Not scrawny, but not fit. He had a patchy beard and small eyes and an evil dimple on his left cheek.
“All this blood came from your feet,” he said. “There’d be so much more if I put a bullet in your chest.”
I could picture it because I’d seen all the blood that surrounded Paulie when he’d been shot in the chest.
Breath wanted me to picture it.
He stared at me as he dragged his hand through the pool of blood. “Was it hard lying to Garin? Pushing him away because you couldn’t stand yourself? Or watching Billy shoot up, knowing you could help him, but you were too selfish to tell him the truth?”
How did he know? How had he gotten inside my head?
“The truth hurts worse than your feet do right now, doesn’t it?”
I didn’t have to tell him; he knew. He seemed to know almost everything already…everything but the identity of the killer. His accuracy was as terrifying as the torture.
“You saw Paulie’s murderer…” He pressed his finger into the blood and used it to draw over the cement.
It took a minute before I realized he was drawing the outline of a body. Paulie’s body.
“I want to know who it is.”
Paulie…his arm had been bent slightly inward. His face fully pressed into the pavement. His right leg was straight, his left turned outward at the knee.
I saw it in my head. Over and over.
And Breath captured it all perfectly.
Too perfectly.
“Let me out!” I cried.
“You want out? Then, start talking. I’ll even let Garin out. I’ll put you both in a boat and ship you back to the mainland where Garin’s plane can take you to the States.”
My eyes were burning from the light. Our cell had been so dimly lit that it felt like I’d been in the dark for…weeks? Months? My hair dripped down my back, keeping me constantly freezing. The temperature in here didn’t help. And the cold seemed to make my wounds hurt even more. Even my brain ached, making it hard to process what he was saying.
“What do you mean, take us back to the States?”
“Where do you think you are, puta? Fucking Miami? Rhode Island? West Virginia?”
I looked around the chamber, as if the answer were somewhere inside here. But there were no windows, no maps, no signs telling me anything. “Where are we?”
“Margarita Island.” His accent suddenly became thicker, rolling the Rs, something he hadn’t done before.
“Where is that?”
“Venezuela, baby. So, if you’re a good girl, I’ll have the boat take you to Caracas where Garin’s plane will be. You’ll never have to return, never have to see this cell again. Never have to get any more love from my little babies.” He got up and leaned into my ear. “Never get gang-raped by my boys.” His tongue wiggled around my earlobe, and I could smell the coppery tang of blood. “Never get to feel more of my cum on you.”
I shook my head, but his tongue didn’t move. He didn’t move.
“I can’t.”
“It’s simple.”
“It’s not fucking simple!” I gasped as I felt something solid against the bottom of my throat. It was freezing, sharp.
He held it in place but pushed it deeper into my skin. When I felt the slice, I knew it was a knife.
“Like I said, it’s simple. You tell me what I want to know, or I’ll slit your throat.”
I tried to calm my mind, my breathing, my heart that throbbed out of my chest. Every time I filled my lungs, the knife pushed deeper into me. I didn’t know how I was going to stay calm, but I needed to.
Garin.
I had to pull out one of those memories that I had saved. His face, his touch. The way he made me feel. Garin would tell me not to panic. He would tell me to breathe. He would get my mind off the knife, off this chamber, off all the pain in my body. Garin would tell me Breath couldn’t kill me because I was the only person who knew the truth.
If I died, the secret died with me.
“What’s happening on the first?” Breath asked.
The first, I repeated in my head.
He’d heard my conversation with Garin.
“They have until the first. Then, things will get interesting.”
At least that was a question I could answer. But, now, I knew he could hear everything that had been said inside our cell…everything that had been moaned.
Or had Garin told Breath what I had said?
The thought left as quickly as it came. Garin wouldn’t have