THE BEDROOM WAS wide, with large windows and a sliding glass door that opened onto a shaded balcony enclosed with balustrades. The only furniture in here was a cheap folding chair. The man standing in the room with her had brought it with him.
The guy looked like Elmer Fudd on steroids. He was white and young and built like a tank, with wide shoulders, a massive shaved head, and a neck as thick as a tree trunk. He wore a visible earpiece, the kind the Secret Service used, and he had dressed for the part—a navy blue suit with black shoes and a white shirt without a tie. His jacket was open, and as far as Ellie could tell, he wasn’t carrying.
The bedroom door was closed. He stood next to it, leaning back against the wall, hands tucked in his pants, and as she paced the room, sometimes rubbing the tender area on her arm where Frank had grabbed her, he tracked her movements as though she were a field mouse—a possible nuisance but by no means a threat. He didn’t move or say a word when she turned to the sliding glass door to the balcony, not surprised to find it locked.
Not that opening it would have done her much good. The drop from the balcony to the backyard was steep; she’d probably break an ankle. Still, she would have risked it. Even with a broken ankle or leg she could have hobbled her way down the slope, to the shoreline, to the scattered people in the not-too-far distance who were walking the beach, pausing to look up at the sky, at the smoke billowing in the far, far distance from the wildfires that seemed to want to consume the entire state, burn everything to the ground.
Two hours passed. Elmer Fudd took her to the bathroom once, and then back to the room, and shut the door. More waiting. She paced the room, barefoot. Her right ankle hurt, but the pain was manageable, thanks to the adrenaline humming through her limbs.
Her adrenaline spiked when the screaming started.
It came from somewhere downstairs and roared past the closed door, causing Ellie to come to an abrupt stop. The floor swayed under her feet and her organs turned to water. Elmer Fudd suppressed a yawn.
The screaming went on for approximately ninety-eight minutes. She knew the time because she tracked it on her watch. Out of those ninety-eight minutes, the last twenty-two were those of someone experiencing the type of pain associated with the lower rings of hell.
That someone, she knew, was Anton.
When he wasn’t screaming in agony, he was cursing in Russian, and every now and then, when she willed herself to be still and strained to listen over the blood exploding against her eardrums, she thought she heard a faint whining sound—the kind made by a power tool motor. She heard it now, that faint whine, heard Anton howl and curse, and Ellie thought she was going to be sick, maybe even faint.
She had caused this. Whatever hell Anton was experiencing, she had caused it.
And at some point Frank would come for her. Frank or one of his men, or maybe Frank would contact the man in the room with her over his earpiece, tell him to drag her downstairs.
Where she’d be tortured.
Killed.
The stark, terrifying truth she’d been ducking for the past few hours came at her and hit her in the heart like an arrow:
She was alone.
On her own. Roland and his men hadn’t followed her. If they had, they would have been covertly watching the house. They would have known she was being held prisoner here and they would have known Anton was being tortured. They would have known she was next. If they were here, they would have intervened by now, and they hadn’t, because for a reason she didn’t know, they weren’t here; they weren’t watching. She was alone.
What could she do?
She could tell Frank who she really was. She could tell him about Brentwood and about Paul and Sophia Vargas and everything she’d seen. She could tell him she was working with Special Agent Roland Bauer of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and his team, that they had been listening and tracking him for months.
And Frank would then torture her and kill her.
Ellie turned her back to Elmer Fudd and faced the sliding glass door. A window was cracked open, and she could hear the frenzied squawk of seagulls and waves crashing against the shoreline. Death was waiting for her downstairs, here in this beautiful house with its sweeping ocean views and bright sunlight. You weren’t supposed to go out in a place like this. This house, its location—this was where you came to build your future, not end it.
Movement behind her. Ellie spun around and saw Elmer standing next to the door now, a meaty hand gripping the knob. She heard approaching footsteps. Frank was coming for her.
Fear blurred the edges of her vision. Ellie wanted the floor to turn into quicksand, suck her down past this room, to a warm womb where she would drown peacefully and not have to face the consequential horror of her choices.
Elmer opened the door.
The man who entered was tall, a good six feet, and had skin the color of cardboard. His thick black hair was cut short, and he wore a black suit, the jacket buttoned, with a lavender-colored tie and a matching pocket square. He smiled warmly, as though she were a guest and not a prisoner.
“Faye, right?” he said, extending his hand.
