Tormentor Mine

by Anna Zaires

  “Yes,” Agent Ryson says. “I see you know about its other use. It’s rarely utilized that way, at least outside the intelligence community, but it’s quite effective as a truth serum. Lowers the higher cortical brain functions and makes the subjects chatty and cooperative. And this was a designer version, thiopental mixed with compounds we haven’t seen before.”

  “He drugged me to make me talk?” My stomach churns with bile. This explains the headache and the brain fog, and the knowledge that this was done to me—that I was violated like that—makes me want to scrub inside my skull with bleach. That man didn’t just invade my home; he invaded my mind, broke into it like a thief.

  “That’s our best guess, yes,” Ryson says. “You had a lot of this drug in your system when our agents found you tied up in your living room. There was also blood on your neck and thighs, and they initially thought that—”

  “Blood on my thighs?” I brace myself for a new horror. “Did he—”

  “No, don’t worry, he didn’t hurt you that way,” Karen says, shooting Ryson a dark look. “We did a full-body examination when you were brought in, and it was your menstrual blood, nothing more. There were no signs of sexual trauma. Other than a few bruises and the shallow cuts on your neck, you’re fine—or you will be, once the drugs wear off.”

  Fine. Hysterical laughter bubbles up my throat, and it takes all my strength not to let it escape. My husband and three other men are dead because of me. My home was broken into; my mind was broken into. And she thinks I’m going to be fine?

  “Why did you make up that lie about the mafia?” I ask, struggling to contain the expanding ball of pain in my chest. “How would that protect me?”

  “Because in the past, this fugitive hadn’t gone after the innocent—the wives and children of the people on his list who weren’t involved in any way,” Ryson says. “But he did kill one man’s sister because that man confided in her and involved her in the cover-up. The less you knew, the safer you were, especially since you didn’t want to relocate and disappear alongside your husband.”

  “Ryson, please,” Karen says sharply, but it’s too late. I’m already reeling from this new blow. Even if I could be forgiven for my drug-induced blabbing, my refusal to leave is solely on me. I’d been selfish, thinking of my parents and my career instead of the danger I could pose to my husband. I believed my safety was on the line, not his, but that’s no excuse.

  George’s death is on my conscience, just as much as the accident that damaged his brain.

  “Did he—” I swallow thickly. “Did he suffer? I mean… how did it happen?”

  “A bullet to the head,” Ryson answers in a subdued tone. “Same as the three men guarding him. I think it happened too quickly for any of them to suffer.”

  “Oh God.” My stomach heaves with sudden violence, and vomit rushes up my throat.

  Karen must’ve seen my face leach of color, because she acts fast, grabbing a metal tray off a nearby table and shoving it in my hands. It’s just in time too, because the contents of my stomach spill out, the acid burning my esophagus as I hold the tray with shaking hands.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. Here, let’s get you cleaned up.” Karen is all brisk efficiency, just like a real nurse. Whatever her role with the FBI is, she knows what to do in a medical setting. “Come, let me help you to the bathroom. You’ll feel better in a second.”

  Setting the tray on the bedside table, she loops an arm around my back to help me off the bed and leads me to the bathroom. My legs are shaking so hard I can barely walk; if it weren’t for her support, I wouldn’t have made it.

  Still, I need a moment of privacy, so I tell Karen, “Can you please step out for a moment? I’m okay for now.”

  I must sound convincing enough because Karen says, “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” and closes the door behind her.

  I’m sweating and shaking, but I manage to rinse out my mouth and brush my teeth. Then I take care of other urgent business, wash my hands, and splash cold water on my face. By the time Karen knocks on the door, I’m feeling a tiny bit more human.

  I’m also keeping my mind blank. If I think about the way George and the others died, I’ll throw up again. I’ve seen a number of gunshot wounds during my residency stint in the ER, and I know the devastating damage bullets inflict.

  Don’t think about it. Not yet.

