Page 118 of Craving Poison Ice

“I will be bleeding.”

“He will have silver. “

“He will have silver. I do not care.” I kissed her forehead. “Please. Do this for me. Not as my sister. As the person I trust most on earth.”

She stared at me for a long moment.

“You’re going to owe me,” she said, “an extremely elaborate dinner.”

“I will cook.”

“You cannot cook.”

“I will learn.”

She laughed, wetly, and shoved me away. “Go. Go on. Before I change my mind. I’ll be right behind you. I’ll be so quiet you’ll think I’m a ghost.”

I got in the car.

Harbor Road runs along the black edge of the river, a long dead strip of docks and warehouses and rusting chain-link, lit by a single lamp at every fourth crossing. Number Seven was at the far end. It was a squat white cube of a building with no windows, a steel door, and a faded sign that read ARCTIC FOODS. Frost had gathered on the walls. The air smelled of ammonia and salt.

I stopped the car in the lot. I got out. I stood a moment in the cold, alone, listening.

Six heartbeats inside. A seventh, fainter and more familiar than the rest, slow and strong and infuriated, that I would have known in a cathedral full of drums.

Alive, I thought. He is alive. He is angry. He is alive.

It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

I walked to the steel door. It was unlocked, as promised. I put my hand on the handle and, for one instant, let myself think of him: of a blue jersey, of a laugh on empty ice, of a hand against a pane of glass.

Then I pushed the door open, and stepped through.

It was a long low space, lit by hanging lamps. Rows of steel racks receded into the gloom, hung with rime. Refrigeration units hummed in the walls. The cold was intense, a dead still cold that pressed on the skin. In the center of the floor, in a cleared space of concrete, stood a single wooden chair.

There was a man in it.

He was tied hand and foot with wire, and his head was bowed, and his hair was matted with blood. His shirt was torn. There was a raw red mark on his neck where the stun gun had bitten. He was breathing in short, harsh, furious breaths.