Chapter 44
I hear male voices, but my eyes don’t want to open. I try harder. My eyelids seem glued together. Two of them—no, three—are talking in a language I don’t understand. I lift my head; my neck hurts. Finally, I manage to open my eyes.
Everything seems blurry, but I can make out the contours. The three men are sitting around a small table, smoking. A lamp above the table casts a focal light on the brown wooden surface, knots of smoke floating and reshaping in the air. Everything else is hidden in the shadows.
My stomach feels nauseous and I can still smell the residue of the intense-smelling cloth.
I look down. I’m sitting on a wooden chair with my hands behind me and my ankles strapped together with silvery duct tape. How did I get here? I try to think back.
The driving . . . the gas station . . .
Yes, I remember.
Stupid.
I should have been more careful.
Oh, but I felt so safe with Sam.
My throat is dry and itchy. I need to cough, but I force myself not to. I don’t want to draw any attention to me.
I slowly look around the room. It’s very dim, but I can see no furniture other than the wooden table and the chairs in front of me. The laminate floor is worn from use.
I turn sideways.
The windows on my right start at shoulder height and reach the top of the very high ceiling. They remind me of old warehouse windows.
It’s completely dark outside.
No lights from other buildings.
I sigh inwardly. We are in a secluded place, far from anyone else.
My throat still itches and I cough through my closed mouth, trying to be silent. But I’m not silent enough, because one of the men turns in my direction and stands up, pushing his chair back. The chair legs squeak against the floor.
He says something to the others, but I don’t understand it.
He comes closer and I can make out his face. He’s tanned, with dark hair and dark eyes; almost handsome—if he were not where he is and I were not where I am. He smiles, and I almost have an instinctive urge to smile back until I see he’s holding a gun in one hand. He brings the gun close to my face and moves a strand of my hair with the muzzle.
I shiver.
The man with the gun turns around and says something to the other two sitting at the table, then one of the men pulls an old-looking black telephone closer and dials a number.
After a few moments, he says in heavily accented English, “We have the girl. What do we do?”
He waits for several moments. Then he moves the handset away, covering the mouthpiece with his hand, and turns to the gunman with a question.
Gun takes my chin in his fingers and turns my head one way and then the other. “Yu sim awake enough, no?” Then he says something back.
The man at the table puts the phone back to his ear and continues, “We will find out what she knows. We will call you back.”
He remains on the phone for a few seconds longer. “Yes, is clear, sir. You don’t need to worry, sir, we know what we doing.” Then he hangs up.
He turns to Gun and says something.
Gun nods his head, still looking at me. “Good, good,” he says, a sly grin on his face. “Let’s find out what yu know, swithart.”
Then he moves away, saying something to the other two. They stand up. Both are really large men. As they approach, I feel my muscles start to shake.
I know this: the fight-or-flight instinct. But right now, I can do neither.
They stand next to me, grab me under my arms, and lift me up, then drag me to the table. Once there, Gun pulls a chair behind me and the two guys holding me drop me hard onto the wooden chair, the legs of it creaking from the force.
The jarring movement makes my head throb. I close my eyes and try to steady my head.
“Open yor eyes, swithart.” The sound is disgustingly close to my ear.
I open my eyes. In front of me there is now a laptop, and on the screen is a window with many different folder icons.
I look at them.
A creepy, tingly feeling starts crawling up my legs, up my spine.
The name of each folder starts with the same three letters: FDM.
I shut my eyes hard.
“What is it, swithart?” Gun asks. “Yu recognize this, no?” And he laughs.
With my eyes still closed, I ask, “What did you do? Where is Francesco?”
These folders come from Frank’s memory stick.
These are his Crazy Gro data.
I open my eyes and look at Gun from the corner of my eyes. He straightens up and puts an index finger to his mouth, tapping his lips. “Now, let me think. Well”—he looks down at me—“let’s just say he won’t be niding it anymore.”
I start shaking my head, first slowly, then more violently. “No! No, I don’t believe you!”
“Swithart, yu better believe it.” Then he presses a hand hard on the top of my head. “Now, let’s not shake this brain of yors; otherwise, we don’t get much information, just like we did not with yor little friend.” He leans in closer. “He was useless.”
I close my eyes, the tears pouring through. He was brave.
“Now, now! Open yor eyes. Yu are going to help us. Yu si, we are on tight schedule here. Only thri wiks to go. We nid antidote.”
I swallow and open my eyes, my voice thick. “Three weeks until what? Which antidote?”
“Bomb, swithart. It’s going to go boom!” He opens his eyes while making a round motion with his hands. “Right in center.”
“Center of what?”
“New York, swithart. Where else?”
All of a sudden, the man sitting next to me, who’d been quiet the whole time, stands up and starts shouting at Gun, raising his hands in agitation.
Gun turns to him and shouts back, waving a hand. The man stops and slowly sits back down, while Gun turns back toward me, slowly shaking his head. “No . . . she’s not going anywhere.” Then he opens the laptop further. “Now, what yu nid to tell me is how to stop growth.”
I frown. “I don’t know. We didn’t have time to find that out.” Asshole!
Gun smiles flatly. “Well . . . yor little friend saw something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, swithart! No nid to pretend. We have yor whole lab bugged. We know every word yu say. And we know Francesco called yu, and that he was really eager to tell yu something. We think he find answer.”
Did he really?
Gun narrows his eyes. “So yu si, there is no point pretending. He had answer. And now yu are going to look at his results and yu are going to tell us what he saw.”
I lift my chin up. “Watch me!”
The man lifts his head up and starts to laugh, a loud, forced sound. Then he abruptly stops and looks at me. “We have hero right here.”
Damn right you do!
Then he tilts his head sideways. “Well, there is something that will make yu talk. Something that will make yu sing like bird.”
A tight squeeze around my heart. Oh, no!
“Yu si, in room behind yu, strapped to chair just like yu—we have yor boyfriend.”