Flames (A Special Agent Novel Book 3)

by C. P. Mandara

  “Eat, Thirty-Eight. We don’t have much time before I need to start sharpening my blades.” Adie gave me a rueful look.

  "I'm really not hungry," I protested, but when he gave me his dark look, I opened wide obediently. He was right, I did need some food in my stomach, and if I was shortly about to lose plenty of blood, it couldn't hurt to have some calories in me.

  "Eat, or I'll begin the next round much earlier than anticipated." That had me sitting up and paying attention. The longer I could put off the next round of pain, the better. Deciding I could play along for the time being, I opened my mouth wide and hoped the Bolognese tasted as good as it looked.

  Adie took his time feeding me. Teasing a forkful of pasta around my top lip, he then pushed it inside my mouth, and I chewed it carefully. Quite honestly, there was a good chance I would bring the food straight up, but not eating was probably an even worse option. If I wanted to try and get out of here alive, I needed something inside me. At the moment, I felt exhausted and barely able to keep my eyes open. My blood sugar had hit rock bottom, and my body felt like someone had beaten the shit out of me and left me for dead. To make matters worse, my arms were going numb. They'd been tied in the same position for so long it was cutting off my circulation, but I guess these were all minor matters compared to the real problem at hand. If I stayed here much longer, I was facing death. If that death was quick and painless, I'd probably hang around for the ride, but if it was going to be a long, drawn out and protracted affair, I'd take my chances with an escape – even if it was by my own design. James may have thought I couldn't kill Adie, but he was wrong. I could shut off the almost human part of me, and kill the bastard without ever looking back. All I needed was a chance to do my job, and we'd get there, eventually.

  Adie fed me slowly, in small mouthfuls. He knew my stomach wasn’t up to much. It was already grumbling violently at the food that had presented itself, but thankfully, I didn’t feel sick as of yet. I desperately needed this meal to stay down. There would be no chance of escape, either with Adie’s help or without it, if I didn’t have enough energy to walk. It was a sobering thought.

  As he fed me, Adie gazed at my face as if mesmerised. With what I had no idea, because with no make up and very little sleep I must have looked an absolute state, but he didn’t seem at all bothered by this. Judging by his interest, I guessed he had a newfound respect for me after discovering the amount of crap I could take. It was no secret in Cellular Operations that I have a high pain threshold, and the bastard was certainly testing that to the max today.

  Could I cope with his knives next? I had once before, but something told me that the stakes would be different today and that pain was about to take on a whole new meaning for me.

  When the next mouthful came at me, I shook my head. I couldn't eat another bite. My stomach had shrunk in the past couple of days, and right now, I was feeling fit to burst.

  “Have you had enough?” Adie looked concerned as he asked the question, but I tried to ignore his reaction. If I was shortly going to kill him, I needed to keep his ‘other side’ first and foremost in my mind. It would help me to do my job much more efficiently.

  “If I eat any more there will be unpleasant consequences.” He nodded.

  "Well, I'll just go and get rid of this, and then I'll get started. We'll be at this for around three hours, Thirty-Eight, so get your head in your happy place. I'm going to begin slowly, and when you can't take any more, grunt twice in quick succession, okay?" He stared at me, and when I didn't do anything, he raised his eyebrows. "This is your cue for help. Nod if you understand." I nodded. I understood, but I'd do everything in my power to avoid another shot of heroin. If that stuff entered my system, I was not escaping this room in a hurry. I'd be virtually catatonic.

  “Good. Now we just have one small problem left to deal with.” Adie bit his lip and twisted his head from side to side as he thought about something.

  I decided I’d bite. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Well, I need to get you tied to a whipping post, and I don’t trust you, Thirty-Eight. Normally, I’d just drug you and move you, but I don’t want to overload your system. That leaves me with two options, the nice option, or the nasty one.”

  “What’s the nasty one?” I asked dryly.

  Adie crouched in front of me and pulled his gun out of the back of his jeans. “Being pistol-whipped,” he said. Great. That sounded like a whole world of fun.

