Chapter Three
Three
“How did you find out?”
He opened his eyes—at least he thought they were open, but they felt hot and swollen, his eyelids not moving as eyelids normally did, but staying in place, barely lifting despite the urgings of his throbbing brain.
He could hardly see, making out only movement and darkness, but he recalled a smile as thin as a knife blade. The smile that went with that voice.
“Who else knows?” the voice came again, heavily accented and menacing.
The voice hit him like a slap with every question, “Who—else—knows?” repeating the words with cold, firm precision so close to his ear that his brain seemed to throb with each syllable.
He recoiled from the sound each time, pushing back against the creaking chair to which he was tied, until it started to tip backward and an unseen set of hands put it straight again.
In a moment of blissful silence, a pause between the words, the sound of something like a whimper came to his ears, and it took a moment to realize that it was coming from his own throat.
His stomach ached as if he’d been trodden on, and though he recalled being hit, he could not precisely remember where it had happened or how much time had passed.
He knew he’d been in the boot of a motorcar. But when?
Head shaking back and forth, he tried to respond. “I did not tell . . . I did not . . .”
“I grow bored,” the voice said, again so close to his ear it felt like a painful touch, and following it came the pressure again, as something, a finger or something colder, pressed into his temple where he’d been injured. Harder, ever harder.
He screamed.