He blinked his eyelids rapidly against the bright light. A figure was standing over him. At first, it was nothing more than a woman's silhouette, looming like a dark apparition in the snowy woods.
He struggled to turn his head right and left, suddenly realizing where he was: a shallow grave in a forest.
He squealed and screamed, but the noises were muffled by the duct tape. He tried to squirm and wiggle his way free, but the binds on his hands and feet were too tight.
After a minute of failed efforts, he let his head hit the dirt. He breathed heavily through his nose and stared up at the ghost hovering over him.
"Are you going to stay quiet?" the woman asked. "Or do I need to keep that tape over your mouth?"
He made several muted sounds that she took to mean he would do as told.
"Because if you start screaming for help or try something stupid, I'm going to bury you alive. Understand?"
"Mmm-hmm," he said.
His eyes dripped with fear.
She jumped into the grave, planting her feet on either side of his hips. When she did, the light shifted, bringing her face into full view.
It was the woman from the alley.
She reached down and jerked the tape off his face like a Band-Aid.
He let out a painful whimper.
"I hope you dug two of these graves," he spat. "You have no idea who you're messing with, lady."
Her eyebrows raised. "Oh? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like I'm messing with a dirty cop."
His head twisted back and forth slowly. "No. You don't understand. The people I work for aren't the types to accept failure. You might as well kill me now because they will. And they'll kill you, too."
Adriana leaned over close enough that he could smell the light, flowery scent of her perfume.
"That's a good start," she said in a cool tone.
The cop frowned. "What do you mean, a good start? Didn't you hear what I just said? They're going to kill you, lady. You're dead. If I was you, I'd get as far away as possible. And even then, that's not far enough. They'll find you. There's nowhere you can go where they won't get to you. Do you understand me? They control everything."
"It's a good start because you're already talking about what I want to know."
"What?"
"Don't stop now," she said, standing up straight. "You're on a roll. Tell me. Who do you work for?"
"You want to know who I work for? Why? So you can go after them? Think again. No one goes after them because they're everywhere and everyone. Just when you think you can trust someone, you find out they're in on it, too."
"Who do you work for?" she asked again. "Tell me everything you know."
He shook his head vigorously. "No. No way. There's nothing you can do to make me talk. Anything you could do to me, they'll do ten times worse. And then they'll do it to everyone I know."
"Oh," Adriana said in a mock sympathetic tone. "You have a family? Wife and kids?"
"N-no," he stammered.
She wasn't sure if she believed him, so she applied a little pressure to his groin with the heel of her boot.
"Ah!" he yelled. "I'm telling you the truth! I don't have any family. My parents died years ago. I was married once, but we never had kids."
She let off the pressure and cocked her head to the side. "I believe you," she read the name tag next to his badge, "Officer Einhorn. That's an interesting name."
"I hope when they find you, they peel the skin from your bones."
Her face contorted to a frown, and she resumed the pressure on his private parts.
He screamed again and tried to turn over, but she was too strong.
"That's not very nice," she said. "And it's an especially terrible thing to say to a lady."
"You can go to — ah!" He yelled as she pressed her foot down harder.
"That's also not a nice thing to say to a lady. For someone so mouthy, you're doing very little talking about what I want to hear."
She climbed out of the hole and disappeared from view for a second.
"Do whatever you want to me," he said, gasping for air. He was momentarily relieved to not have a boot crushing his testicles. "It won't make a difference. You'll never get to them."
Adriana returned with a pair of yellow cables hanging from one hand and a box in the other. When she squatted down next to the grave, the cop could see what she was holding.
"How much do you know about electricity?" she asked.
He wiggled again, fighting against the bonds on his hands and feet.
She didn't wait for an answer. "It's a fascinating thing. I've been shocked by it a few times myself. Nothing major. Mostly just static electricity from touching a doorknob. There were a few times, though, that really hurt. Did you know, for example, a motorcycle spark plug can send a significant jolt through your body? Feels like a giant finger flicked you."
As she spoke, she connected the jumper cables to the battery and then dropped the other ends into the grave. She reached behind her back and picked something up. It was a bowl.
She placed it in the grave next to his bare feet and then stared at him. The pause allowed his anxiety to build.
"You don't scare me," the cop said, doing his best to sound brave. "I've been tased before. We all have to go through that just to carry a Taser."
Adriana pouted her lips, pretending to be impressed. "Oh. Well, maybe this won't hurt as much as I thought. Still… I went through the trouble of getting it at the auto parts store, and I'd hate to waste money. Should probably give it a try, just in case."
She took one of the cables and dipped it into the big bowl. Then she grabbed his feet and dunked them into the water. The liquid was warm compared to the freezing air temperatures, but Officer Einhorn didn't take any comfort from that fact.
He started shaking violently, trying to get his feet out of the water and maybe — if he was lucky — knock the bowl over entirely.
Adriana drew a pistol out of her coat and pointed it at the cop's knee. "Stop struggling. You're spilling my water, and I don't want to have to put more in there. If you don't, I'll blow off your kneecap, which is probably more painful than the electrocution you're about to endure, and certainly more permanent."
He froze, staring up at her like a chastised child with a frightened look on his face.
"That's better," she said.
Adriana bent down and picked up the tape. Then she hopped back in the grave and stood over him, dangling the silver adhesive strip over his head.
"Before I put this back on your mouth and start shocking you, is there anything else you'd like to say? Anything? Names would be good. Places, bank routing and account numbers, previous atrocities committed by this mysterious them you keep talking about?"
The cop's head trembled, but he kept his lips sealed.
"Very well. I guess we do this the hard way."
She crouched over him and started to strap the tape to his mouth when he pursed his lips and spit on her face.
Adriana winced then wiped the saliva on her sleeve. She shook her head. "That wasn't very nice. And to think I was just about to let you go." The last comment was a lie, but he didn't need to know that. It was just one more needle under his skin.
She slapped the tape onto his mouth as he tried to hurl profanities and insults. Soon, the words were muted, coming out as mumbled gibberish.
"Feel free to scream as much as you want," she said. "From what I know about this sort of thing, it's going to hurt quite a bit."
Adriana climbed out of the hole again and picked up the second cable. She held it over the bowl of water while the cop kicked around, trying to get his feet out.
"I thought I told you not to do that," she said. "Oh well. I guess you'll learn with a bit of voltage going through your body."