“Why the hell is she here?” Paul demanded, his words slurred as they passed through his misshapen lips. “She doesn’t know anything!”
“But you do.” Frank smiled his cold, reptilian smile and motioned to have me placed beside Paul. With a rough shove, I was shown the floor, where I barely caught myself on my knees, gasping with the pain of landing on my kneecaps. I slipped on the blood and was horrified that so much had pooled under his chair.
“Are you all right?” Paul tried to lean toward me, but the ropes held tight. “You’re bleeding,” he noted, which was totally a surreal and absurd moment, considering he looked like a piece of pulp. Blood had dried in a thick, dry crust over his face, with splatter on his T-shirt. It was sickening. My stomach churned, and I had to take a deep breath.
“What happened to you? Who did this?” My voice sounded small.
“I have associates.” Frank quirked his lips, answering for Paul. “They’ll be back soon, wanting a completion to our business as quickly as possible. We were just waiting for you.”
“I’m so sorry. So sorry...” Paul murmured with a heartfelt sadness. He let his head fall back on the top of the chair, like he couldn’t hold it up anymore.
“Isn’t that sweet.” Frank grabbed the one spare wooden dining chair that had been pulled into the room and placed it before Paul. Taking his time, he sat in a genteel fashion and gave Paul a saccharine smile. “You care for her? That should make this even easier.”
“Bastard,” Paul muttered.
Had I just become leverage? I shivered, feeling so cold suddenly. I reached out to search Frank’s mind for any hint at what he was planning to do with us but encountered blankness. Not even a smidgeon of feeling was coming through. He was a master of constructing a mental fortress.
Footsteps sounded from one of the other rooms. We listened silently for a moment as the steps grew louder amid angry-sounding voices.
“Back off, Rosser! I’m not in charge,” I heard Jory say sharply. She rounded the archway in her cloglike sandals.
“Why have you taken him? What the hell is happening here?” The older male voice sputtered angrily from somewhere behind her.
“Not my business,” she hissed over her shoulder as she appeared in the archway. She seemed upset, which was strange. There was nothing being done to her. No one was threatening her life. Damn bitch.
“Paul! Oh, God, Paul!” The gray-haired man I’d seen in Paul’s memory appeared and blanched at the sight of his son. He tried to rush across the room toward him, but after a nod from Frank, Crew Cut and Baldy grabbed him and shoved him back. He struggled with urgency to get past them, but they held firm.
“Get off me, you sons of bitches!” Rosser demanded, stalling his efforts to pull away.
“Rosser, your son has been a bad, bad boy.” Frank shook his head. “He won’t tell us the location of the mylunate.”
“So you beat him? Please! Let me take care of him! He’s my son! He needs medical care!” Rosser’s voice cracked.
“Not until he spills the beans,” Frank said pleasantly enough.
“Pauly!” Rosser renewed his struggles, only to have Baldy thrust a fist into his gut, causing him to grunt and gasp for air, stilling his resistance.
“I’d stay put if I were you,” Frank offered helpfully.
“Dad, what the hell were you thinking?” Paul asked tiredly through his swollen lips. “How could you make plans with terrorists?”
Tears of helplessness began dripping from Rosser’s eyes. He loved his son and couldn’t handle seeing him like this. With gasping breaths, he said, “Pauly, Pauly...I didn’t want you to know... I’m so sorry... The business was in trouble... I’m in trouble... I acted on tips I was given and sank the whole ship. I’m going to jail if I can’t cover the loss.” To Frank he yelled, “Do you have to keep him tied up? He’s not going to hurt anything!”
“Wrong,” Frank replied coldly, calmly. “He’s feeling a bout of patriotism, humanity, call it what you will, and despite numerous attempts at persuasion, he won’t come clean.”
“Tell them where the mylunate is, Pauly,” his father pleaded. “Then I can get you out of here.”
“They’re terrorists, Dad. They’re going to kill people! I just...just can’t believe that you...would do this.” The depth of Paul’s disappointment, his sudden comprehension of who his father was, was almost painful. This was an intimate conversation between father and son that was happening with an audience.
“Goddammit! You don’t fuck around with these guys! They’re going to kill you!” Rosser’s voice rose in panicked distress.
“I know. I’ll die with a clean conscience.”
I looked up at Paul from my position on the floor, soaked in the violence that surrounded me, and realized that he truly believed that he was going to die. He’d given up. I could only imagine what all had been done to him, and he’d spent his time here making peace with himself.
“But what about your father?” Frank pulled a gun out of his side pocket and aimed it at Rosser, who was visibly startled to see it pointing in his direction. His face flushed.
“What the hell is this? Who the hell do you think you are to come into my house and start making demands on people? I’ve been here for you almost twenty years now! Where’s the loyalty? The appreciation? Put that goddamn gun away!”
“Rosser, I am loyal to myself. Loyalty to anyone else is foolish and only brings pain,” Frank stated grimly.
In that moment, gone was the facade of levity, and in its place were the cold-blooded eyes of a killer. We all got a good look into the dark depravity that was Ranik Grayson. Even Baldy and Crew Cut cast nervous glances at each other before looking back at Ranik. He had secrets. Secrets that had twisted him.
Silence fell as Rosser looked into Frank’s eyes and saw the coldhearted truth. He looked down at the gun that was pointed directly at his chest, and his anger drained. Terror was born.
Rosser’s pleading eyes turned to Paul. “You’re going to let him shoot me? All you have to do is tell him where the stuff is!”
“Dad, do you really think he’s going to let us out of here alive even if we give him what he wants?” Paul shook his head sadly, sorrowfully. “You signed our death warrants. Take a good look around. We’re all dead. Every single one of us.”
And that included me. That’s when my shivering started. I was truly terrified.
“I’m out of here,” Jory muttered. “You know where I am.”
“Until later, Jory, love.” Frank’s icy voice came out softly. Then he turned on Paul. “So where is the mylunate? And let’s be clear that this is the final time I will ask you before I shoot your father.”
“Pauly! Please! I’m your father!” Rosser’s breathing had become quick and shallow with fear.
The horror of the moment swamped my senses. Paul was resolved, but waves of shock and scalding pain were clenching his insides. He was remembering a warm, loving time when his mother and father had still been together, and they’d had a lovely beach holiday in some tropical place. He could remember his father chasing him down the sand, letting him get away, but just barely. They were both laughing, enjoying the game. I could feel what this was doing to him viscerally and could only wish for a miracle intervention that wasn’t going to come.
“What am I supposed to do?” Paul choked on his words. “You want to take money for killing innocent people. Who are you? I don’t know you.”
“Not me, Pauly! I’m just a go-between guy!”