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His minions fastened my wrists to the table another time while I fucking hyperventilated.
“That quiet, soft voice too,” he said. “Until she was screaming for you, anyway. That kind of ruined it.”
“You’re going to want to kill me before you free my hands again.”
Bryson smiled at that. “Set it up,” he said and nodded to the little blonde woman. She was close enough for the first time for me to get a look at some frighteningly familiar black coffee-colored eyes. And I spent a few extra seconds in a confused daze rather than surviving the hellfire of rage that had consumed me a moment earlier.
Bryson waited for the screen to suggest that we were connected somewhere, and the video feed was transmitting live.
“Listen girls,” he said and leaned closer to the computer. “This is the last time we’re reaching out. The last time we’ll give you the opportunity to end his life quickly. If I don’t hear from one of you by the end of the day today, he’ll be dead by this time tomorrow. I’m going to start now, but I’ll make sure he lasts through tomorrow. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him alive, but in so much pain that he’ll be begging me for his own death.”
He paused to stand up and punch me in the jaw, then he stepped right up behind me to grab my jaw with his good hand to make sure I was looking right into the camera.
“I’ll start skinning him. And I’ll do it until I can see bone, Trista. Then I’ll reach in and break those bones with my own hands.”
He started squeezing my jaw until I could taste blood just from the inside of my cheeks against my teeth. This would probably be my last chance to speak.
“Don’t you dare. You break for me and me alone, baby. Don’t do it for them. Don’t give in.”
The punch to the back of my head after that felt like it damn near broke my neck.
But my heart stopped when I managed to catch just a single fucking glimpse of that computer screen before Bryson slammed it closed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
trista
Riding in the passenger’s seat of Utah’s truck wasn’t anything at all like riding shotgun with Jersey. I wasn’t overwhelmed with the need to annoy Utah until he snapped. I didn’t feel like I needed to break the silence with senseless chatter just to pull a conversation out of him. I had no desire to force the truck into the ditch at the edge of the road to escape Utah’s presence.
We hadn’t spoken much since we’d left Jersey’s house a few hours earlier, but it was really a pretty comfortable silence for it being with someone I didn’t actually know. Where Jersey preferred the inside of his car in absolute silence, Utah blasted country music as loud as his ear drums could handle. Jersey never drove with the windows rolled down, because then dust would get inside. Utah hadn’t even pulled out of the driveway before he had all four windows down. Jersey existed in the driver’s seat like a statue, like he was as happy as he could be plastered in place in control of that car in silent respect of what it could do and what he could do. Utah was fidgety. He tapped his fingers along with the music. He shifted around in the seat, let his arm hang out the window and blow in the wind for a few minutes before he moved to the next position. The truck was rigged with gadgets inside just like Persephone had been, but that was the only similarity I’d been able to find to this point.
He laughed when the display on the dashboard flashed with a call from Indy. “And I thought we’d make it at least halfway there before they needed something.”
He didn’t even get a chance to speak when he pushed the button to answer the call.
“Pull over,” Memphis said immediately. “Get the computer up and running. They’re showing us a live video with Jersey.”
I nearly ripped that laptop right off its mount trying to make it happen faster, while Utah was as cool as a cucumber pulling the truck off the road. The second that the screen came to life, Memphis had taken control of it and was moving open windows around until a crystal clear image of a very broken Jersey was the only thing that I could see. Bryson was in the middle of a speech about how this was our last chance to contact them before he’d start doing unspeakable things to kill Jersey slowly. I hadn’t even noticed that my very shaky hand was trying to touch Jersey’s face through the screen. He wasn’t okay. Nothing about him looked right anymore. I was crying by the time Bryson was talking about skinning him, but something in Jersey’s face focused so hard on the screen that I couldn’t look away if I’d tried.
“Don’t you dare. You break for me and me alone, baby. Don’t do it for them. Don’t give in.”
The very audible sob that broke out of me was probably embarrassing.
“He can’t hear you, Trista. But type something. Anything. It’ll show up on their screen. Fast,” Memphis was talking a mile a minute.
I sent him the only thing that I could think to say.
Survive for me, J. Please.
Bryce had already punched him directly in the back of his head, but I wanted so desperately to believe that he was able to see it in that few seconds when he looked at the screen again before the connection was interrupted.
When Utah’s grip tightened on my leg, I realized that I didn’t even know when he’d put his hand there. The tiny sniffle that came through the speakers of the truck suggested that Memphis was probably crying now too.
“Indy?” Utah asked.
“I’m right here with her,” Indy said.
Daddy Utah. Trista Whisperer. Little Light.
