“He’s an expert in torture.” Cal is the exact opposite of Adam when he speaks. He’s smiling and appears jovial. Even when he pulled the half dead man from the tub. He freaking winked at the guy.
“Expert in torture?”
“Yeah. He’s good. You’ll see. He can inflict pain that you wouldn’t imagine a person could survive, but they do. He knows exactly when to stop to keep from going too far.” He shrugs his shoulders and bobs his eyebrows in a ‘you really gotta see this’ expression before continuing. “You’ll see. Some people count cards. Adam counts the breaths left in your lungs.” He seems to be finished and then remembers something. “Oh yeah, and he can fight. Not like crush skulls but anticipate moves and just...kick ass.”
Who the hell are these guys? What situations have they even been in that they know these things about each other?
“What about you? We already know you’re a Navy SEAL. Eve’s dad and that other piece of shit were pissing their pants when they thought you were here. What is it about you though? What do you bring to the table?”
It’s possible that Adam has more balls than is strictly safe.I’m already on edge because they have my fucking wife, and then he wants to ask what I bring to the table?
“Hmm. Well, I’m a pretty good shot. I can make a weapon out of just about anything. I’m shit with an axe but aces with a knife. I can make bombs, rig traps, and I, too, can anticipate moves, but I can also smash skulls.”
Cal’s mouth turns down, and he nods with an appreciative ‘not too bad’ look on his face before he speaks again. “So, you’re the guy.”
“The guy?”
“The one we need to get your girl back and make sure there’s no one left to be so damn stupid as to come looking for Belle again?”
“Belle?”
“Eve.”
“I’m the guy.”
Adam’s actions prove that he does indeed know how to torture. First, he rouses the guy with a heating pad and warm compresses. Once he’s sentient enough, he gives him warm liquids to drink. He’s obviously done this to him before because the guy starts crying when he brings him the coffee, like he knows exactly what’s going to happen next.He’s wrong, however. He won’t be going back on the ice this time.
“What do we want to know?” Adam holds a scalpel in his left hand and asks the question without taking his eyes off the hostage. There’s a table set up next to the cot the guy is laying on, and it has all manner of torture devices neatly organized atop it. Covering the entire floor of the room we’re in is a large, thick sheet of clear plastic. These guys do not intend to fuck around.
“Does he know where they’re keeping Vaughn?”
The guy hears the question and looks at me for the first time. His eyes widen. He almost seems to recognize me, but I know I’ve never seen him before. His eyes roam my face and then down the length of me before he appears to change his mind.
“Es nerunaju angliski” I wonder how many times he’s told them he doesn’t speak English and how many tortures he endured before they believed him.
“Kur ir mana sieva?” Something tells me that he doesn’t know where Vaughn is, but I ask anyway.
At the sound of my near perfect Latvian, Adam looks to Cal and tells him, “We won’t be needing the translator”. He then looks to me with a bored expression and says, “You could’ve mentioned this earlier.”
I don’t bother responding, as I did in fact hold this tidbit about myself back just to irritate him.
Turning my attention back to the hostage, I ask again “Kur ir mana sieva?”.
“Es nezinu, kur vina ir.” Just as I thought.He doesn’t know.
“Care to share this experience with us English speaking peasants?”
Cal says pretty much everything with a smile. He actually reminds me a lot of myself.Come to think of it, the whole dynamic between these two, reminds me of me and Abel. The jovial easy-going younger brother and the stern, no bullshit older brother.The pang in my heart makes me wonder when it’ll ever start to hurt less. It’s been a year.
“I asked, ‘where is my wife’. He says he doesn’t know.”
I continue to pelt the popsicle with questions while Adam carves out chunks of the man’s flesh anytime he is slow to respond.He really is good at this.He knows where to cut to inflict the maximum amount of pain without costing us answers by spilling too much blood.
Ultimately, we learn that the hostage has no truly useful information. All he can tell us is when he got here and who he came with. It appears that each group of men wasn’t aware of what any other group was tasked with. This was definitely intended to keep important information secret in the event that one of them was caught and tortured.
“He telling the truth?” I like that Cal seems to be ready to defer to my assessment of the situation.
“Yeah. He is. He is also still the guy who broke into your home with the intent of taking Eve and using her against me. Adam, he’s all yours. Cal and I have things to get to.”