  “Have my parents been notified?” I ask after Karen helps me return to the bed. She’s already removed the tray, and Agent Ryson is sitting in a chair next to the bed, his craggy face lined with weary tension.

  “No,” Karen says softly. “Not yet. We wanted to discuss that with you, actually.”

  I look at her, then at Ryson. “Discuss what?”

  “Dr. Cobakis—Sara—we think it might be best if the exact circumstances of your husband’s demise, as well as the attack on you, were kept confidential,” Ryson says. “It would save you a lot of unpleasant media attention, as well as—”

  “You mean, it would save you a lot of unpleasant media attention.” A spurt of anger chases away some of the haze in my mind. “That’s why I’m here, instead of a regular hospital. You want to cover this up, pretend it never happened.”

  “We want to keep you safe and help you move past this,” Karen says, her brown gaze earnest on my face. “Nothing good can come of blasting this story to all the papers. What happened was a terrible tragedy, but your husband was already on life support. You know better than anyone that it was only a matter of time before—”

  “What about the other three men?” I cut in sharply. “Were they on life support too?”

  “They died in the line of duty,” Ryson says. “Their families have already been informed, so you don’t have to worry about that. With George, you were his only family, so…”

  “So now I’ve been informed too.” My mouth twists. “Your conscience is appeased, and now it’s cleanup time. Or should I say ‘cover your ass’ time?”

  His face tightens. “This is still largely classified, Dr. Cobakis. If you go to the media, you’ll be stirring up a hornet’s nest, and trust me, you don’t want that. Neither would your husband, if he were alive. He didn’t want anyone to know about this matter, not even you.”

  “What?” I stare at the agent. “George knew? But—”

  “He didn’t know he was on the list, and neither did we,” Karen says, laying her hand on the back of Ryson’s chair. “We learned about that after the accident, and at that point, we did what we could to protect him.”

  My head is throbbing, but I push the pain away and try to concentrate on what they’re telling me. “I don’t understand. What happened on that assignment abroad? How did George get involved with this fugitive? And when?”

  “That’s the classified part,” Ryson says. “I’m sorry, but it’s really best if you leave it alone. We’re searching for your husband’s killer now, and we’re trying to protect the remaining people on his list. Given his resources, that’s not an easy task. If the media is on our heels, we won’t be able to do our job as effectively, and more people may die. Do you understand what I’m saying, Dr. Cobakis? For your safety, and that of other people, you have to let it drop.”

  I tense, recalling what the agent said about the others. “How many has he already killed?”

  “Too many, I’m afraid,” Karen says somberly. “We didn’t find out about the list until he got to several people in Europe, and by the time we were able to put the proper safeguards in place, there were only a few individuals left.”

  I draw in a shaky breath, my head spinning. I’d known what George did as a foreign correspondent, of course, and I’d read many of his articles and exposés, but those stories hadn’t felt entirely real to me. Even when Agent Ryson approached me nine months ago about the supposed mafia threat to George’s life, the fear I experienced was more academic than visceral. Outside of George’s accident and the painful years leading up to it, I’d led a charmed life, one filled with the typic
al suburban concerns about school, work, and family. International fugitives who torture and kill people on some mysterious list are so far outside my realm of experience I feel like I’ve been dropped into someone else’s life.

  “We know it’s a lot to take in,” Karen says gently, and I realize some of what I’m feeling must be written on my face. “You’re still in shock from the attack, and to learn about all this on top of that…” She inhales. “If you need someone to talk to, I know a good therapist who’s worked with soldiers with PTSD and such.”

  “No, I…” I want to refuse, tell her I don’t need anyone, but I can’t make my mouth form the lie. The ball of pain inside my chest is choking me from within, and despite my mental wall, more horrible memories are filtering in, flashes of darkness and helplessness and terror.

  “I’ll just leave you his card,” Karen says, stepping up to the bed, and I see her give the beeping monitors a worried glance. I don’t need to look at them to know that my heart rate is spiking again, my body going into an unnecessary fight-or-flight mode.

