‘Give me a second… done.’
Hunter heard a ping coming from his cellphone.
‘Second, I need you to call Dispatch and ask them to send a black-and-white to that location, right now – possible officer in distress.’
‘On it.’
‘Thank you, and keep on tracking his cellphone until I get there. I’m on my way now.’
‘Not a problem,’Milton replied.‘I’ll keep you posted if there’s any status change.’
Hunter disconnected and put his car in gear.
If his gut feeling was screaming at him before, it was now playing a full-blown metal concert through a wall of sound – something had definitely gone wrong.
Fifty-Four
Garcia blinked himself awake, or at least he thought he did. His eyes felt like they were open, but he could see nothing other than absolute darkness.
But this wasn’t a dream, this wasn’t a nightmare – God knew he’d had plenty of those and in none of them had he ever felt physical pain, which was the only thing that he could feel right then… sickening, debilitating pain.
The back of his neck felt like it was on fire – as if a lit charcoal stone was just sitting against his skin, scorching and blistering it, as it burned through onto the flesh beneath. That agonizing feeling had forced his neck muscles to tighten to the point of spasms, sending shards of pain traveling down his spine until they hit its base, at which point they would break out in every direction.
Right then, the phrase ‘everything hurts’ had never felt so real.
Zing.
There it was again – another explosive stab of pain coming from his neck, like fireworks shooting into every corner of his body, seemingly ripping through tendons and muscles to finally sear every nerve-ending he possessed, and some he wasn’t even aware existed.
Reflexively, his hand tried to move up to the source of the pain, but it didn’t get far. In fact, it didn’t move at all, because both of his arms were bound at the wrist to something solid.
‘What the fuck?’
It seemed like the intense pain had shot its shards into his brain as well because Garcia couldn’t remember much.
Where the hell was he and why was he there?
Every time he tried to think, it felt as if he had activated a kaleidoscope of sharp razors inside his skull.
Zing.
More fireworks, forcing him to clench his jaw and his body to convulse in place, but still, Garcia pushed his brain through what he could of the pain to try to remember. If he could remember what had happened, he would probably stand a better chance… of what exactly, he had no idea.
Think, man… think,he urged himself.
The kaleidoscope inside his head rotated again.
The sharp razors dropped like confetti.
More pain.
More convulsing.
But finally, through all the jaw clenching, fragments of something began to come back to him. And they came back fast – the school classroom… the support group… the late arrival who called himself George… the parking lot outside… the black pickup truck… sitting inside his car… and then nothing… until he woke up in this dark hell.
That gap in Garcia’s memory, Hunter had explained to him once, was called ‘selective amnesia’. It was usually brought on by some sort of traumatic event. To try to shield the person from the kind of psychological fractures that the traumatic event could cause, the brain would then choose to forget just part of an event. That’s why he could remember the entire night until just before the attack that had rendered him unconscious. All that was missing from his recollection was the attack itself – the most traumatic part of the event.
Garcia tried to move his hands again. As he did, he feltsomething dig at his wrists, but the pain already moving around his body was so intense that the digging at the wrists felt like a summer breeze.
