.”

He must. It had been weeks since Jordan. Not good.

“Describe the room. The instruments. Tell me as much as you can.”