  My lizard brain doesn’t know that the memories can’t hurt me, that the worst has already happened. Unless—

  “Will I have to disappear?” I gasp out through a tightening throat. “Do you think he’ll—”

  “No,” Ryson says, immediately understanding my fear. “He won’t come for you again. He got what he wanted from you; there’s no reason for him to return. If you’d like, we can still look into relocating you, but—”

  “Shut it, Ryson. Can’t you see she’s hyperventilating?” Karen says sharply, gripping my arm. “Breathe, Sara,” she tells me in a soothing tone. “Come on, honey, just take that deep breath. And one more. There you go…”

  I follow along with her voice until my heart rate steadies again, and the worst of the memories are locked behind the mental wall. I’m still trembling, however, so Karen wraps a blanket around me and sits next to me on the bed, hugging me tight.

  “It’ll be okay, Sara,” she murmurs as the pain overflows and I begin to cry, the tears like streaks of lava on my cheeks. “It’s over. You’ll be okay. He’s gone, and he will never hurt you again.”

  5

  Peter

  * * *

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

  The priest’s droning voice reaches my ears, and I tune him out as I scan the crowd of mourners. There are over two hundred people here, all wearing dark clothes and somber expressions. Under the sea of black umbrellas, many eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, and some women are audibly crying.

  George Cobakis was popular during his lifetime.

  The thought should anger me, but it doesn’t. I don’t feel anything when I think of him, not even the satisfaction that he’s dead. The rage that’s consumed me for years has quieted for the moment, leaving me strangely empty.

  I stand at the back of the crowd, my black coat and umbrella like those of the other mourners. A light brown wig and a thin mustache disguise my appearance, as do my slouched posture and the flat pillow padding my midsection.

  I don’t know why I’m here. I’ve never attended any of the funerals before. Once a name is crossed off my list, my team and I move on to the next one, coldly and methodically. I’m a wanted man; it makes no sense to linger here, in this little suburban town, yet I can’t make myself leave.

  Not without seeing her again.

  My gaze travels from person to person, searching for a slender figure, and finally I see her, all the way at the front as befits the wife of the deceased. She’s standing next to an elderly couple, holding a big umbrella over the three of them, and even in a crowd, she manages to look remote, somehow distant from everyone.

  It’s like she exists on a different plane, like me.

  I recognize her by the chestnut waves visible under her small black hat. She left her hair down today, and despite the grayness of the rainy sky, I see the reddish glints in the dark brown mass that falls a few centimeters past her shoulders. I can’t see much else—there are too many people and umbrellas between us—but I watch her anyway, like I’ve been watching her for the past month. Only my interest in her is different now, infinitely more personal.

  Collateral damage. That’s how I thought of her initially. She wasn’t a person to me, but an extension of her husband. A smart and pretty extension, sure, but that didn’t matter to me. I didn’t particularly want to kill her, but I would’ve done what was necessary to achieve my goal.

  I did do what was necessary.

  She froze in terror when I grabbed her, her reaction the response of the untrained, the primitive instinct of incapacitated prey. It should’ve been easy at that point—a couple of shallow cuts and done. That she didn’t crack instantly under my blade was both impressive and annoying; I’d had seasoned killers piss themselves and start singing with less incentive.

  I could’ve done more to her at that point, worked her over with my knife for real, but instead, I went with a less damaging interrogation technique.

  I put her under the faucet.

  It worked like a charm—and that’s when I made a mistake. She was shaking and sobbing so hard after the first session that I took her down to the floor and wrapped my arms around her, restraining her and calming her at the same time. I did it so she’d be able to talk, but I didn’t count on my response to her.

  She felt small and breakable, utterly helpless as she coughed and sobbed in my embrace, and for some reason, I remembered holding my son that way, comforting him when he cried. Only Sara is not a child, and my body reacted to her slim curves with startling hunger, with a desire as primitive as it was irrational.

