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New Year’s Day
KINGSTON MOORE
The Museum of the Inquisition in Carcassonne, France holds hundreds of iron implements of torture, including spiked iron bands to pierce a heretic’s eyeballs, racks to dislocate every joint between bones, funnels to force burning oil down the throat to the stomach, and skull vises.
All of these were applied at once to Kingston Moore in his dream, but when his eyelids parted to the laser-edged rain of white light like he was suspended in the heart of a star, the pain didn’t stop.
He managed to lift one arm and touch his head, finding only his own thick hair slipping through his fingers, no metal device, no blood.
His hair hurt.
This was—brutal. What the hell had happened?
He was worth a lot of money those days. Kidnapping for ransom? Had he been down in Central America or Mexico and been abducted by narco cartels? Lately, his business had been real estate and venture capital, not the less legal endeavors of his early career, but the past can ride into your life, brandishing a baseball bat.
Voices.
Men’s voices, talking quietly.
Not screaming at him to wake from being knocked out during the kidnapping.
His arm could move normally, unencumbered. He wasn’t tied down.
As a matter of fact, the couch under his back and against his face was buttery-soft leather, not the usual wooden pallet of drug cartel kidnappers.
He rubbed his eyes, scrubbing the acid sand away. Foul slime coated his teeth and tongue.
Maybe they’d drugged him instead of beating the crap out of him during the kidnapping.
His stomach cramped, clenching in an attempt to vomit. Sweat needled from his pores.
Gasping deep breaths of the cool air around him trickled enough oxygen into his blood that he stopped the expulsion before it started.
He opened his eyes again, and the blinding light subsided, dimming, until he could see empty bottles on a coffee table, glistening and winking in the sunlight.
Tito’s. Macallan. Pappy Van Winkle. Cristal.
Jesus, this was ahangover?He hadn’t been this poisoned since his freshman year of high school when he’d weighed about seventy pounds.
A man’s voice said, “What could we have done that is so horrible?”
Kingston recognized the flat tones. Morrissey Sand, one of his three closest friends and business partners, was speaking.
Had Morrissey been kidnapped, too?
No, kidnappers didn’t toss their victims on soft leather couches like under the side of his face and leave them untied.
He waggled a foot.
Yes, definitely not tied up. His feet were also free.
Gingerly, he drew his palms up beside his shoulders and rested his fingers on the couch cushions for a moment, gathering strength and courage, and he pushed his torso up and did his best to look around.
Morrissey was struggling to lift his head from where he lay curled in an armchair with an ottoman and squinting at the two shadows over on other couches.
Kingston swallowed hard, traces of toxic saliva running in rivulets down his cracked throat. He tried to ask what was happening, but no sound came out of his mouth.
