by Linda Ladd
“I get it. You’re the nice badass of the family, right? Mr. Good Guy? So you don’t have your own personal little weighted sap to carry around? Maybe yours is blue so you won’t get it mixed up with your sister’s pink one?”
“You are trying again to provoke me, Ms. Morgan. Clumsily, I might add, and without much finesse. That won’t happen. No matter what you do or what you say, or how outrageous you behave, I will not succumb to your antics. That is because you have already shown me your hand.”
“Is that right? How so?”
“Yes, it is.”
Silence reigned while Claire waited for him to tell her how she’d shown him her hand. He didn’t speak for a moment, and then he looked her over some more and decided to oblige her. “All I have to do is take that kid there and put him back in the hands of my sister. You keep up the smart-ass talk and that’s exactly what I’ll do. She thinks of him as an animal, you know. She treats him worse than any animal. Much worse than I treat Zeus back there. She shocks that kid with the collar so she can listen to him cry. I find it disgusting and perverted, but it seems to amuse her.”
“And so it doesn’t bother you all that much? No fatherly instincts at all for little innocent babies like this kid hidden behind that icy façade of yours? Strike that, human instincts?”
“He’s not my son. He’s nothing to me. He’s a means to an end. He’s a little thief and liar, just like Jaxy said. But he helped us get your boyfriend under our control, and now he’s going to help us manage you. That’s all he is to me. He is expendable and so are you. I advise you to remember that. If you don’t, I’ll cut his throat from ear to ear and right in front of you. Don’t doubt me and don’t provoke my sister again.”
Claire knew he was right on about her and the kid, of course, with each and every word that he had uttered in such cold, matter-of-fact finality. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to hurt the little kid while she was around. Not without a fight. She pretended not to be affected by his threats, but she was scared to death of him all right. He was telling her the truth about his intentions, and she definitely believed him.
“All righty then,” she said, as breezily as she could muster when newly terrified out of her mind. “Nice chatting with you. So how about that chow? Jeez, I can hear my stomach growling. And while we’re on the subject of you not being a gentleman, is there a ladies’ room around here somewhere? I really do need to freshen up. Comb my hair and slap on some lipstick. You know, that girlie kinda stuff.”
To her surprise, he rose, and even smiled politely. “Please pardon me for my rudeness and inconsideration. I have always been careful to behave as a gentleman to ladies, despite my family’s reputation. Allow me to escort you. But if you make a move against me or one of my men and especially with Jaxy, I will put you down. And then I will put that boy down. Understand me, Ms. Morgan?”
“Sure. I am your prisoner, and you’re a big tough guy who is being magnanimous at the moment, but watch out or all hell can break loose and you will beat up on a captive woman half your size and a tiny little kid. Got it.”
That brought the barest hint of a frown between his rust-colored eyebrows. “Just so you understand. My patience with you is limited, and you are growing tiresome.” He stepped back and gestured for her to rise. “Please, Ms. Morgan, after you.”
Claire stood up, still holding the sleeping child in her arms. She’d be damned if she’d put him down for the girl to jerk around and shock senseless. She wasn’t letting go of him again, not ever, not until they forced him out of her cold dead hands, and good luck with that, even then. “No need to come along, I can find my way. Just point me in the right direction.”
Max said nothing, just gestured her up toward the front of the plane. She walked in front of him, glad to be up and walking around. She needed to stretch her legs, remain nimble and ready to take any chance they gave her. Let him get used to her being docile. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she could escape, not seven or eight miles up and at a cruising speed of five hundred miles per hour. And she wanted to get Black out alive. She was all he had now, at least until Booker and company arrived and saved the day, if they ever did arrive. It was highly likely now that she might have to get Black out by her wits alone. That wasn’t gonna be easy, but hell, nothing in her life had ever been easy. And that was putting it mildly.
