Tormentor Mine

by Anna Zaires

  “Stop! Please!” The scream is wrenched out of me. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you.”

  The water turns off, and the cloth is pulled off my face. “Speak.”

  I’m sobbing and coughing too hard to form a coherent sentence, so he pulls me off the counter to the floor and crouches to encircle me in his arms. To someone looking in, it might’ve seemed like a consoling embrace or a lover’s protective hold. Adding to the illusion, my torturer’s voice is soft and gentle as he croons in my ear, “Tell me, Sara. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll leave.”

  “He’s—” I stop a second from blurting out the truth. The panicked animal inside me demands survival at all costs, but I can’t do this. I can’t lead this monster to George. “He’s in Advocate Christ Hospital,” I choke out. “The long-term care unit.”

  It’s a lie, and apparently not a good one, because the arms around me tighten, nearly crushing my bones. “Don’t fucking bullshit me.” The soft croon in his voice is gone, replaced by biting rage. “He’s gone from there—has been gone for months. Where is he hiding?”

  I’m sobbing harder. “I… I don’t—”

  My assailant rises to his feet, pulling me up with him, and I scream and struggle as he drags me toward the sink. “No! Please, no!” I’m hysterical as he lifts me onto the counter, my bound hands swinging as I try to claw at his face. My heels drum on the granite as he straddles me, pinning me in place again, and bile rises in my throat as he grips my hair, arching my head back into the sink. “Stop!”

  “Tell me the truth, and I’ll stop.”

  “I—I can’t. Please, I can’t!” I can’t do this to George, not after everything. “Stop, please!”

  The wet cloth slaps over my face, and my throat seizes in panic. The water is still off, but I’m already drowning; I can’t breathe, can’t breathe…

  “Fuck!”

  I’m abruptly yanked off the counter and onto the floor, where I collapse in a sobbing, shaking heap. Only this time, there are no arms to restrain me, and I dimly realize he stepped away.

  I should get up and run, but I can’t make my legs function. All I can manage is a pathetic roll to the side, followed by an attempt at a crawl. The fear is blinding, disorienting, and I can’t see anything in the darkness.

  I can’t see him.

  Run, I will my limp, shaking muscles. Get up and run.

  Sucking in air, I grab at something—a countertop corner—and pull myself up to my feet. Only it’s too late; he’s already on me, the hard band of his arm wrapping around my ribcage as he grabs me from behind.

  “Let’s see if this works better,” he whispers, and something cold and sharp stabs me in the neck.

  A needle, I realize with a jolt of terror, and my consciousness fades away.

  * * *

  A face swims in front of my eyes. It’s a handsome face, beautiful even, despite the scar that bisects the left eyebrow. High, slanted cheekbones, steel-gray eyes framed by black lashes, a strong jaw darkened by five-o’clock shadow—a man’s face, my mind supplies fuzzily. His hair is thick and dark, longer on the top than the sides. Not an old man, then, but not a teenager either. A man in his prime.

  The face is wearing a frown, its features set in harsh, grim lines. “George Cobakis,” the hard, sculpted mouth says. It’s a sexy mouth, well shaped, but I hear the words as though from a megaphone in the distance. “Do you know where he is?”

  I nod, or at least I attempt to. My head feels heavy, my neck strangely sore. “Yes, I know where he is. I thought I knew him too, but I didn’t, not really. Do you ever really know someone? I don’t think so, or at least I didn’t know him. I thought I knew, but I didn’t. All those years together, and everyone thought we were so perfect. The perfect couple, they called us. Can you believe it? The perfect couple. We were the cream of the crop, the young doctor and the rising star journalist. They said he’d win a Pulitzer prize one day.” I’m vaguely aware I’m babbling, but I can’t stop. The words pour out of me, all the pent-up bitterness and pain. “My parents were so proud, so happy on our wedding day. They had no idea, no idea at all about what was come, what would happen—”

  “Sara. Focus on me,” the megaphone voice says, and I catch a hint of a foreign accent. It pleases me, that accent, makes me want to reach over and press my hand to those sculpted lips, then run my fingers over that hard jaw to see if it’s bristly. I like bristly. George would often come home from his trips abroad, and he’d be all bristly and I liked it. I liked it, though I’d tell him to shave. He looked better clean-shaven, but I liked feeling the bristle sometimes, liked feeling that roughness on my thighs when he’d—

  “Sara, stop,” the voice cuts in, and the frown on the exotically handsome face deepens.

