Chapter 22 #2
Steeling myself, I lift my eyes.
There he is. General Cohen. My tormentor is being escorted into the room, his cuffs hooked to a sturdy-looking attachment bolted to the tabletop.
He is bigger, although the simple T-shirt and loose pants he’s wearing hang off his frame.
His face is swollen and misshapen, and his feet are bare against the tiled floor.
My reaction to him is physical: elevated breathing and heart rate, sweat breaking out and a rush of adrenaline that sets my teeth chattering. This terrible man had such a hold over me for so long.
Rhett purrs. Tells me how brave I am. How I can leave if I need to.
He gives the choice to me, and that steadies me and my resolve.
The questions begin. Simple ones. Nothing intended to trip him up… yet.
“You have asked him these questions before… he is irritated… and wary… not answering any questions leads to being taken back to his cell and pain.” I relay. “He is trying to remember which answers he gave you before, but the pain and lack of sleep are making it difficult.”
Soon, the questions turn more detailed. Troop movements. Operations. Details of power players. He might not answer, but his thoughts do, and I tell them everything, including whether I can verify their correctness.
We are an hour in when Cohen’s jaw suddenly tightens and his head swings to the left. He stares straight into the monitor—it feels like he’s looking right at me, his obsession with me seeping through the wall.
“Where is she?” Cohen snarls, jerking against the restraints.
I jump, fearing he’s about to break free and get to me. The urge to lash out, to shove something vile back into his mind, is almost irresistible. My fingers dig into Rhett’s sleeve. “He knows,” I whisper. “He knows I’m not dead.”
“When an alpha meets an omega,” Peters says smoothly, “he can take some of her traits, her gift. Are you familiar with this?”
Cohen’s head snaps around.
“His emotions are volatile,” I say shakily.
“Sometimes they manifest the same, and sometimes they manifest differently,” Peters continues.
“He’s thinking about my death… How someone took me from him… How we might have been together… He’s thinking about Rhett, the alpha who dared to take what was his.”
“He would be mindless after losing a mate,” Cohen spits out.
I have to give the interrogation specialist his due. He is calm and composed. But I dare say he has done this before.
“Scraping out your brains to aid us is his only motivation and focus right now,” Peters says.
“When we’ve ripped every useful thing from you, and you’re utterly spent, we promised him that he may kill you.
Ripping every secret from you, and then ripping the life from you, is what he lives for.
Make yourself comfortable, Cohen. You’re in for a bumpy ride. ”
The interrogation continues.
And the next day, and the day after that. They allocate us quarters, and we stay there in between.
Cohen doesn’t want to give the answers, and yet they come anyway. He’s weakened. Not quite broken, but certainly not the man I once knew.
He speaks of things I don’t even understand, but I repeat whatever I see. All of it is recorded so that it may be analyzed and pored over.
After a while, the words blur out. They leave his mind and exit my mouth, and I disconnect from the process. And at the end of the sessions, Rhett tells me how brave I am and how he loves me. It feels like fate brought this complex man into being just for me.
Woodrow updates us regularly on the successes that the information yields, and it helps me to stay the course.
“Today was our last session,” Woodrow says as we gather once more in the briefing room with Interrogation Specialist Peters. “You’re free to return to your home. We already have a lot of information to work through. And while we’re far from done with Cohen, your part is over.”
“For good?” Rhett demands.
“To the best of my ability to commit to that, yes,” Woodrow says. “But if something specific comes to light and if we feel it is vital to a military operation or the security of our people, then we may need to call on your unique skills, Larissa.”
“That is such a cop out,” Rhett says. “That gecko sanctuary is always in need of a cash injection.”
Woodrow rolls his eyes. It’s such an unexpectedly candid display that I laugh.
“What the fuck?” Rhett mutters, glaring at me like this somehow betrays him.
“Son, if you were in the military, I would have knocked your attitude into shape. But alas, you skipped the discipline that alphas invariably benefit from, even if they do go off the damn script down the line.”
“I have discipline,” Rhett mutters, still scowling.
“You have focus,” Woodrow says dryly. “It is definitely not the same thing. And trust me, your protectiveness toward your mate goes a long way toward mitigating your annoying-as-fuck gecko obsession and proprietary use of other people’s money. Where did the gecko fixation even start?”
Rhett suddenly grins. “You mean you haven’t guessed?” He’s positively gloating while keeping his thoughts on a tight lockdown so I can’t cheat. “You ever look up my tag number? You know, the one they used instead of a name when they scraped all the alphas from Lyus.”
Woodrow’s brows pull together. “I may have. It appears to have slipped my mind.”
Peters suddenly chuckles.
“What?” Woodrow mutters, scowling now. “What am I missing? It’s just a bunch of numbers and letters.”
“Five of them,” Rhett says, smirking now.
Peter taps on his data tablet and slides it across the table toward Woodrow.
“G3CK-0,” Woodrow reads out. He shoves the data tablet back.
“That’s it? That is where the name comes from?
Do you even like geckos?” He snatches the data tablet back and stabs his finger at it.
“It says you’re deceased?!” His brows crawl up into his hairline as he pins Rhett with a look.
“Was it not enough that you already doctored your record to remove all mention of your agoraphobia?”
Rhett rubs the back of his neck, looking cagey and smug all at the same time. “Yeah. You know, dropping off the radar is a lot easier when everyone thinks you’re dead. I believe you were the one who put that idea in my head.”