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I couldn’t think of a whole lot to say.
“That guy in there, he’s the one was feeding info to Bailey Stone,” Benny said with a snort. “Like we wouldn’t find out? Fucking stupid, huh? Oh, hey, I don’t mean nothing personal, you know, ’cuz that’s kinda what you did?” He snickered. “Naw, this guy? He shoulda known better. But . . .” He shrugged. “What the fuck. He betrayed Mr. Boniface, we find out—of course we find the fuck out.” He shook his head. “She fucking hates that.” He nodded, still smiling. “Bernadette, I mean. She’s real loyal, and if somebody betrays Mr. Boniface? Oooh.” He gave a fake shiver, like he was overcome with horror. “So I gotta tell you?” He jerked his head at the wiggly thing on the table. “That’s you in a couple of weeks.” He winked. “Maybe she makes it last even longer if she really likes you.”
He let me think about that for a minute before we moved on. It was still very much on my mind when Benny halted us in front of another cell and slid open the observation panel. “Mr. Boniface thought you’d like to see this, too,” he said. And before I could decide if I was going to take a look, one of the mercs grabbed the back of my head and shoved my face up against the peek hole, hard enough that for a few seconds the only thing I saw was stars. When my head cleared and I could see again, I really wished I could go back to just seeing the stars. Because sitting inside the cell was something that dropped everything off the scale of awful into a whole new arithmetic.
The thing in Bernadette’s playroom was about the worst thing I’d ever seen. Knowing they wanted to turn me into its twin kicked it way past that. But what I saw in this second room? It was even worse than that. Which sounds impossible, I know, but it was.
It was Monique.
Her face was bruised—puffy eyes, a big lump on one cheek—and she was holding one arm like it might be hurting a lot. Other than that, she just sat there on the stone shelf, chained to the wall, knees up to her chin. Just sat there. Face empty of everything human. Didn’t even look up to see what the thumping sound was when my head hit her door.
They had Monique.
Behind me I heard Benny laughing, and I lost it. I turned around and grabbed him by the throat. I lifted him off the ground and slammed his head against the wall, and I have to say I was fast, I hit hard, and he didn’t expect it.
And of course, the reason he didn’t expect it was pretty clear. It was because only an idiot would try anything with a bunch of hard-ass mercenaries standing by. Two seconds after I grabbed Benny they slammed their rifle stocks against my head and my kidneys and had me on the floor before I could really get going. Then they started kicking, probably so they wouldn’t have to bend over. They were clearly very experienced at this whole kicking-the-shit-out-of-somebody move, because I stayed conscious for a good long time before one of them kicked me in the temple and it all went dark.
I have to say, it’s almost always nice to know you’re dealing with real professionals. It saves so much worry and so much time. You need the confidence of knowing that the people around you are good at what they do, experienced at doing it, and put everything into their work. And the guys working for Boniface fit the bill. They were so good that when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was, and I couldn’t figure it out because I was seeing double. My head was pounding like I had a taiko drummer on each temple, I couldn’t breathe without pain, and my legs hurt like hell and pounded with a counterbeat to my skull. I didn’t recognize either of the rooms my double vision showed me. For that matter, I wasn’t really sure what my name was. I decided I should try to find out why these things were so, and I sat up.
It was one of the worst mistakes I ever made.
The first thing I did was to throw up, all over myself, my bed, everything within a five-foot radius. After that I sat there just hoping something would kill me quickly. I would have done it myself, but I couldn’t move. Everything that merely hurt before was agony now—agony with a disco beat. I closed my eyes, which took every bit of
strength I had.
It takes some time. If you have ever really and truly had the shit kicked out of you by people who know what they’re doing and like doing it, you know what I mean. Nothing works for a while. Things won’t come into focus—not objects, thoughts, memories . . . nothing. And you don’t really give a rat’s ass that they don’t, because you are devoting all your willpower to trying to breathe, trying to make at least one of the pains go away.
Of course that doesn’t work. The pain gets stronger. But eventually a little life comes back into you, just enough so you can whimper. When I got to that point, I opened my eyes.
The good news was that I wasn’t seeing double anymore. The bad news was that I knew where I was, and I remembered how I got here. I was on a nice firm stone mattress, chained to the wall, like I had been on my first visit to Île des Choux. Worse, Monique was in a room just like it.
I did a quick survey of damage. My right shoulder was sore as hell, but I could move it. Probably I’d fallen on it. No biggie, but there was no strength in it. I felt my head with both hands. It was mess. Both hands came away wet. There was bleeding on both sides, but on the left it was swollen up like a pumpkin, too. I probably had a concussion, and maybe there was some little interior bleeding thing that would knock me dead sometime in the next twenty-four hours. No way to know. But at least that would keep me off Bernadette’s hobby shop table.
Breathing still hurt, so I prodded with my fingers. Three ribs definitely broken, one or two more maybe.
My left leg was stiff and hurt like hell, but my right was worse. I couldn’t bend it at all. The knee was swollen so big it was threatening to bloat out and rip the pants leg.
I added it up: I could barely stand, and if I tried I might get so dizzy I’d fall on my face. If I did make it to my feet, I could only limp, and not fast. One arm, my right, was probably no good for anything more energetic than turning the pages of a comic book. All that aside, I was chained to a stone wall in the dungeon of an impregnable fortress surrounded by well-armed, well-trained people who wouldn’t mind killing me. And somehow, I had to get out of my chains, get Monique, and get away, before a psychotic bitch from a bad 1950s horror movie chopped at me until I looked like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Sure. No problem. I would have laughed, except if I did I’d probably start bleeding internally.
I looked for something I’d missed, some small thing that might give me a tiny edge, a little bitty door, some slim possibility. Because I have lived my life by Riley’s Golden Rule, the one that says there’s always a way. And there was a way here, too. It was just really well hidden, and I was running out of time.
So things were about as bad as they could be, but I still had one tiny little hope. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had. Bailey Stone was coming with his gang of professionals, who, I had to believe, were every bit as good as the psychopaths who worked for Boniface. And he would bring a lot of them, because he was attacking. Maybe even enough of them to win, even though Boniface knew they were coming. Probably not, but what the hell, that was all I had.
And I was pretty sure Stone hadn’t come yet, because I could hear, just dimly, all the normal sounds of Île des Choux out in the hall. I couldn’t tell how long it had been since I got beat and kicked into a different time zone. But unless I had been unconscious for ten or twelve hours, which I didn’t believe, it was night outside. Nobody with enough sense to tie their own shoes would attack this place at night. That would multiply the odds against you, turn Not Likely into Forget It, Slim.
Bailey Stone couldn’t possibly do that. He’d do the smart thing, the thing that everybody from Geronimo to Stormin’ Norman believed in. He’d attack at dawn, when there was enough light to see but your enemy was still only half awake. He’d come in with the rising sun, guns blazing, ready to kick some serious ass.
So I had one very small flicker of hope that maybe, somehow, Stone might win and get me out of here. I mean, miracles happen, right?
Sure they do. But only in fairy tales.
I knew the odds against Stone were long. But there was a chance. I mean, unless he did something so stupid that it killed that tiny chance, too.
And guess what? That’s exactly what Stone did.
Bailey Stone attacked at night. That should tell you everything right there—he attacked at night.
