There followed a dog-pile, and it took all four of them to lift me up and get me out into the night and the cold and the snow, and they dropped me twice because, unlike back in Whitefish, I felt no need to be nice about it. I got a glimpse of thick trees and a clear, star-filled sky when they finally hauled me outside, and there wasn't a hint of light pollution, and wherever we were, I knew I could make a lot of noise and no one who cared would hear it.
I hoped to God that Alena knew where I was, that she was out there, somewhere, armed and ready and waiting and with a plan that could pit her against seven and bring her out on top. It was the walking patrol she'd have to worry about first; once she targeted the house, she wouldn't want anyone at her back.
Sean and the others pinned me in the snow, knees on my neck and back, forcing me facedown. The snow was deep, maybe three to four feet in places, and it stole the heat out of me immediately. One of the heavies had demonstrated the foresight to bring some clothing shears, and they used those to cut my shirt and pants off me. It was better than using a knife, at least, and they didn't break any skin. They left me my underwear, that was all. Adrenaline and fear notwithstanding, I was shivering before they actually started in to work.
Then they used the bucket, and the bastards filled it with hot water before dumping it on me, which made the cold all the worse. The water in it probably hadn't been that hot, but it didn't need to be. It felt scalding all the same.
They worked me over one at a time. They stayed away from my face for the most part, not out of concern for my rakish good looks, but more out of desire to protect their hands, even though they all wore gloves. When I tried to stand they were quick to put me down again, on my back or my knees or my face. Mostly, they used their fists, though the one who wasn't Sean threw a couple of kicks at the start, one of which caught me hard on the hip, almost exactly where I'd been shot. Remembered pain lanced my middle and down my legs, and the one who did it liked the reaction he got so much, he got ready to do it again, but Sean put a stop to that. I couldn't tell if that was because Sean was playing the good cop in this routine, or because he was afraid a kick would do too much damage and might keep me from talking, or because he had less of a taste for the affair than the others.
Whatever the reason, it didn't keep him from delivering a savage jab to my kidneys when his turn came. What they did to me hurt.
It hurt a lot, and in many different ways.
It made me angry, and it humiliated me, and it was, of course, just plain old painful as hell.
None of that was the worst thing.
The worst thing was the doubt that began to creep in as the beating seemed to go on and on, as the time stretched and contracted all at once. As their gloved fists beat me again and again, as my skin, raw with cold, stung and split and broke.
She wasn't coming.
Either she couldn't or she wouldn't, and it was the wouldn't that had the hooks, that dug into my mind and my thoughts, tangling itself until I couldn't silence it or ignore it. Nothing else had weight in its face, nothing else mattered; not everything we had between us, not all of the things we had shared and said. I was seeing the display on Bowles's laptop, the file less than five months old, telling me all the things I'd been a fool to let myself forget.
She was a professional, she was one of The Ten, she was Drama, and couldn't it have been an act all along? Why should she care about what happened to me? Why would she care about what had happened to a woman who was my friend, not hers?
Why would she risk her life and her liberty for these things?
She had warned me. She had tried to convince me not to do this, not to draw them out, not to give myself to them. She wasn't coming, that was what she'd been trying to tell me. I was on my own.
She wasn't coming.
They made me doubt her.
For that, I hated them more than anything else. After a while, I don't know how long, they quit, and Bowles emerged from the house with a cup of something that steamed invitingly in his hands. He'd put his overcoat and his gloves back on, as if to demonstrate all the more to me that he was warm and I was not. He crunched through the disturbed snow to where I was shivering and bleeding, dropped down to his haunches, and waited for me to meet his eyes. It took some will to do it, because mostly I was considering passing out, but also because I was having a hard time focusing. The ambient light had turned the snow a blue that seemed to rise up around where I rested. Where my blood had spilled it had turned black.
"Where is she, Atticus?"
My teeth were chattering so much it was hard to say the words.
"Who gave the order?" I asked.
He shook his head sadly, then poured out half of his hot coffee on my still-bound hands. The heat exploded through the numbness, sent sparks and shards into the bone, and I screamed, tried to lunge for him. He'd expected it, backing up, and I went down face-first, my hands still burning with the cold, with the heat.
I lifted my head from the snow, seeing him standing a foot away, seeing the four others gathered outside the front door of the cabin, the warm light spilling from within.
Bowles moved his mug so that he held it over my head, tilted it slightly, as if readying to dump the remaining contents onto my neck and back.
"In a few more minutes, we're going to take you back inside," he told me. "We're going to let you warm up. We're going to clean you up. We might even let you nod off, go unconscious.
"Then we're going to take you back out here, and we'll do all of this again. Except this time, I won't bring a mug of coffee. I'll bring a fucking kettle hot off the stove, do you understand me, you stupid piece of shit?"
My chattering teeth wouldn't let me respond, so I nodded.
"You tell me right now, you tell me where Drama is, where I can find her, and this is over, it's finished, we'll be done. That's all you have to do, Atticus, that's all you have to tell me. Where is she?"
"Why?" I asked. It took effort just to get that much out.
He looked honestly disgusted by the question.
I shook my head, realizing he'd misunderstood me. They needed us both, yes, I'd gotten that much, I understood that much. It was why they'd hit the safe house at the same time they'd ambushed me. They were trying to kill us, that wasn't news, not to him, not to me.
It was harder to say it the second time. "Why us?"
Bowles wavered in my vision, then shook his head, declining to answer. This time, I was sure he'd understood what I was asking, but even now, he wasn't willing to give me the motive. Whatever crime Alena or I or we together had committed, whatever the threat was that either of us alone or together might pose, he wasn't about to explain it.
He moved the mug, let another dribble of his coffee spatter out onto my back. I heard a scream, and I thought that it might be mine.
Then I heard it a second time, and I knew it wasn't.
It rolled out of the trees and the darkness from somewhere behind me, awful with fear and pain. Bowles, Sean, all of them froze in place.
"Son of a bitch," Bowles murmured.
I blinked several times, trying to convince at least one of my eyes to focus on him. I wondered if, this time, I had lost a contact.
"Okay," I said. "You win. I'll tell you where she is."
Bowles threw down his mug, reaching into his overcoat with his other hand, spinning in place all at once even as he brought out his pistol. He did not look at me.