were resilient and could be trained to withstand physical pain and psychological pressure.
But emotional torture accompanied by well-planned physical torture could turn even the strongest of men to mush.
It was the games Elise played that had him on edge. Psychologically, he could withstand it. She hadn’t even asked him for information. It was like cat and mouse—he was the mouse and Elise was a psychopathic cat who wanted to see how long he would last with her claws at his throat. Why he wasn’t dead baffled him, but clearly there was a reason.
After he’d been grabbed only blocks from DEA headquarters, he’d been unconscious for hours. There was no clock in the dark, windowless room where he was being held, but one of the men who checked on him had a digital watch. It helped him keep track of the time, because once he had a starting point, he could mentally keep count.
At three thirty-four P.M. he saw Elise Hunt for the first time. He suspected that they’d injected him with drugs and he was still mostly out of it. She talked and he tried to listen, but it was as if she was at the end of a long tunnel. The room was hot and stuffy, but he felt cold and his every muscle was sore from being tied up for so long. But he wasn’t dead, and he had to hold on to that.
At seven ten he felt more himself; whatever they’d drugged him with had passed through his system. His head ached, his mouth was parched, but he was alive and needed to regain his strength.
Then bright lights came on, nearly blinding him after being in the dark for so long. Instinctively, he fought against the restraints, but they were secure.
“Take off his shirt and roll him over,” Elise said.
His survival instincts had him fighting, but to no avail. Hands that belonged to faces he couldn’t see grabbed his shirt and tore it off, then pushed him facedown on scratchy, thin carpet. It smelled like oil and cleanser. “Hold him still, I don’t want to kill him yet.”
The pain that seared into his back made him scream and she laughed.
“Scream as loud as you want, sugar. No one can hear you.”
It wasn’t until she was done and he felt the throbbing from her knife that Brad realized Elise had carved an H into his back. Branding him. Marking him.
She talked almost the entire time. She was excited, energized. She talked about Lucy.
“She can’t touch me,” she kept saying in a singsong voice. “I knew she’d go crazy. Maybe I’m the psychic one!”
Then she’d slapped him.
“You killed my sister! Do you know how that scarred me? For life? Watching my sister and aunt die so violently?”
He didn’t believe it for a minute. The girl was insane.
Lucy said she’s a psychopath, plain and simple. Not legally insane. She enjoys these games and knows right from wrong. She loves doing bad things. Inflicting pain, humiliation.
What had Lucy said? She was impulsive and unpredictable. So Brad didn’t bait her. He couldn’t afford to be so seriously injured that he couldn’t escape if presented the opportunity.
She kicked him in the balls and the pain was so sharp that he couldn’t breathe for a long minute. He felt men tugging at him, Elise giving orders, but he couldn’t distinguish the words over the ringing in his head.
By the time he gathered himself together, the lights were out, the room was empty, and his feet were chained to a metal desk. His hands were free. He tried to get out of the chains as soon as his fingers stopped shaking, but they were secure.
He hadn’t seen anyone since then. They hadn’t fed him or given him water, but every once in a while bright lights would blind him unexpectedly. Not a basement—there were few basements in Texas, especially in this area—but it felt secure. Like a storage room or a garage or reinforced shed or something similar. Thick walls, and when he leaned against them they had some give, as if there were padding to them. Soundproofing.
Scream, no one can hear you.
The first time someone threw firecrackers into the room, he thought it was gunfire and he was dead. Elise laughed hysterically outside the door.
Not bullets. Fireworks. Just fireworks.
The second time firecrackers were set off in the room, one got so close to him it seared his skin. He was pretty sure it was the young guard this time—a kid named Donny, not more