  “And the nice one?” I looked at him warily.

  “I thought you’d never ask, Thirty-Eight.” He then came at my neck with both hands, pressing his index and middle fingers tightly in my carotid arteries. I saw stars after ten seconds, was horribly dizzy after thirty, and dead to the world shortly after. It seemed Adie had far more talents than I’d given him credit for.

  Chapter Four - Lois

  When I came to, my head felt worse than ever. Wincing, I tried to put my hand over my eyes, and when that didn’t work, I risked opening one. Fuck. Exactly as Adie had promised I was now tied to a stout wooden whipping post in an ‘X’ shape, with my limbs spread wide. They were restrained with thick, coarse rope, and I was forced to stand on tiptoes if I wanted to take some of the strain off my arms. My tormentor never did anything by halves, it seemed.

  “Nasty headache?” Adie asked cheerfully.

  Never have I wanted to slap a man more. When the chance to kill him presented itself, I was going to do it slowly, and boy was I going to enjoy myself.

  “I’m getting used to them,” I replied tightly.

  "On the upside, after I've finished this session, that kind of pain will seem utterly insignificant, so you'll hardly even notice it." He winked at me.

  “Gee, I feel so much better now,” I said frostily.

  "I knew you would. Moving on, I'm going to start with a flogging, followed by a whipping, so I can make your skin nice and raw for the knives. It will hurt more, that way." The smile was still there, and I would have given a great deal to have been able to smash the thing off his face.

  “Should I start crying now?” Adie had a vicious, black rubber flogger in his hand and he was gently caressing the thin trails in his hand. I knew from experience that the thing would hurt like hell, as James had introduced me to one briefly, but that would be nothing compared to the knives.

  “Go on then, Thirty-Eight. You know that kind of thing turns me on.”

  We stared each other out then. Adie's was deep and intense, his dark chocolate eyes now almost black with desire. Mine was full of anger and resentment, although it wasn't all directed at the man before me. I knew I was responsible for the predicament I now found myself in, and although I had little choice in the matter, it didn't make the end result any easier to stomach.

  “You’ll have to earn them,” I growled, my eyes dipping to the flogger, almost jealous of the thing because it had Adie’s fingers stroking it up and down.

  "Oh, I intend to, slave. Before this session has finished, I'm going to taste your tears and watch you beg for mercy. You will tell me every damn thing I want to know and then some." That's what he thought. I was doing no such thing.

  "Well, you'd better get started and stop all this yapping." My eyes then challenged him to do his worst, and the tension in the room notched up a level. There was now a dangerous excitement lurking in the depths of Adie's eyes, and if I didn't know better, I'd say the guy was turned on by the thought of reducing me to a blubbering mess.

  “Five hundred pounds says I can get you to cry in under thirty minutes, Thirty-Eight. Want to take that wager?”

  “Would it be rude of me to say ‘not particularly?” I smiled sweetly.

  Adie continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “Excellent. The bet’s on and it’s time to get started.”

  The man meant what he said. The flogger was already moving in his hand, and it came down with a resounding thud upon the top of my thighs. The resulting sting made me catch my breath, but before I'd managed to fully appreciate its
bite, another one followed it. Again and again, Adie worked my body over with the flails. Prowling around me like a panther, his eyes feasted over every inch of naked flesh. He paid particular attention to my thighs and ass, with the occasional stroke aimed at my breasts and back. He wielded the flogger just as impressively as James and the muscles bulging from his biceps told me he could probably fling the thing around for hours. This was not good news.

  After ten minutes of hard, stinging slaps from the malevolent rubber thongs, my body was a seething mass of inflamed nerve endings that screamed for forgiveness. Although I hadn't uttered a sound in that time, it wasn't because I hadn't wanted to. At the moment I was bottling them up, saving my voice for when I would really need it – and that wasn't yet.

  “Who do you work for, Thirty-Eight?”