Killing Black
The extreme cold temperature finally began to warm up a bit, but not before Black felt as if he were already frozen. The room was pitch black again, a frigid, dark nothingness that surrounded him and dulled all his faculties. The extreme shivering had stopped and that was not a good sign. That was the sign of hypothermia that he had been dreading.
Stiffening, he blinked under the sudden glare when all the lights came back on. The television screens in front of him flashed on, too, but with one image this time, a photograph of Claire’s A-frame house on the lake. But that was it, just that stationary shot of her house and dock. The center screen looked like a video feed. In the distance of that picture, he could see branches moving at the top of the big oak tree in her front yard and more leaves fluttering on bushes close to the video camera lens.
By the angle of the picture, he believed the camera was most likely set up just across the cove from Claire’s cabin, somehow concealed in the thick wooded hills over there. He watched the digital timer counting down at the bottom of the picture, ticking down from thirty. It was on twenty now, and he waited, not sure what to expect. He held his breath when it reached five, then four, then three, then two, then one. The clock disappeared, and he realized it was just another one of their mind games designed to make him crazy with worry about her. But then, suddenly, without warning, Claire’s cabin just exploded, with a cloud of black smoke and fingers of fire that shot flames high up into the sky. Timber and debris and remnants of furniture and clothing rained down as a fiery blaze caught and roared alive and more debris fell into the front yard and littered the water out in front of the dock. While he watched in shock, more debris and timbers continued to splash down into the lake.
Stunned, Black stared at the destroyed house, now burning out of control, and then he started straining and pulling desperately against the leather straps, disbelieving what he’d seen with his own two eyes. The image disappeared then; the screen went black. Oh, God, what if Claire had been inside that house? What if she was dead? He couldn’t stand to think about it, but then a deep voice sounded inside the room with him.
“Now you know how I felt, Dr. Black.” It was Marcel Soquet’s voice. Black recognized it from the one time he’d met the man. He turned his head and looked at the doorway. His avowed enemy now stood in the threshold, leaning on a black cane with a curved top. He looked a lot older than he had a decade ago when Lorraine had introduced them in Israel, his red hair gone now to complete baldness. He had aged a great deal all right, his ruddy face lined and pale. He had suffered more than one mild heart attack and was on cardiac meds, and he looked like he’d been very ill for a very long time.
But at the moment, he was smiling. “Your lovely Claire is dead now. You saw it. I want you to know that she was inside that house when it went up in that big fireball, no doubt worrying about you and longing for the day you would come back to her. Yes, she died as horrifically as my lovely wife did. Lorraine was a good woman, too, until you corrupted her with lies and made her betray me, her own husband who loved her more than anything else in the world.”
“You blew her up yourself, Marcel. You murdered her in cold blood. You built that bomb and you gave the order. Or maybe you set the explosives under her car yourself. And why? She didn’t do anything except beg you to stop providing arms to terrorists. She wanted you to stop killing innocent people, but you couldn’t do that, could you?”
Marcel spoke again, as if Black hadn’t croaked out his accusations.
“Ms. Morgan’s friends are dead, too. So are most of yours. So is everybody in your family. It was easy because they were all
gathered together inside that house to wait on news of you. You see, because that explosion you just watched? It was filmed on your wedding day, while they were all there in one big, easy target, all dressed up and waiting for you to come home. It’s really rather sad, is it not? To lose everyone you love in the mere blink of an eye. But now you know how I felt when Lorraine betrayed me. Now you will feel the loss and the pain and the anger I have suffered all these many years.”
Inside, Black cringed and fought the thought of losing everybody he loved, of losing Claire. “I don’t believe you. It’s easy enough to digitally enhance videos. You’re bluffing. You want me to believe she’s dead. You could never have gotten a bomb into her place. It’s too well guarded.”
“Think what you will, doctor, but they are all dead. You will live a little longer, however, my old friend, because you will need to suffer the knowledge that everyone you love is dead and all because of you and your intrusion into my wife’s life. You caused her death. You made me kill her. And you will suffer for it. I will see to that.”