  I was speaking out loud, I realize, but I don’t feel embarrassed, not at all. The words don’t belong to me; they just come of their own accord. My hands act of their own accord too, attempting to reach over to that face, but something stops them, and when I lower my heavy head to look down, I see a plastic zip tie around my wrists, with a man’s big hand over my palms. It’s warm, that hand, and it’s holding my hands pinned down on my lap. Why is it doing that? Where did the hand come from? When I look up in confusion, the face is closer, its gray eyes peering into mine.

  “I need you to tell me where your husband is,” the mouth says, and the megaphone moves closer. It sounds like it’s right next to my ear. I cringe, but at the same time, that mouth intrigues me. Those lips make me want to touch them, lick them, feel them on my—wait. They’re asking something.

  “Where my husband is?” My voice sounds like it’s bouncing off the walls.

  “Yes, George Cobakis, your husband.” The lips look tempting as they form the words, and the accent caresses my insides despite the persistent megaphone effect. “Tell me where he is.”

  “He’s safe. He’s in a safe house,” I say. “They could come for him. They didn’t want him to run that story, but he did. He was brave like that, or stupid—probably stupid, right?—and then the accident happened, but they could still come for him, because they do that. The mafia doesn’t care that he’s a vegetable now, a cucumber, a tomato, a zucchini. Well, tomato is a fruit, but he’s a vegetable. A broccoli, maybe? I don’t know. It’s not important, anyway. It’s just that they want to make an example of him, threaten other journalists who’d stand up to them. That’s what they do; that’s how they operate. It’s all about greasing palms and bribing, and when you shed light on that—”

  “Where is the safe house?” There is a dark light in those steely eyes. “Tell me the address of the safe house.”

  “I don’t know the address, but it’s on the corner near Ricky’s Laundromat in Evanston,” I say to those eyes. “They always bring me there in a car, so I don’t know the exact address, but I saw that building from a window. There are at least two men in that car, and they drive around forever, switch cars sometimes too. It’s because of the mafia, because they might be watching. They always send a car for me, and they couldn’t this weekend. Scheduling conflict, they said. It happens sometimes; the guards’ shifts don’t align and—”

  “How many guards are there?”

  “Three, sometimes four. They’re these big military guys. Or ex-military, I don’t know. They just have that look. I don’t know why, but they all have that look. It’s like witness protection, but not, because he needs special care and I can’t leave my job. I don’t want to leave my job. They said they could move me, have me disappear, but I don’t want to disappear. My patients need me, plus my parents. What would I do with my parents? Never see or call them again? No, that’s crazy. So they disappeared the vegetable, the cucumber, the broccoli—”

  “Sara, hush.” Fingers press against my mouth, stopping the stream of words, and the face moves even closer. “You can stop now. It’s over,” the sexy mouth murmurs, and I open my lips, sucking in those fingers. I can taste salt and skin, and I want more, so I swirl my tongue around the f
ingers, feeling the roughness of the calluses and the blunt edges of the short nails. It’s been so long since I’ve touched someone, and my body heats from this small taste, from the look in those silver eyes.

  “Sara…” The accented voice is lower now, deeper and softer. It’s less of a megaphone and more of a sensual echo, like music done on a synthesizer. “You don’t want to go there, ptichka.”

  Oh, but I do. I want to go there badly. I keep swirling my tongue around the fingers, and I watch the gray eyes darken, the pupils visibly expanding. It’s a sign of arousal, I know, and it makes me want to do more. It makes me want to kiss those sculpted lips, rub my cheek against that bristly jaw. And the hair, that thick dark hair. Would it feel soft or springy? I want to know, but I can’t move my hands, so I just take the fingers deeper into my mouth, making love to them with my lips and tongue, sucking on them like they’re candy.