  Ah, so we were back to that old chestnut. “Activity Advertising,” I said through gritted teeth. “Why do you keep asking me that question?” There wasn’t a soul in this place who believed what I was saying, but I figured I’d got this far, so I might as well continue with the charade.

  “I keep asking that question because I don’t believe your answer. When you give me something more truthful, the pain will stop.” When I give you something more truthful, my life will also end, rather abruptly, I thought. If I spilled, Geraud would be all over me like a rash and Adie would have no choice in the matter. We were both playing a very delicate game. At the moment, I had no idea what Adie’s motives were for wanting me to escape, or even if he would be true to his word – and the guy in front of me was a Machiavellian character at best. Besides, I needed to distance myself. Adie aka Alain Dumortier would be dead as soon as I got myself out of this chair, and that was the only thing I needed to concern myself with.

  “So go check my story out,” I panted, through another three smashes of the awful flogger. “Head on out to the office and quiz my boss. Hell, go to my desk and rifle through my drawers. I don’t care…” my sentence was cut off abruptly as the flogger shot between my legs. Eye-watering pain assaulted my senses, but with it came a fairly hefty dose of arousal, too.

  “Like that, Thirty-Eight?” The gleam in Adie’s eyes told me he already knew the answer to that question.

  I glared at him mutinously. How did this man read people so effortlessly? Sure, I’d expect someone like James to be adept at assessing his prey, but the son of a drug lord? It didn’t make sense.

  “What’s up, slave? Cat got your tongue?” He gave me another fearsome swat in exactly the same place. My eyes bulged out of my head, and I could feel my legs straining against the rope, trying desperately hard to close themselves.

  Adie continued talking. “I have to confess, I like the peace and quiet. Maybe I’ve finally hit the right spot.”

  My fingers curled into fists as he hit me between the legs a further three times. By now I was gasping out loud, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. There’s pain, and there’s pain – and this was on the higher end of the scale.

  “Want to talk yet?”

  “How about you just give me the polygraph and we get this over with?” I growled.

  “Where would the fun be in that?” Adie looked affronted that I could suggest such a thing. “Besides, dad’s out for blood. As I’ve said before, if I don’t do a good job, he’ll come in here to finish you off, and you don’t want that.”

  “I fail to see how your father can be any worse than you are already,” I mumbled to myself.

  “Oh, he’s not any better at dishing out pain, if that’s what you’re getting at. He’s just a bit sloppy with the drugs. He’s killed a few people by giving them a little too much of something. Seeing as how we’re trying to get you to talk, the last thing I want to do is get him excited, or you’ll be dead – and I find that kind of puts a damper on things.

  “It would put a rather sudden end to your fun,” I remarked darkly.

  “Enough talking. Unless you want to tell me something I don’t already know, shut up and try and keep still.”

  That was the end of the small talk. When Adie had finished giving me the once over with the flogger, I was panting hard and sweating buckets. The effort of keeping my weight balanced upon the tips of my toes was considerable, and though I’d learned by now to relax into the pain, it still hurt like a bitch. Somehow, I’d managed to keep that to myself, but it was a hard won battle. When the next round with the whip began, keeping myself from screaming out would be mind over matter, but I had every faith in myself. When he got the knives out, however, I made no promises.

  Adie left me on my own, while he went to retrieve his whip, and I had to wonder if he’d done it on purpose. At the moment, I was a stinging, smarting mess, and the merest touch of a fingernail would have me hissing – but I guess that was the idea. By the time he’d whipped me, it would be worse – much worse. If I’d still been strapped to the chair, I might have made an attempt at escape, but the rope was unforgiving. Adie knew his knots, and there was no way I was getting out of this mess in a hurry. Damn it. How much more of this was I going to be able to take? Speaking of pain, I wondered what kind of whip he was going to subject me to? Single tail, perhaps? Adie wouldn’t settle for a riding crop, that much was for sure.

  “Miss me?” Adie bounced back into the room full of smiles, carrying something that looked a little like a leather paddle. My eyes were immediately drawn to it because it was not what I was expecting. I also had a nasty feeling I’d seen one before.

