Reid Farmer had never considered himself to be a particularly brave man. Like all American males, he’d often watched movie heroes achieve the unthinkable, and abstractly wondered if he could have withstood the same.
Reality now rolled around inside his pain-numbed brain: He’d have spilled his guts after the first jolt of electricity tore through his naked body. The agony couldn’t be described. Words could do no justice to the humiliation of his body fouling itself, or the screams, whimpers, and pleadings torn from his desperate throat.
But a subtle truth had lodged deep in his brain: These people want Kilgore. They’ll do this to her.
The man named Brandon Marsden leaned down, a devilish gleam in his eyes. “Where is she, Doctor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t feed me that horseshit. You were going to collect Dan Murphy and this Skylar Haines and put them to work on Fluvium’s book. You weren’t going to do that in a Starbucks.”
Reid took a breath to reply, but the current hit him first, paralyzing his lungs, blasting through his body. Existence turned inside out.
After it stopped, he weakly sucked a lungful of cool air, eyes struggling to focus. His scrambled thoughts began to coalesce. The cement room slowly swam into focus. The black-clad Marsden stood before him. Yusif sat tied to his chair at the side, sweat beading on his bare skin.
“Dr. Farmer?” Marsden asked. “We’re going to do this all night. It won’t end until you tell me where Kilgore France took the Mayan scholars. You stole Fluvium’s book. You took the jar and the notes. We only want our property back.”
“I don’t know.” His tongue felt like a stone.
“If it were yours, wouldn’t you want it back?”
Reid blinked, his nose recovering enough to identify the acrid smell of the feces and urine he sat in.
Marsden bent down to peer into his face. “If you don’t tell me, it will be Yusif’s turn again. Is that what you want? For your friend to suffer? Your fault, Doctor. You’re doing it to him.”
“My fault.” He imagined Kilgore’s delicate face, her soft brown eyes, the perfect cast of her cheeks. Even as her face swam in his imagination, a tear broke from her shimmering eyes and streaked down her smooth skin.
He glanced over at Yusif. The man’s fear and terror reflected in his wide-eyed gaze, in the shivering muscles that tensed against the wires binding him to the chair.
“Sorry, my friend. Zambee ana. It’s my fault.”
“Why?” Yusif’s voice squeaked.
“Chief Raven wouldn’t tell them.”
“Who’s Chief Raven?” Marsden immediately cued on the words.
“The lady who’s gonna bring you down,” Reid answered with a smile.
“She’s an Indian?” Marsden prompted. “On a reservation? Is that where Kilgore went?”
“Oh, she’s way off the reservation.” Reid tried to chuckle, but only coughed.
“Which tribe?” Marsden leaned close, the electrical switch in his hand for emphasis.
“The kick’is’ass tribe, white eyes.”
“You mean the Kickapoo?”
“God, you’re a stupid fuck, Marsden.”
Electricity blasted the world away in paralyzing brilliance and pain . . .