Chapter 3 #3
Hardy must have seen some flicker in my eyes, for he hobbled around the table, standing directly in front of me.
His face was very pale, and in contrast, the pupils in his eyes were very wide and dark.
What color there was of his iris was nearly swallowed by them. His lips twisted into a cruel smirk.
“You know, there is someone else we can put these questions to. Someone we needn’t use kid gloves with.” He turned to confer with King. “I can only imagine what your husband might tell us to spare you.”
Alarm shot through me, nearly provoking me into protest. Hardy had recognized this was the chink in my armor and he was prepared to exploit it for all it was worth. But I grasped onto reason just in time.
Word of my detainment had no doubt reached the press.
It had likely been reported within an hour of my being marched out of my home under armed escort.
As such, reporters would be vociferously demanding answers, and if I knew Sidney and my friends, they were exploiting that for all it was worth.
If Sidney Kent, war hero, was also detained, the uproar would be enormous, both here in Dublin and in London.
As such, they wouldn’t dare arrest him. Not unless he was caught red-handed hurling a bomb into a lorry of Auxies or standing shoulder to shoulder with Michael Collins.
“Don’t you love him enough to spare him?” Hardy queried, twisting the metaphorical knife deeper.
Though I knew I should have kept my expression neutral I couldn’t stop the sardonic quirk of my eyebrow. Even as I did it, I realized it was the wrong thing to do.
King pushed forward, evidently ready to strike me again, but his cohort stopped him, a look I was wary of entering his eyes.
“I have another idea.”
I watched as Hardy crossed toward a stove positioned a short distance away. It was all that was keeping the stone chamber warm. He bent down to pick up the fireplace poker from the floor and thrust it inside the glowing fire.
I stumbled back a step, instinctively retreating from what I suspected was to come, but King grasped hold of me from behind, gripping my upper arms fast. I could hear myself breathing hard—or perhaps it was King—as Hardy pulled the poker from the stove, its tip now glowing an angry red.
He studied it and then studied me, advancing toward me steadily.
I had imagined any number of unpleasant things that might happen to me here, but not this. It was impossible not to shrink away or pull against King’s grasp, which tightened painfully. Every nerve and fiber of my body strained away from the red-hot poker.
Hardy grasped my chin brutally. “Now you’ll talk.” He lifted the poker so that its tip was inches from my face.
I closed my eyes, unable to watch, a scream caught in my throat.
“Oh, yes, you’ll talk,” he sneered as the poker moved from above my cheek to over my eye. I could feel the heat radiating against my skin, blistering it, singeing my eyelashes. The smell made my nostrils flare, and my stomach roil.
Then the heat was abruptly removed, though their grips on me remained. I opened my streaming eyes, blinking to try to clear them.
Hardy’s jaw was set. “Will you talk?”
I swallowed against the pressure his hand exerted on my throat and neck, but remained silent, even though part of me was at war with the rest, cursing and berating myself for a fool.
A small corner of lucidity remained inside me, clamoring to remind me that these men couldn’t mark me as they were threatening to.
After all, Hardy had warned King of that very thing just minutes earlier.
If they branded me or gored out an eye, the resulting tumult would topple more than these men’s careers.
It would threaten the entire government.
And by God, would I burn them all to the ground, Secrets Act be damned.
Hardy snarled and turned to hurl the poker at the floor near the stove.
King released me, but only long enough to pivot me around so that he could drive another fist into my gut, lower this time. I crumpled to the floor in pain as he stood over me.
“Do you think you can win? You’re going to talk, by God!” He stood over me shouting questions, but they blurred together in my mind as a deep ache radiated through my whole abdomen. I struggled to regain my feet.
“Shall we try the Webley?” I heard Hardy inquire as if they were merely choosing a restaurant for lunch. I could only guess what he intended to do with a pistol.
King had ended his tirade, but his chest rose and fell quickly as he stood glaring at me. “No.” He reached for his belt. “I’ve another weapon to bring to bear. Against the table!”
Because I was a woman, I’d expected it might come to this even as I’d shied away from the notion that my own countrymen, my own colleagues, would ever perpetuate such a brutal act.
That I might have as much to fear from them as I had the enemy during wartime.
Well, they’d proven themselves every bit as barbaric. This knowledge bruised my soul.
But before King could lower his pants, the door opened.