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He grabs my nose and holds it shut, then jams the bottle’s head into my mouth. Water pours in, but I don’t swallow. Ingram doesn’t let go until I try to breathe, inhaling the water. I choke, bucking in my seat until Ingram backs away. Every cough is like a truck hitting me in the chest; I pass out from the pain.
Consciousness returns with a splash of water over my face.
“I warned you,” says Ingram. “We’ll set you up with a feeding tube if you don’t eat or drink. Trust me, you don’t want to die of thirst. It’s not a good feeling. I hid in a pile of dirt in Saudi Arabia for a week to kill Hamza and take your missiles — I drank as little as humanly possible. It sucked, and I was in good shape. You… you’re not, Anton. You’re in seriously bad fucking shape.”
I smile, as much as it hurts.
“Something funny?”
“None of this… is as bad… as what I did… to you and… Kate. I made her… a trained… animal. And you… watched.”
Ingram balls his fists.
“Eight months… you waited… and she… suffered. It must have… felt like… years.”
He nods.
“Yeah, it did. Kate and I considered keeping you alive for just as long, putting you through the worst torture imaginable. As far as I’m concerned, that option isn’t off the table.”
I shake my head.
“I’ll die… and be gone. You’ll live… with your… failure… forever.”
“You’re right, Anton. I will. Not a day will go by where I won’t think about what I cost her, and I’ll spend every day making it up to her. My life will be about picking up the pieces and putting them back together. But you… you’re going to die with your failure.”
I sneer at him.
“Even if she never has her whole life back,” he continues, “I will make her happy. Whatever she needs, I will provide. And you can be sure that she is going to make me very, very happy. I’m going to live a long life with her. Your skeleton will be at the bottom of the sea while Kate and I are living out our days. The world will know you were a monster and they’ll be glad you’re gone.”
Fuck. Fucking shit.
“At any point in the last twenty years you could have just looked me up, found me and shot me in the back when I wasn’t looking,” Ingram says. “You could have gotten your revenge and avoided all of this fighting. That wouldn’t have been enough?”
“No,” I growl.
He shakes his head.
“All of this because of a fucking broken bottle.”
With that, he turns to leave.
“See you tomorrow, Anton. Get ready for another very, very painful day.”
I’d rather not think about that, so I slump my head down and try to rest. Everything hurts too much, though; the throbs and spasms kick me out of my grogginess before I get in too deep. So, I’m still awake when Jamison enters my cell.
He walks right up to me and punches me in the face. Despite his age, he has plenty of strength; my head lolls back, dizziness takes me.
“Conquistador,” I say.
Jamison laughs.
“There’s no phone in here, Anton. There’s no network to send out a signal. Even if there was, your systems have been shut down and my chips were removed.”
Damn, I’m losing it. I knew that wouldn’t work; I still wanted it to work.
“Good… for you.”
He kicks my shin; it’s a fresh pain. Was Ingram saving that for later? Or did he not want the white-hot molten steel frying my brain so I couldn’t talk?
