Noble Intentions: Episode 1

by L.T. Ryan

8

  “Wipe the blood from your face, child.”

  Clarissa reached over, grabbed the towel lying next to her and wiped the blood and dirt off her face. The last eight hours had been hell. Three different interrogators had beaten her, each of them using a different tactic. They all wanted to know the location of the documents. She figured that with as much torture as she had gone through, they would believe her denials. But they all knew Jack, and anyone associated with him should be considered as trained and dangerous as him.

  “Now, you are you going to tell me what I want to know?” asked the mysterious man.

  She pushed her head and torso off the ground and looked up at him. This man was different. Not that big compared to the other three that had taken turns beating her. He looked to be as tall as her, but he probably didn’t weigh more than one hundred fifty pounds. His face drawn and pale, with a thin silver and grey mustache. However, he had a sinister look about him. His nose crooked like a fighter’s. His left eye was completely white, highlighted by the fact that the right one looked black. She would soon learn that the white eye was from a scalding hot ice pick shoved into it during an interrogation session.

  His eyes met her and he continued. “Or am I going to have to persuade you?” He put on a pair of dark leather gloves.

  Clarissa steadied herself, waiting for the room to stop spinning. She sat up and stared at the man.

  “I’m waiting.” He tapped his foot.

  Clarissa cleared her throat to speak.

  The man raised an eyebrow in anticipation.

  Instead of speaking, she spat at him. She aimed for his face, but the beatings had left her weak. Her spittle sprayed over the floor and on his shoes.

  The man looked down at the mixture of blood and saliva covering his seven hundred dollar Fratelli Rossetti shoes. He shook his head and smiled at her. “If these shoes didn’t cost so much I’d break your ribs with them.”

  Clarissa mustered up a laugh. “Who are you?”

  “Why should I tell you?” the man asked.

  “The other cowards did.”

  “The other cowards also failed to coerce you to give up the information they were tasked to get from you.”

  Clarissa smiled. She’d pissed the interrogators off, no doubt about that. They couldn’t get anything out of her. Not a single word.

  The man smiled back. He seemed to be intrigued by her. “My name is Sinclair,” he said. Sinclair stepped back and grabbed a black leather bag from the table. It resembled one of those medical bags doctors carried around a hundred years ago.

  She stared intently at Sinclair as he dug around in his bag. This is different. None of the other men had brought anything with them, just their fists. They used brute force on her. “You’re not like the others,” she said.

  Sinclair looked down at her, his lips pressed tight. “Thank you, dear. I’m not part of the old man’s association. I work independently. People call me in when they need information extracted. They call me when no one else can crack the code.” He reached into his bag again, pulled out a large hypodermic needle and a vial of liquid. “I’m a specialist,” he said as he plunged the needle into the vial, filling it three quarters of the way to full. The needle slid out of the vile. He flicked the tip with his middle finger.

  Clarissa steadied herself, removing any expression from her face. Her heart rate increased, as did her breathing. She wanted to ask what the needle was for, but she knew. Instead she asked, “Does it really do anything when you flick the end of a needle like that? I thought that was just to build a little suspense in a movie.”

  Sinclair laughed. “You are something else, child.”

  She smiled. Shrugged. She felt the sincerity in his words. But she wasn’t going to kid herself. In the end, this would go the same way as the other attempts to get her to talk had gone.

  “Now, child, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

  Six hours ago Clarissa would have leapt at him, taken the syringe and plunged it into his neck. The hours of beatings had left her exhausted. She held out her arms, palms up and waited for him to inject the drug into her.

  “Very nice,” Sinclair said. “I’ll make this quick.”

  Clarissa’s eyelids fluttered. Her eyes reacted to the light. The world looked grey and blurry. The drug Sinclair injected into her knocked her out cold. For how long, though? She blinked and her vision started to clear. She saw his expensive shoes a few feet away from her face.

  “Welcome back,” Sinclair said.

