Page 62 of Hotter than Wildfire

She was rendered down to rock bottom by the time he lifted his hand away from her. Her head hung down, curly hair forming a dark curtain around her face. Tears spurted out of her eyes, mucus ran out of her nose, both dripping down onto her knees.

She could barely stand stage one. Stages two three four and beyond were right here in this room.

The shivering was beyond her control. She looked down at her knees, knocking together, though the movements were hampered by the duct tape around her ankles. Her breathing was loud in the room, sharp intakes of breath and sobbing.

No way out.

Except one.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she mumbled. She could barely get the words out.

“The bathroom?” Mr. Elegant asked, black eyebrows raised, as if the very concept were foreign.

“Please.”

She couldn’t stand another session of pain. And they’d only just begun. Kerry didn’t have much information on Irene. Irene had been very closed mouthed about her story and now Kerry understood exactly why.

But the fact that she knew so little would just enrage the man sitting across from her. She could feel it. Years with Tom had taught her a lot about male rage. This type’s rage wasn’t explosive like Tom’s. This type had rage hidden under the skin, cruel to the bones. Even after she’d told everything she knew, he’d punish her for knowing so little.

Kerry couldn’t do it.

She had two things to give. She’d give one, then beg to go to the bathroom.

Her hands, she needed her hands.

“Bathroom,” she mumbled again, trying to dry her eyes on her shoulder. “Please.”

“How did you two communicate?” the man asked abruptly.

It was a question she was expecting. Still…Don’t make it easy. She let her head hang for a minute, then raised her eyes. She tried to look shaken, disoriented. It wasn’t hard. Her muscles held the memory of the red hot pain and a pounding pulse had set up in her head.

She opened her mouth.

His voice dropped, became ice cold. “And don’t tell me by cellphone because you didn’t.”

Actually, they had. Kerry should have realized the type of man who was after Irene by the precautions she took. Irene had three cellphones, prepaid, untraceable. One to communicate with her, one to communicate with her agent and one for their boss, Mario.

These men didn’t know that. Oh God, every piece of information she could withhold—if only she could get to the bathroom!—was something that might help Irene survive.

Her own life was lost, she understood that. Given a choice, she’d have chosen to save her own life instead of Irene’s, but the choice wasn’t hers.

Life, fate, destiny. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was operating here. She was already gone. A ghost. Her 32-year journey from Denver to Vassar to marriage in San Diego to life on the run was over. She’d never know the love of a child, of a good man. Never feel the rain on her face, never rock to Aerosmith again. Never eat ice cream, never finish War and Peace.

Her life ended here. Her only choice was between betraying a friend who could fall into this man’s hands, after hours and hours of unspeakable pain, or controlling the situation in the only way she knew how.

“How did you communicate?” he asked again. He wouldn’t be a man to ask three times.

“Computer.” Kerry coughed the word out. It tasted bitter, like betrayal. But of the two, this was better than giving a cellphone number. Or—God!—forcing Irene out in the open to save her. “Message board.” She gave the access data and password.

Mr. Elegant nodded to the man behind her. The man whose hands held such pain in them. An electric whir, a faint blueish light reflecting off the concrete walls. The tapping of keys.

“Got it. Yeah.” The way he spoke was weird. Clipped, the vowels all wrong. Yiah. “Scrolling through. Mostly messages about meeting up. Nothing interesting.”

No, there wouldn’t be anything interesting there. Both she and Irene would never have committed anything potentially dangerous to writing. So no, these two dangerous men wouldn’t find what they needed in the message board. Which meant they’d probe, hard, for the next thing.

Pain, much more pain, was coming. With death at the end of it.

Kerry suddenly bucked, the back legs of the chair coming up off the floor. She opened her mouth, tightening her stomach muscles, retching with forced dry heaves.