NICHOLSON WOKE UP in the dark, on cold ground, but at least he was alive. He was completely naked, he realized, and his wrists and ankles were bound.
A horrible ache blazed up in his neck when he tried to look around. But he was still in the game, which was all that really counted now, wasn’t it?
There was a building of some kind behind him, dimly lit from the inside. Everything else was just shadows and trees. A stack of firewood, maybe. Machinery of some kind near the building. What? A snowblower? Lawn mower?
“He’s waking up,” a voice said, not far away from him.
Nicholson heard footfalls and the sound of sloshing water. As the steps came closer, a flashlight beam lit the ground in front of him. He saw a pair of feet in dark cordovans.
“Welcome back, Tony. Thought we lost you back there. Here you go!”
When the splash of water hit, it jolted him like an electric shock. His whole body seized with the cold, and his breath came in crazy accordion gasps he couldn’t control.
“Get him up,” someone else said.
They hoisted him under the arms until his bare ass landed on a wooden chair. The flashlight caught just glints of things—a face, a stump, a flash of silver in someone’s hand. Gun? Phone?
“Where’s Mara?” he slurred, as she suddenly came to mind.
“Don’t worry about her right now. Least of your problems. Trust me on that.”
“We had an arrangement!” He sounded pathetic and he knew it. “Promises were made to me. I did exactly as I was told!”
Something sharp pricked at the crown of his head. “Who else knows about Zeus?” one of the men asked. His tone was bland, conversational.
“No one! I swear! Nobody knows. I did my part. So did Mara!”
A stinging line, almost like fire, ran straight down behind his ear to the back of his neck. There was a slight breeze, an air current, but it lit up the pain like acid.
“Not Adam Petoskey? Not Esther Walcott?”
“No! I mean… they might have figured a little out. Adam wasn’t as careful at the end as he was at the beginning. But I swear to God—”
Two more cuts slashed across the front of his chest and down his abdomen. Nicholson screamed both times.
He drew in his stomach muscles as if he could somehow escape the blade even as it continued down slowly, separating skin from skin, until it stopped just at the base of his cock.
“Who else, Nicholson? Now would be a good time for you to get chatty.”
“Nobody! Jesus, God, don’t do this!”
He was crying now, moaning out of control. It was all so incredibly unfair. He’d spent his adult life trading in one kind of a lie or another, and now here he was, caught in the truth.
“I don’t know what it is you want,” he blubbered at them. “I don’t know anything anymore.…”
Somewhere behind him, a third voice came out of the dark. It was different from the other two, with the kind of Dukes of Hazzard redneck twang Nicholson had looked down on ever since he came to America.
“Hey, fellas, let’s move this along, all righty? I got some work of my own to attend to.”
And that’s when Nicholson gave up the last piece, his lifeline—at least he hoped so.
“I gave a disk to the cops. Zeus was on it. Detective Alex Cross has the disk!”