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Grabbing up her phone, holding it impatiently to her face to open the screen, Olivia jabbed at the phone pad to call 9-1-1.
The door burst open.
A smack to her hand sent the phone flying. It hit the wall with a crack and fell silently onto the bathmat.
A gun at her temple had an enormous power of persuasion.
Following instructions, Olivia walked slowly to her office.
Henrietta snarled and danced, trying to be brave and helpful when she, too, was so obviously terrified. The next lunge and the second man gave Henrietta a kick that sent her sailing back into the bathroom. And he shut the door.
Olivia listened hard.
Henrietta sounded freaked. But those weren’t the sounds she made when she was in pain.
And with the cold metal pressing against her temple, there was nothing Olivia was willing to do right now except to try very hard to remember that if they wanted to pull that trigger—if they wanted her dead—it would be over.
Over might be the better outcome here, was the thought that whispered just under her breath.
Death might be their endgame. But there was at least a middle. And in that middle, she had an opportunity to survive, she reasoned. And that began with compliance.
Did she learn: Hide. Run. Fight?
Yes.
Was that going to work here?
No.
They didn’t teach her in those shooter scenarios how her body would stop functioning, that she was basically an autonomic system—heart beating, eyelids blinking, the inhale and exhale of oxygen, though that was strangled and shallow.
No, Olivia couldn’t get her body to fight or run, couldn’t make her mouth open and scream.
She fell into the desk chair that had been dragged to the middle of her office.
She offered nothing by way of counter when her forearms were duct taped in place.
She watched them do it like she was an indifferent observer.
Somewhere in her mind, Olivia remembered that duct tape was an illusion. One could get out of it. But that would take privacy and time. And Olivia had neither. Nor did she have control of her limbs or thoughts in any meaningful way.
A gun to the head had magical powers, debilitating, enfeebling powers.
The man—in his jeans and biker boots, his heavy leather jacket, and wallet chains, with his shoulder-length gray hair slicked back into a ponytail, and the neck tattoo—sat at her desk behind her, opened the laptop, tapped the screen open, and walked over to show the security app her face. “Thank you.” He sat at her desk and started looking through her files.
Olivia had tried a lot of cases. And she had learned about the depravity of humanity.
This was her midnight.
Things were dire.
The sniper and even the ambush, by comparison, felt benign.
Olivia knew that there was nothing she owned—no valuable in the physical world, no piece of intelligence in the factual world that she was willing to suffer for.
Take it.
What was she willing to protect with pain?
