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By now, Sam should have realised that he was not getting out of this chair unless he was killed or the men keeping him here would let him go, once he spilt the information they needed.
Information he would die before giving up – two of his closest friends’ lives depended on him keeping his mouth shut.
Now, he just slumped in it, trying not to move any more than necessary, lest an extra breath or a misplaced jerk caused the bleed that would end his life.
His wrists were already raw, covered in fresh and dried blood, the plastic zip ties cutting down to the bone. His left eye was so swollen he’d stopped seeing out of it sometime about a day ago, and his ribs… well, he was more than certain that no square inch was left that wasn’t black or purple or blue.
These guys were pros – they’d managed to inflict maximum damage without killing him. A younger him would have broken. But what they wanted, he wouldn’t give them. He couldn’t.
The door creaked open, bringing him fully back to his current reality. He didn’t bother looking up, instead opting to stare at the blood spatter on his boots.
“You still with us, Detective?”
The voice belonged to the boss, Cole, the man who had orchestrated this entire nightmare. Also, the man who could be taken down if he gave up who Witness A and B were. Or in other words, his best friend Shaw and his wife, Andy.
He just hoped that they were safe, that they realised they were in danger once he was abducted on his way to work two – maybe, three? – days ago.
“You’re wasting your time,” Sam rasped, his voice gravelly, thirst clearly affecting the timbre of his voice, “Like I’ve been telling you, I do not know who the witnesses are, and even if I did… I wouldn’t tell you.”
“I can tell, Detective,” Cole said, not hiding his admiration of the man still keeping it together when most would have already broken. But then again, based on his research of the man, he would have been disappointed if he had broken too early.
“Your loyalty is admirable, Sam Swarek, and certainly the kind I would hope my men would exhibit in your situation. But even my admiration is waning into frustration. Sam, I have three days to find those witnesses, and somehow, you seem to be the only one I can reach with those names. You think you hate me now? Wait until my patience really ends… and then you’ll be wishing for death.”
“Why wait, Cole? I told you already, I’m not going to give you what you want. You might as well kill me now,” Sam told him, and he was deathly serious. Everyone had their limits, and Sam was worried he was quickly reaching his – his mind was fuzzy, and he could no longer be careful about every word that came out of his mouth.
He didn’t want to inadvertently give away the two of them.
“Death is easy, Detective, and it's frankly, quite unartistic.”
Sam would have choked on his spit if he had any left in his mouth – unartistic?
“You scoff, Detective, but I’m serious. Death is just a single moment of time, the exsanguination of life. I kill you, and that’s it, you’re not in pain, nor in fear. Why would I get rid of you? Worse, you become a fucking martyr. No, I’m not going to kill you, Sam.”
“Well, looks like we’re at an impasse.”
“No, not at an impasse, Sam. I spent yesterday thinking about how I could break you, you know, truly break you, tear your spirit, and Walsh gave me an excellent idea. And so, I want you to understand the cost of crossing us,” he said, pulling his gun from the holster at his hip.
“Bring her in.”
Sam’s heart stopped.
No.
Surely not.
It couldn’t be—
The door opened wider, Walsh and the bald guy, whose name he never caught, stepping into the room, dragging a struggling figure between them.
“Get your hands off me!”
The voice tore through Sam’s soul, and he realised that Cole was right – his body could break and break over and over, but just hearing her voice already fractured him.
Andy.
She was bruised, her lip split, her plainclothes jacket torn at the shoulder, but she was still fighting, and from the looks of the shiner on the bald guy, she’d landed quite a punch too.
“Andy,” he managed to get out, and she must have heard him, for they locked eyes, and Sam’s three days of stoicism evaporated entirely, his plan to minimise the harm to him merely a suggestion now as he instinctively lunged towards her, the chair groaning in protest, the ties biting into his wrists so deeply once again that fresh rivulets of blood poured down his fingers.
He looked up at Cole, whose eyes lit up as though Christmas and his birthday had both come early.
Did he know? Was he just messing with his head, and did he know Andy was one of the witnesses?
“Let her go, Cole. Andy’s got nothing to do with this, you son of a bitch.”
Cole just nodded at his two men, who forced his wife to her knees in front of him, twisting her hands behind her back painfully, holding her in place. She was panting, her eyes locked with Sam, tears cutting through the blood and dirt on her own face.
What had they done to her?
“I’m okay, Sam, I’m okay,” she tried to convince him, more worried about him.
She’d spent the last three days fearing the worst, and she and Shaw had ditched their day-to-day, hoping it wasn’t, but working on the assumption that Cole Deveraux was still trying to locate the two witnesses who were going to testify secretly and finally bring him down, one of whom was she.
“Cole, leave Andy alone. Let her walk, Cole. She has nothing, nothing, to with this.”
“She may not have nothing to do with this, Sam, but she’s your wife, and seeing as she’s made you say more words in the last two minutes than the last couple of days, we’ve had you hear, well, she has everything to do with making you sing. And so, Sam,” Colee said, stepping behind Andy, casually resting the barrel of his pistol against her spine.
McNally flinched instinctively.
“We’re going to speed things up,” Cole traced the pistol back up her spine, before resting it against her neck, and then forcing it into her mouth.
“Like I said, dying is so simple. So I’m going to make you live, Sam, live to see this.”
Sam barely had time to argue when the gunshot rang out, and Andy jerked violently, her breath leaving her lungs with a sharp hiss.
“By my estimates, she’s going to bleed out in about five minutes. If you want Derek to save her,” he pointed to the bald guy, “you’re going to speak. And if you lie, next time the bullet will be a fatal one, and it will be for her.”
The men left, and Andy rolled onto her back, clutching weakly against her side.
“Don’t… say… anything…” she said as forcefully as she could muster, coughing blood.
“Andy, you’re going to die if I…”
“You think he’ll save me… or let me go? Sam… I was dead… as soon as he grabbed me…”
She dragged herself towards Sam, weakly reaching out to his strapped-down hand, and Sam caught it, trying to find just a fleeting moment of comfort before the inevitable.
“I love you, Sam,” she breathed out, but before Sam could tell her to stop acting like this was it, it was, indeed, it.
Her hand stopped gripping his; the only thing keeping it from dropping was his iron-tight grip around her ever-colder fingers.
Andy was dead. And he was alive, perhaps in only the most technical sense.
Cole Deveraux had just broken him, but not in the way he had hoped.
He would join Andy before he gave up the single living witness.
But knowing Deveraux, he would keep him living.
Living in every sense but the one that mattered.