Black said nothing because he couldn’t stand to think about any of it being true. He watched Marcel turn and limp his way out of the room. The door closed, and the screen lit up again and he saw the explosion happen again. They ran the film for him to watch over and over and over again. He stared at it, not wanting to believe it was true, unable to bear the thought of Claire being dead. She couldn’t be. No way, no way could that have happened. Then he began to feel the first inkling of despair start up deep inside him. He tried to pull his thoughts together before the grief could overtake him.
Okay, think, think it through, he told himself. No, it was unlikely that Soquet or any of his men could have gotten on Claire’s property and planted an explosive device under the cabin or even hidden it elsewhere on the property. She had been there for weeks. Preparations had been going on around the yard and dock since before he left for Italy. Harve had a safety gate up the road beside his house that nobody got through without his permission or the password. Soquet would have the means and money to have a video digitally enhanced. That would be no problem for him. They wanted him to think Claire was dead, wanted him to suffer her death and obsess about it and go to pieces. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Claire was safe at home. The cabin was safe and right where it was when he left the lake. He could not let himself think otherwise, or he would lose it. He would crash.
For a while that explanation worked for Black, but then sometimes he would lose all hope for a few minutes and let himself believe that it really was her cabin in the film and that she was dead and gone. That everybody he cared about was dead and gone. Then, suddenly, in the midst of his inner torment and doubt, powerful sunlamps flashed on over his head, blazing down with wave after wave of extreme heat. He heard the heat vents in the dropped ceiling rattle and begin blowing air into his prison, and at first, he was just glad he wouldn’t be cold anymore. Slowly the room grew more comfortable and Black’s half-frozen fingers and face and bare skin tingled as if being gouged with straight pins. But it felt good, warm, after being so cold for so long.
But it didn’t take very long, not under the broiling waves of the heat lamps, for the room to turn into a stifling sauna. The high temperature of the lamps burned into his skin. Sweat dripped off him, running in rivulets down his face and body, and then after a while, he stopped sweating, dehydrated now from complete lack of water. That’s when he began to feel sick, and his arms and legs grew weak, his mind not quite able to string coherent thoughts together. He fought off his growing anxiety, but his deteriorating condition threatened to overwhelm him.
Again, he told himself that he had to stay calm. He could not lose it. That’s what they wanted him to do. To lapse into complete panic. This was just the next stage of breaking him. Extreme cold and then hot environments. He knew that was one of their techniques, and he knew they probably wouldn’t kill him this soon. He could not struggle against the bindings or beg for mercy. He could not scream or moan. He could not do any of that. He could not. He had to steel himself and conserve his energy for what else would come.
So he sat quietly in the chair, and as still as he could, and told himself that he could not go to pieces, that help was on its way. That Booker and Holliday were alive and most likely winging their way across the Atlantic to find him, if they weren’t already there. That was the protocol they had put in place, in the event that any one of them was taken by the enemy. His GPS would lead them to him, and they would eventually show up. Then they would storm the place and free him. It would just take some time. He had to hold on a little longer, and he could do that. He could do it by force of his mind alone. And he would. By now, though, he’d lost all track of time or what day it was. But he couldn’t think about that.
He told himself that Booker was a good man and so was Holliday. Both were good soldiers. Both had done many similar missions at his side. They had gone in and rescued others from captivity, and they would be getting close now, making a good and thorough plan on how to get him out. He had to keep believing that. They knew he was alive and they were coming. They’d done successful hostage extractions, too, and they were good at it.
But what if they were dead, all of them, just like Soquet had said? Blown apart in that devastating explosion. No, they weren’t, he thought firmly. He’d seen Claire on FaceTime, but when had that been? Minutes before the explosion? Was she still inside when the bomb went off? No, no, he would not let himself think that way. It was all a hoax, a torture device designed to torment him. All he had to do was stay alive. And Claire was alive, too, he refused to believe anything else. She was alive and well and back home in Missouri. The film was a phony. They’d done things like this before and that’s what they’d done this time.