  “Sara.” The voice is thick and husky, the face tight with barely restrained hunger. “You have to stop, ptichka. You’ll regret this tomorrow.”

  Regret? Yes, I probably will. I regret everything, so many things, and I release the fingers to say so. But before I can utter a word, the fingers pull away from my lips, and the face moves farther away.

  “Don’t leave me.” The cry is plaintive, like that of a clingy child. I want more of that human touch, that connection. My head feels like a bag of rocks, and I ache all over, especially near my neck and shoulders. My belly is cramping too. I want someone to brush my hair and massage my neck, to hold me and rock me like a baby. “Please, don’t leave.”

  Something resembling pain crosses the man’s face, and I feel the cold prick of the needle in my neck again.

  “Goodbye, Sara,” the voice murmurs, and I’m gone, my mind floating away like a fallen leaf.

  4

  Sara

  * * *

  The headache. I first become aware of the headache. My skull feels like it’s splitting into pieces, the waves of pain a drumbeat in my brain.

  “Dr. Cobakis… Sara, can you hear me?” The female voice is soft and gentle, but it fills me with dread. There’s worry in that voice, mixed with restrained urgency. I hear that tone in the hospital all the time, and it’s never good.

  Trying not to move my throbbing skull, I pry my eyelids open and blink spasmodically at the bright light. “What… where…” My tongue is thick and unwieldy, my mouth painfully dry.

  “Here, sip this.” A straw is placed near my mouth, and I latch on to it, greedily sucking in the water. My eyes are starting to adjust to the light, and I can make out the room. It’s a hospital, but not my hospital, judging from the unfamiliar decor. Also, I’m not where I usually am. I’m not standing by someone’s hospital bed; I’m lying in one.

  “What happened?” I ask hoarsely. As my mind clears, I become aware of nausea and an array of aches and pains. My back feels like one giant bruise, and my neck is stiff and sore. My throat feels raw too, as though I’ve been screaming or vomiting, and when I lift my hand to touch it, I find a thick bandage on the right side of my neck.

  “You were attacked, Dr. Cobakis,” a middle-aged black woman says softly, and I recognize her voice as the one who spoke earlier. She’s dressed in nursing scrubs, but somehow she doesn’t look like a nurse. When I stare at her blankly, she clarifies, “In your house. There was a man. Do you remember anything about that?”

  I blink, straining to make sense of that confusing statement. I feel like a giant cotton ball has been stuffed into my brain, alongside the beating drum. “My house? Attacked?”

  “Yes, Dr. Cobakis,” a male voice answers, and I flinch instinctively, my pulse jumping before I recognize the voice. “But you’re safe now. It’s over. This is a private facility where we treat our agents; you’re safe here.”

  Carefully turning my aching head, I gaze at Agent Ryson, and my stomach hollows at the expression on his pale, weathered face. Bits and pieces of my ordeal are filtering in, and with the memories comes a surge of terror.

  “George, is he—”

  “I’m sorry.” The creases in Ryson’s forehead deepen. “There was an attack on the safe house last night as well. George… He didn’t make it. Neither did the three guards.”

  “What?” It’s as if a scalpel punctured my lungs. I can’t take in his words, can’t process the enormity of them. “He’s… he’s gone?” Then the rest of his statement sinks in. “And the three guards? What… how—”

  “Dr. Cobakis—Sara.” Ryson steps closer. “I need to know exactly what happened last night, so we can apprehend him.”

  “Him? Who’s him?” It’s always been them, the mafia, and I’m too dazed for the sudden change in pronoun. George is gone. George and three guards. I can’t wrap my mind around that, so I don’t try. Not yet, at least. Before I let the grief and pain in, I need to recover more of those memories, piece together the horrifying puzzle.

  “She might not remember. The cocktail in her blood was pretty potent,” the nurse says, and I realize she must be with Agent Ryson. That would explain why he’s speaking so freely in front of her when he’s usually discreet to the point of paranoia.

  As I process that, the woman steps closer. I’m hooked up to a vital signs monitor, and she checks the blood pressure cuff around my arm, then gives my forearm a light squeeze. I look at my arm, and a cold fist grips my chest when I see a thin red line around my wrist. The other wrist has it too.

