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“And he was so messed up from the start that he was already unstable going in, so he pretty much stayed the same?” I interrupted and giggled at myself. He didn’t even react to my question.
“You get to know the men you serve with more on a cellular level than an emotional one. These guys who would annoy the shit out of you if you’d met them under other circumstances became the men you trusted more than anyone anywhere in the world because they’re all you have. That city kid who showed up on the first day was the kind of punk I’d beat up on the weekend just to take his girl home for a night.”
“I can’t really imagine anyone successfully beating up Jersey for fun.”
“He turned into somebody I’d do anything for. We all knew he had a family. A wife and a baby, that his wife wasn’t okay. He didn’t talk about that part of it much, but he talked about them nonstop when things would get scary. And one time, he came back for another deployment…different. Something in the core of who he was had shifted. I couldn’t figure out what it was. We hadn’t been out together in nearly a year at that point, so I thought maybe he just seemed different because it’d been so long. But one of the other guys who had kids nailed it down. Van’s kid started talking. Really talking. Not that in-between stuff where every third or fourth mumble of gibberish is a real word. I guess she had this game where they would come up with nicknames for everything. And I mean fucking everything. She really got a kick out of it. Van brought that to all of us, like he couldn’t turn it off. The people, our gear, our weapons, fucking nicknames everywhere. They weren’t as child-friendly as I’m sure they were when he was home, but it gave him something else to hold onto when things got rocky. Motherfucker had all of us doing it. A whole band of assholes running through the desert or some city or awful jungle, calling our weapons the sexiest women’s names we could come up with, giving each other the worst names we could think of.”
I tried so fucking hard to swallow the sobs that wanted to escape me.
“He still does that,” I choked out. “Calls me Fancy Face. Calls Memphis every name in the book because she won’t let him use any particular one on a regular basis, so he just keeps trying. I just thought he was weird.”
“Fancy Face,” he repeated and laughed. He made a noise at Dandy, and she moved to sit at my feet while I cried. “Your turn, honey. Tell me something.”
“I wish I had stories like yours. Mine are…awful,” I stopped to laugh, because they really were just terrible. “I guess if we’re sticking with the name theme, I spent like nine hours trying to guess his real name. I only ever knew him as Jersey. I pulled out every douchebag name I could think of just to piss him off to see if I could get him to break. He never did tell me his actual name, but saying your name like I was auditioning for a porno sure got a rise out of him.”
He stared at me like I’d lost my mind for a solid minute before he laughed. “I have a douchebag name?”
“Kyle is very much a douchebag name. You’re not so bad, but the name isn’t so good.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
jersey
A swift fucking kick to the ribs woke me up from the unpleasant sleep I’d found myself in on the floor in the corner of that concrete box. Shit was getting bad for me quickly if the door opening and closing didn’t even wake me up anymore. They’d managed to cut the water and food rationing back just enough for it to be devastating. I hadn’t been here that long, but I was already badly injured before this started. And they added on extra beatings at every opportunity. Even in its fog, my brain knew that all of that in addition to shitty sleep, no nourishment, and no water resulted in a combination that went south fast. Even strong bodies deteriorated quickly under those conditions.
I watched a set of men carry in a massive wooden table and two chairs while the small blonde woman returned with her camera setup. Bryson stood over me the entire time with a box under his good arm, just watching me. He stayed that way until the other two men each grabbed me by an arm, completely ignoring the shrieking sound that came from me when the motion strained my shoulder again. They sat me in one of the chairs before one of them unlocked the handcuffs. That was when my eyes landed on the center of the table in front of me. There were shackles built into it, ready and waiting to bind me to this table.
“Is this about to be a sexy day?” I rasped out from the driest mouth I’d ever experienced. “Sorry, I haven’t had much of a chance to clean up for it.”
“That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Bring someone in to let him make you his bitch,” Bryce said walking around behind where I sat. “Let you find out what it feels like to be the one getting fucked for once.”
I managed to laugh. “Bold of you to assume that it’d be my first time.”
The gentleman who’d released me from the handcuffs got to work fastening my wrists to the table. Bryce rammed the tip of a knife into the table in between my hands while I was still being shackled and scared the other man enough to make him jump back away from the table.
“Then maybe I’ll just cut your dick off now,” he threatened. “I can’t imagine you’ll be needing it again.”
I made a point to look back down at the knife. “You better have a chainsaw somewhere.”
Rather than just trying to knock my teeth loose that time, this son of a bitch slapped me. Hard enough and solid enough to leave the entire side of my face stinging. I shook my head violently while they finished locking my hands flat against the table.
“Alright then,” I said. “Now that I’m awake, let’s do this. What’s the goal today, boys? Excuse me, boys and girl.”
The woman had already setup the camera and shifted to the corner the furthest away from where I was forced to sit, the corner where I usually tried to sleep. She made eye contact with me for the fastest split second before I watched her right hand come out of her pocket and that whole arm shift behind her body. I convinced my brain there and then not to look at her again for the duration of their stay with me in this room after that.
Bryson dropped heavily into the chair across from me and slammed the biggest fucking rat trap that I’d ever seen down on the table between us.
“This is one of my favorite games,” he said. “And it’s got the easiest rules to follow, to remember.”
He pulled the sling away from his body so he could use the limited mobility that he had in his bad arm. He reached into the box and pulled out three more of the massive traps.
He smiled. “Extras. Just in case you last longer than anticipated and one of them breaks.”
He pulled the bar back on the trap that sat between us on the table to hook it into place, and then I watched him raise the fingers of my left hand just high enough to slide the wood of the trap underneath them. I couldn’t lift my hand any higher with the way that it was shackled. The only option was lowering it, and that would set off the trap.
“I only have one question, New Jersey,” he said. “I’ll ask it. And you obviously have a choice. You can give me the answer. Or we can find out how many snaps it takes from a rat trap before your fingers are detached from your hand. We’re going to record the whole thing. That way we can send it to your friends. If you’re not interested in telling us where they are, they might be interested in coming to us after seeing what they’re putting you through by hiding.”
I locked my jaw right the fuck into place and slammed my hand down into that trap as hard as I could while I leaned forward into that table as far as I could to get closer to Bryson. Tears burned my eyes and fire flared from my fingers all the way to the bullet hole in my shoulder, but I held the stare that I’d locked onto that motherfucker.