After a while, he fell into a shallow doze, his head dipping forward, his chin down on his chest, but each time he sought relief through mindless sleep, the ear-shattering music blared on, pumped into his prison, full blast and deafening. They wanted him sleep deprived, of course. He knew that. And he knew the danger of that. He would grow weaker and weaker mentally. Especially suffering thirst and hunger. He would eventually go stark raving mad. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they were waiting for.
Black looked up at the camera. The red light blinked steadily. He wondered who was observing him, probably taking copious notes, planning the next psychological technique. Probably Marcel, enjoying the show, enjoying every minute of Black’s suffering. That’s why he had been brought here. To suffer, and then to die. Black remembered from his research on the man that Marcel now let his children do a lot of the maiming and killing for him, especially after his heart attacks. And he had taught them well. They were known far and wide for their brutality.
More hours passed. Black again tried to gauge how long he’d been inside the room. Couldn’t begin to figure it out. He had lost all track of time. To him, it felt like days and days of misery and deprivation, weeks on end, but there was no way to know for sure. His best guess was three or four days. If they were feeding him, he might be able to tell from when the meals were served to him, maybe. But they weren’t feeding him or giving him water. He had stopped being hungry, but the thirst was different. It was agony; he could barely swallow.
Black knew that was probably what was going to get him in the long term. Lack of hydration. He was so thirsty; his mouth so dry that he no longer could work up saliva. He had sweated out what little hydration that was left inside his body. He had seen no one in a long time, talked to no one, except for Marcel and when Jaxy and her two men used the hose on him. At least that had given him enough blessed water to quench his throat. No voices came out over the loudspeaker, just the thunderous music, but they often played the false news accounts of his death. Over and over and over until he almost went crazy with the sound of it. Then they would show Claire’s cabin exploding over and over, and he watched for digital enhancements and convinced himself again that it was fake. He was now in solitary confinemen
t and they would keep him there for a long time. But he was still in Phase One, Jaxy’s domain, the breaking down of his mind and will, and that would continue for quite some time. But not forever.
Chapter Seven
Max Soquet was no doubt still waiting outside the plane’s lavatory for Claire to emerge, probably pretending he really was a gentleman, with his nose still in what had to be the most fascinating book in the world. He loitered there, relaxed, but fully armed to the teeth and with his monster dog, Zeus, just waiting for the kill command. Claire helped the child go to the toilet, and then she took time to wash his face and hands. It looked as if he hadn’t had a bath in a very long time. Jaxy probably wouldn’t let him clean up. She washed his hair, too, as best she could in the tiny sink with soap out of the dispenser, finger combed it, and then dried it with paper towels. Through all of it, he never said a word, only watched her with his big, sad, expressive dark eyes.
After she had him looking halfway presentable, she told him to turn his back and close his eyes while she took care of her own needs. The boy acted as docile as a lamb and always grave of demeanor and did everything she told him to, but whenever she let go of him, even for a minute, he began to quake all over and moan, soft and pitiably and awful, down low inside his throat.
Claire took enough time to examine and clean with soap and water the two lacerations where they’d dug out the GPS chips with their big knife. They had been placed just under her skin, so the puncture wounds didn’t bleed much. All it had taken was the tip of the goon’s blade slicing a slit and pressing the chip out with his finger. But she knew only too well that she was now on her own with no GPS safety net. She just prayed Booker would follow Black’s beacon, and if God was smiling, that’s where they would take her, too. The fact they were in the air behind them was the only thing keeping her halfway calm and in possession of her flayed nerves. Otherwise, she just might lapse into a state of pure panic. She didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want them to see any weakness in her, for fear of what they’d do then. She had a bad feeling that Max was saving her hide for something special, special meaning horrible and awful and deadly.