  Zip tie. The recollection comes to me with sudden clarity. There was a zip tie around my wrists.

  “He waterboarded me. When I wouldn’t tell him where George was, he stuck a needle in my neck.”

  I don’t realize I spoke out loud until I see the horror on the nurse’s face. Agent Ryson’s expression is more restrained, but I can tell I shocked him too.

  “I’m so sorry about that.” His voice is tight. “We should’ve foreseen this, but he hadn’t gone after the families of the others, and you didn’t want to move away… Still, we should’ve known he wouldn’t stop at anything—”

  “What others? Who is he?” My voice rises as more memories assault my mind. Knife at my throat, wet cloth over my face, needle in my neck, can’t breathe, can’t breathe…

  “Karen, she’s having a panic attack! Do something.” Ryson’s voice is frantic as the monitors start to beep. I’m hyperventilating and shaking, yet I somehow find the strength to glance at those monitors. My blood pressure is spiking, and my pulse is dangerously fast, but seeing those numbers steadies me. I’m a doctor. This is my environment, my comfort zone.

  I can do this. Suck in air. Let it out. I’m not weak. Suck in air. Let it out.

  “That’s good, Sara. Just breathe.” Karen’s voice is soft and soothing as she strokes my arm. “You’re getting the hang of it. Just take another deep breath. There you go. Good job. Now another. And one more…”

  I follow her gentle instructions as I watch the numbers on the monitors, and slowly, the suffocating sensation recedes and my vitals normalize. More dark memories are edging in, but I’m not ready to face them yet, so I shove them aside, slam a mental door on them as tightly as I can.

  “Who is he?” I ask when I can speak again. “What do you mean by ‘the others?’ George wrote that article by himself. Why is the mafia after someone else?”

  Agent Ryson exchanges looks with Karen, then turns to me. “Dr. Cobakis, I’m afraid we weren’t entirely truthful with you. We didn’t disclose the real situation to protect you, but clearly, we failed in that.” He takes a breath. “It wasn’t the local mafia who was after your husband. It was an international fugitive, a dangerous criminal your husband encountered on an assignment abroad.”

  “What?” My head throbs painfully, the revelations almost too much to take in. George started off as a foreign correspondent, but in the last five years, he’d been taking on more and more domestic stories. I’d wondered about that, given his passion for foreign affairs, but when I asked, he told me he wanted to spend more time home with me,
and I let it drop.

  “This man, he has a list of people who have crossed him—or who he thinks have crossed him,” Ryson says. “I’m afraid George was on that list. The exact circumstances around that and the identity of the fugitive are classified, but given what happened, you deserve to know the truth—at least as much of it as I’m allowed to disclose.”

  I stare at him. “It was one man? A fugitive?” A face pops into my mind, a harshly beautiful male face. It’s hazy, like an image from a dream, but somehow I know it’s him, the man who invaded my home and did those terrible things to me.

  Ryson nods. “Yes. He’s highly trained and has vast resources, which is why he’s been able to stay ahead of us for so long. He has connections everywhere, from Eastern Europe to South America to the Middle East. When we learned that your husband’s name was on his list, we took George to the safe house, and we should’ve done the same with you. We just thought that—” He stops and shakes his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter what we thought. We underestimated him, and now four men are dead.”

  Dead. Four men are dead. It hits me then, the knowledge that George is gone. I hadn’t registered it before, not really. My eyes begin to burn, and my chest feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise. In a burst of clarity, the puzzle pieces click into place.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” I sit up, ignoring the wave of dizziness and pain. “I did this. I somehow gave away the safe house location.”

  Ryson exchanges another look with the nurse, and my heart drops. They’re not answering my question, but their body language speaks volumes.

  I’m responsible for George’s death. For all four deaths.

  “It’s not your fault, Dr. Cobakis.” Karen touches my arm again, her brown eyes filled with sympathy. “The drug he gave you would’ve broken anyone. Are you familiar with sodium thiopental?”

  “The barbiturate anesthetic?” I blink at her. “Of course. It was widely used to induce anesthesia until propofol became the standard. What does—oh.”