  She tried to lift herself up but found that her arms wouldn’t move. She tried to kick her legs and nothing happened. She tried to talk but her mouth stayed shut. Her throat didn’t produce a single sound. She could feel. Her body tingled. The sting of the cuts and bruises hadn’t faded. She just couldn’t move.

  “Not to worry,” he told her. “I’ve injected you with a paralytic agent. Your muscles are frozen, that is all. In a few minutes the ability to control your body will return. Try speaking now.”

  Clarissa tried to talk. A squeak slipped from her throat. Her mouth remained closed, though, still unable to work the muscles of her face.

  “Excellent. Here’s how this will work. I’m going to ask you a question and you are going to give me an answer. Failure to provide me an answer will result in pain being inflicted upon you. Understand?”

  Clarissa remained still.

  “Blink twice to let me know that you understand,” he said.

  She blinked her wide eyes twice.

  His lips thinned. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hit you. I don’t believe in that. I can see that they have thoroughly beaten you. Yet, where did that get them?” He shrugged. “You see, my methods are far more effective. A tough girl like you can take a fist to the face. But do you really want to lose your thumbs?” He held up a pair of garden shears, slamming the blades together to demonstrate.

  A tear rolled down Clarissa’s cheek. Her lips trembled. She tried to force out a word but nothing happened.

  “There, there. You have nothing to be afraid of. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll be on my way. Have you regained your voice?”

  She looked away and closed her eyes. She enjoyed a few moments of silence, trying to convince herself this was just a dream. The hissing of a blowtorch disrupted the serenity she had built in her mind. She opened her eyes and looked up at Sinclair.

  He held the end of an icepick over a flame. “I asked if you had regained your voice.”

  She refused to answer. Looked away again.

  Sinclair knelt over her and whispered in her ear, “We can do this any way you like. It makes no difference to me.” He waited a few seconds for a response and then touched her cheek with the burning hot icepick.

  Clarissa gritted her teeth and did her best to hold in her scream. The pain increased with every second he held the burning icepick to her face. She yelled out, “Bastard!”

  “Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it? Now that we have established you can speak, we will proceed with the questioning.” He lifted her off the ground and sat her in a chair fitted with restraints. He crossed the large leather belts across her torso, wrapping them around her arms. He also placed separate belts around her waist, above her knees, and across her shins, securing them to the chair. Sinclair grabbed his chair and supply bag. He placed his chair in front of Clarissa and sat down. “I’ve already provided you with instructions on how this works. So let’s get started.”

  Clarissa looked down at her bound body. The feeling returned to her arms and legs, but she was in no position to defend herself.

  “First question. What is your name?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He fired up the blowtorch and grabbed the shears. “The beauty of heating these up is that they will partly cauterize the remaining flesh after I cut off your thumb, reducing the amount of blood. Quite revolutionary for cleanup crews.”

  She watched intently as the blades turned bright red. She kne
w she was dead. It would just be a matter of how much suffering she could tolerate before the final blow.

  Sinclair leaned in and grabbed her right hand. “I will ask one more time. After that you lose your thumb. What is your name?”

  She felt the heat from the blades. She clenched her fists. “Clarissa,” she whispered. “Clarissa Abbot.”

  “Beautiful name, Ms. Abbot. I can’t believe you were almost willing to give up your thumb to withhold that information from me.” He scribbled her name into a notepad.

  She knew what he would do with that information. They probably figured that she wasn’t going to give them any information, but killing her would be a waste. However with her name they could track down her family and try to find someone close to her. If she wouldn’t talk to save her own life, maybe she would to save someone she loved. Fortunately, she had no one, except for Jack.

  “Next question. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a dancer.”

  “Ah, ballet?”

  She smiled at him. “Exotic.”

  “Intriguing. Who is the little girl?”

  “Mandy?” she asked.

  “Is there more than one?”

  “No. Mandy is her name. I thought you would know about her. I don’t know much about her. She was lost. Jack brought her to my apartment.”

  “Tell me about Jack. How do you know him?”

  “My father. He served under my father.”

  “So your father introduced you to him?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her eyes cast down at the floor.

