I snort, totally unladylike. “You’ll be dead before him.”
The only leverage I have is the information I gathered yesterday, and I’m not giving it up unless I can write a letter to my family. I can’t go back to Alessio, so I’m useless to these people. They don’t know that, but they’ll find out when I refuse to go back. Even if I agreed to return, Alessio wouldn’t let me go near him.
The sadist slides the plastic piece I handed him into something that looks like the spare battery of a telephone. He hooks the battery by a cable to the computer. I haven’t seen cables in a while, so that equipment seems old, but what do I know.
Whatever he sees on the screen makes him slam his fist on the desk and curse, or at least I think it’s a curse. He dials someone and speaks in a foreign language. I make out the wordParisand can tell he’s displeased.
“The code name for the weapon was Margaret. What is it now?”
Margaret was a weapon? Oh my God. They want a weapon, and Alessio has it. At least that’s what I’ve now put together. I swallow hard, contemplating my answer. I must give them something. “Susan.”
“Do you know the location?” he asks, looking at me.
I pinch my lips. When I listened in on Alessio’s conversation yesterday, I gathered it was an international crisis, but I didn’t quite know exactly what they were talking about. Alessio’s conversations are clear as mud, and I’m sure he was even more careful with me around. I did, however, deduce enough so that I can make an educated guess of which location the sadist is talking about.
“What kind of weapon are you looking for?”
“The kind that wins wars.”
“A big weapon, then.”
He stares at the screen. “Useless.” He pulls out a gun and slams it on the desk. It’s a threat.
But I won’t say a damn thing until he guarantees my family’s safety. “I want to speak with your prime minster, and I want guarantees for my family. I want to write them a letter, and I want them to be left alone. After that, I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“You’re playing dangerous games, girl.”
“I’m not a girl. I’m a woman, and I’m not playing. I know Susan is en route, and you can’t pin her down. I know the secret codes they’re using to enter the secured areas, and I know that if there’s any interference from anyone outside of a small security team handpicked by Alessio, the repercussions will be severe. I know that the weapon leaked and that Alessio managed to contain it, and I know that the original buyer was your boss, whom you’re betraying now. I know you can’t call your prime minister because you’re the commander who wants to overthrow him.” I don’t know half of this stuff. But I make a decent journalist when forced.
The sadist rises from the desk. He turns the computer toward me, and the screen shows my uncle’s hospital bed.
Oh God. This time, I grit my teeth and don’t collapse in tears. “You need this information, and if you touch him, you’ll never get it.”
“You will talk.”
“No.”
“Fine.” He grabs his phone and dials. “The man who pushed your uncle down the stairs is on standby.” While waiting for the man on the other side to answer, he walks around the desk and leans against it. “I need the location.”
I cross my arms over my chest.
“Give me the location,” he says, growing inpatient.
His wife enters the room. She changed out of her bloody clothes and shoved bits of tissue into her nostrils. I doubt her nose is broken, and while my hand is swollen, I don’t think I broke anything either. We’re almost even. Almost.
They exchange foreign words. The sadist hurls his phone at her. She struggles to catch it, but when she does, she dials and waits. Her frown deepens because the man they’re trying to reach doesn’t pick up.
She hangs up and turns to me. “I only want to know the name of the man who killed my brother, and I swear your little brother will live.”
“Well, see, that’s the thing. Yesterday, you threatened my aunt too, and now I have a lot more to lose than I had before, so you need to up the ante at this point.”
“What do you want?” she asks.
The man comments in the foreign language again. She retorts. They argue again before she walks up to me and pulls out her gun. I see my life flash before my eyes. “Tell me his name!”
Something hits her temple, comes out the other side of her skull, and, wide-eyed, she drops to her knees right in front of me. Her husband lifts his arm, but a bullet hits his forehead, splattering his brains all over the curtain behind the desk. His body slumps in the chair.
I turn, expecting the man at the exit to have betrayed them, but someone else stands in the room.