  I wanted the woman I’d come to interrogate, the one whose husband I intended to kill.

  I tried to ignore my inconvenient reaction, to continue as before, but when I had her on the counter again, I found myself unable to turn on the water. I was too aware of her; she’d become a person to me, a living, breathing woman instead of a tool to be used.

  That left the drug as the only option. I hadn’t planned to use it on her, both because of the time it required to work properly and because it was our final batch. The chemist who made it was recently killed, and Anton warned me it would take time to find another supplier. I’d been saving that batch in case of emergencies, but I had no choice.

  I, who had tortured and killed hundreds, couldn’t bring myself to hurt this woman more.

  “He was a kind and generous man, a talented journalist. His death is a loss beyond measure, both for his family and his profession…”

  I tear my eyes away from Sara to focus on the speaker. It’s a middle-aged woman, her thin face streaked with tears. I recognize her as one of Cobakis’s colleagues from the newspaper. I investigated all of them to determine their complicity, but luckily for them, Cobakis was the only one involved.

  She continues going through all of Cobakis’s outstanding qualities, but I tune her out again, my gaze drawn to the slender figure under the giant umbrella. All I can see of Sara is her back, but I can easily picture her pale, heart-shaped face. Its features are imprinted on my mind, everything from her wide-set hazel eyes and small straight nose to her soft, plush lips. There’s something about Sara Cobakis that makes me think of Audrey Hepburn, a kind of old-fashioned prettiness reminiscent of the movie stars of the forties and fifties. It adds to the sense that she doesn’t belong here, that she’s somehow different from the people surrounding her.

  That she’s somehow above them.

  I wonder if she’s crying, if she’s grieving for the man she admitted she hadn’t really known. When Sara first told me she and her husband were separated, I didn’t believe her, but some of the things she said under the drug’s influence made me rethink that conclusion. Something had gone very wrong in her supposedly perfect marriage, something that left an indelible trace on her.

  She’s known pain; she’s lived with it. I could see it in her eyes, in the soft, trembling curve of her mouth. It intrigued me, that glimpse into
her mind, made me want to delve deeper into her secrets, and when she closed her lips around my fingers and started sucking on them, the hunger I’d been trying to suppress returned, my cock hardening uncontrollably.

  I could’ve taken her then, and she would’ve let me. Fuck, she would’ve welcomed me with open arms. The drug had lowered her inhibitions, stripped away all her defenses. She’d been open and vulnerable, needy in a way that called to the deepest parts of me.

  Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave.

  Even now, I can hear her pleas, so much like Pasha’s the last time I saw him. She didn’t know what she was asking, didn’t know who I was or what I was about to do, but her words shook me to the core, making me long for something utterly impossible. It had taken all my willpower to walk away and leave her tied in that chair for the FBI to find.

  It had taken everything I had to leave and continue with my mission.

  My attention returns to the present when Cobakis’s colleague stops speaking, and Sara approaches the podium. Her slim, dark-clothed figure moves with unconscious grace, and anticipation coils in my gut as she turns and faces the crowd.

  A black scarf is wrapped around her neck, shielding her from the chilly October wind and hiding the bandage that must be there. Above the scarf, her heart-shaped face is ghost pale, but her eyes are dry—at least as far as I can tell from this distance. I’d love to stand closer, but that’s too risky. I’m already taking a chance by being here. There are at least two FBI agents among the attendees, and a couple more are sitting unobtrusively in government-issue cars on the street. They’re not expecting me to be here—security would be much tighter if they were—but that doesn’t mean I can let my guard down. As it is, Anton and the others think I’m crazy for showing up here.

  We normally leave town within hours of a successful hit.

  “As you all know, George and I met in college,” Sara says into the microphone, and my spine tingles at the sound of her soft, melodious voice. I’ve been watching her long enough to know that she can sing. She often sings along to popular music when she’s alone in her car or while doing chores around the house.