  “Go on,” said Sinclair.

  “Jack was the one who informed me that my father had been killed. And then, I don’t know.”

  “I sense there is more, Ms. Abbot. Did Jack take you in after your father’s death?”

  She laughed. “I was nineteen and had been on my own for two years. I didn’t need a hero to take me in. He let me know if I ever needed anything he was there and could help.”

  “Are you aware of Jack’s job?”

  Clarissa nodded. She didn’t know all the details, but she knew enough.

  “Jack was carrying a briefcase the night he came to your apartment. Correct?”

  “Yeah, handcuffed to his wrist.”

  “Did he tell you what was in the briefcase?”

  “No,” Clarissa responded. “He never said anything about it. I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell.”

  Sinclair reached for the icepick and blowtorch again. He repositioned himself and said, “Where is that briefcase now?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes focused on the icepick. The burn on her face ached and she wondered if he was going to give her a matching one on the opposite cheek.

  “Are you sure?” he asked as he lit the blowtorch.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Jack was gone before I woke up. He took it with him.”

  “Did you see him take it with him?” Sinclair held the end of the icepick in the flame.

  “Like I said, I was sleeping. When I got up, he was gone. So was the briefcase.”

  “So you looked for the briefcase?”

  “What? No, I mean, I just noticed it was gone.”

  “How long have you been working for Jack?” His tone deepened, eyes narrowed to slits, and his lips drew thin and tight.

  “Work for him? I don’t work for him. He’s just a friend.”

  “Do you often let friends sleep over at your house?”

  The questioning flustered her.

  “I will ask you one more time, Clarissa. Where is the briefcase?” He turned off the blowtorch and put it on the table. Then he stood up and grabbed the back of her head pulling her hair back and forcing her face to look up at him. He held the icepick inches from her eye.

  Clarissa started to cry. “I don’t know.”

  “Clarissa, don’t lie to me. Where is the briefcase?”

  “If I knew, I would tell you.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Clarissa.” He leaned over so his face was barely hovering over hers. “Do you see my eye? Do you see my dead eye? That is what happens when a scalding hot icepick is stuck in an eye. Is this what you want?”

  Clarissa sobbed. Her heart raced and her stomach tightened. She had never been this frightened before. “I don’t know.”

  Sinclair backed up and reignited the blow torch. “This is your last chance.” He cleared his throat and brushed strands of his silver and black hair out of his face. “Where is that briefcase?”

  She said nothing and looked away. There was no hope. His gloved hand grabbed her chin and pull her face toward him.

  “So be it, Ms. Abbot.” He moved the icepick directly above her eye. “I won’t do this quickly. You see, it’s rather painless once the pick penetrates your eye.” The real damage was the buildup of the event, the terror of knowing that a burning piece of metal was about to be inserted into her eye, blinding her. The fear spread as the glowing red icepick inched closer and closer. “Enjoy these last ten seconds of sight.”

  The door to the cell slammed open. Sinclair let go of Clarissa’s face and turned around. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Clarissa saw the outline of a large man in the doorway.

  Charles stepped into the light. “Give me the whore.” Dried blood covered his face. A white bandage stained red covered his. A trickle of blood streamed down between his eyebrows and along the right side of his nose.

  “The old man called me to extract information. You can have her when I’m done,” Sinclair said.

  “You’re done,” Charles said. I’m relieving you of your duties.”

  “Like hell I am. Go get the old man.”

  Charles grabbed Sinclair by the throat and lifted him into the air. Sinclair swung the icepick and plunged it into the back of Charles’s shoulder. Charles hurled the man against the wall. Sinclair staggered to his feet. Charles charged and slammed his shoulder into Sinclair, driving him into the wall. He lifted Sinclair by his neck, punching him twice in the face. He let Sinclair go and watched his body collapse into a pile on the floor.

  Then he turned his attention to Clarissa. “You’re mine.” He untied her restraints, threw her over his shoulder, and carried her out of the room.

  Part of her felt relieved. And the other part of her felt more terrified than ever.