  "It's a tawse,” he said, answering my unspoken question. Historically it was used on school children in England and Scotland to enforce discipline, although strangely, it was never referred to by its name – normally it was just called a strap or a belt. Now you might be thinking you've got let off easy here, as it looks a lot like a paddle, but you'd be wrong. This beast is a lot more flexible. On the pain scale, it's up there with the cane, so you're going to need to brace yourself."

  That was all the warning I got. The first slice of the tawse was already coming towards me, and I did my best to brace for impact. When the first weighty thud connected with my backside, all the air in my lungs exploded out of me in a rush, and the after-bite left me reeling.

  “Who do you work for, Thirty-Eight?”

  “Fuck you,” I whimpered. It wasn’t the most sensible thing to say your captor, I grant you, but I’d had a long and exhausting day, and it didn’t look like it was about to finish anytime soon.

  “As appealing as that offer is, I don’t think you’ll get the chance, Thirty-Eight. You are not destined for a long and fruitful life, I think.” Adie didn’t sound overly apologetic at the prospect.

  “So let’s hurry up and skip to the part where you kill me.” My tone was a little dry.

  "You can't hurry torture. It takes a great deal of dedication and skill, and I've been practising the art for years. When I do get the chance to unleash myself, I make sure I take my time." Another stroke of the tawse landed on my already red-raw ass, and I let out my first hiss. It was to be the first of many. Adie unleashed a string of furious lashes that rained down upon my back, ass, and thighs. My body began jerking in the ropes as each fresh stroke ploughed into my skin, and standing on my tiptoes was now becoming almost impossible. It took another ten minutes of monstrous blows before I hung forward on the ropes limply. I still wasn't screaming, although the effort required to keep those sounds lodged in my throat was considerable. My body now felt like someone had dragged me naked along a mile of tarmac – raw, blistered, angry, and fiendishly hot. My skin was burning up, sweat was pouring from my forehead, and every single nerve in my body was screaming blue murder. It didn't stop Adie. He continued for another ten minutes until my whimpers had turned to choked sobs, and my body was trembling uncontrollably.

  “You have an impressively high tolerance for pain, Thirty-Eight. I don’t know if there’s a single submissive in my care that could have withstood that without screaming out loud. Seems I owe you five hundred pounds, after all.” He raised
his eyebrows as he came to stand in front of me, before sweeping a clump of matted hair away from my forehead. His fingertips on my skin felt oddly intimate and I could feel my body clench in desire. What the hell was wrong with me? I was falling for a corrupt, psychotic sadist, who had a drug and prostitution empire as a sideline. Where was my moral compass when I needed it? On fucking holiday, that’s where.

  “Too bad you won’t live long enough for me to pay up.” Adie looked directly at the cameras above us and grinned. The expression on his face made my blood run cold.

  As soon as he’d said the words, I heard the doors opening behind me, and angry footsteps could be heard marching towards us. As if things weren’t bad enough already, it appeared they were going to get worse. Judging by the heavy tread of those shoes, Geraud was checking up on his son’s progress.

  “Has she talked yet?” Geraud was now looking up at me with barely concealed loathing, and it looked like he’d had enough of waiting. He didn’t appear to be a patient man, and I already knew he was itching to put a bullet through my brains, so he’d obviously come to speed up the proceedings.

  "You already know the answer to that question, father. Either she's who she says she is, and so far all research has confirmed her story, or Thirty-Eight is a very talented operative who enjoys a spot of torture.

  “I want her dead before the day’s out. No excuses. Do what you can to make her talk, and if you can’t get anything out of her, then get rid of her. I’ve put the clean-up crew on standby. We haven’t got time to mess about at the moment. I’ve got Riley Rutherford coming over later from the Clerkwell Boys, as their normal guy is doing a bit of business further afield. We need to sort him out with a shipment of girls, and it will be all hands on deck for a while.” Geraud looked pissed. That was too bad. He made a very fetching picture in his polo neck jumper today, though I thought it best not to mention the fact.