Ellie straightened, nodded confidently even though she didn’t feel confident. His hand felt warm and dry and strong in her limp, damp grip.
“Nice to meet you,” he said in a jovial tone, like they were meeting at a cocktail party. “I understand you wanted to speak to me.”
“Are you Sebastian?”
“I am. Sorry to have kept you waiting. Some unforeseen circumstances, as I’m sure you heard. Billy here treat you okay?”
Ellie nodded and swallowed dryly, her limbs shaking. She hadn’t known who to expect, but she hadn’t expected to meet a middle-aged Latino who looked like the older version of some guy who might have posed shirtless for the cover of a romance novel. He had a square jaw and sultry lips and the most piercing green eyes she had ever seen in a human being. He also had a drop of blood smeared on his smooth cheek.
He saw where she was looking and, puzzled, touched his face. He examined his fingers and said, “That reminds me,” and then reached into his pocket and came back with what looked like a sealed bag the size of a deck of cards.
“For you,” he said, and handed it to her.
The bag felt light in her hand, the contents as clear as the bag.
“It’s a poncho,” he said. “I don’t want you to get all wet, ruin your clothes.”
Ellie didn’t know what terrified her more—whatever horror was waiting for her downstairs or his cavalier manner, Sebastian acting as though torturing another human being was an ordinary, boring activity, like waiting in line at the supermarket.
“I was hoping we could talk here. About Paul,” Ellie said. “I saw him—”
“Let’s have this conversation downstairs. It will be far more productive and a much better use of everyone’s time.” He stepped aside and motioned to the doorway with his hand. “After you.”
Ellie stared at it as though it were a portal to hell.
Sebastian said, “If you’re having trouble walking, Billy here can assist you.”
Ellie walked, her legs shaky and weak, and when she moved into the hall, Sebastian closed the door behind her. She didn’t have to ask where to go; she knew the way.
The hall ended and she rounded the corner, to a winding staircase that ended in a foyer of travertine marble, the front door so massive it could have been a drawbridge. And this home might as well be a castle. She was trapped inside with the king and his guards, and at the king’s mercy. She gripped the banister, and as she took the steps one at a time, the packaged poncho gripped in her other hand, Ellie felt as though her soul had departed her body, felt as if she were watching her corporeal self trudge reluctantly downstairs, heading to her doom—a prisoner on her way to meet the firing squad.
Even with her limited time as a street cop, Ellie had seen the myriad ways people hurt and killed one another, and yet there had always been a part of her that clung to the age-old belief that good always found a way to triumph over evil. She remembered something someone had said about how when you found yourself in hell, the key was to keep going, and for a reason she couldn’t fathom, let alone explain, she felt a momentary calmness. She would get through this. She had to get through this in order to find her brother.
That fragile, scraped-together calmness shattered when she reached Anton.
The odors hit her first—wet, coppery blood and the unmistakable stench of excrement. Anton, stripped of his clothes and bloodied and beaten and God only knew what else, sat in the center of the main living area, bound to a high-backed dining chair with plastic cuffs that had cut into his wrists and forearms and ankles from thrashing in pain against the restraints. His head hung forward, and he was drooling blood and saliva, his face unrecognizable. There was no question it was him. She recognized the tattoos—the ones that weren’t covered in blood. His blood. God, there was so much of it.
Her stomach lurched and she looked away, across the room at the perfect blue afternoon sky lying beyond the windows and French doors. A man with thinning hair and wearing dress pants and a blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up, stood by the door, hands folded across his chest, a nine strapped inside a leather shoulder holster. Sebastian pointed at the man as he charged past her and said, “The hell’s wrong with you, Jack?” The room was empty of furniture; Sebastian’s voice echoed through the wide, cavernous space. “You want my guest to pass out? Open a couple of windows, will you? Get some fresh air in here.”
The man named Jack opened the pair of French doors for the large viewing deck that overlooked the ocean. Ellie could see only the sky, but she could smell the ocean, the salt and seaweed, riding on the cool breeze blowing from the water—bright, clean, and peaceful scents that belonged in this vaulted room, with its beautiful architecture, and now suddenly didn’t.
Sebastian turned to her. “Come, come,” he said, beckoning with a hand. “He’s not going to bite, I promise.”
Ellie didn’t move, staring at the floor. She’d spotted a couple of Anton’s teeth scattered in blood pooled on the floor around the chair.
The man from upstairs, Billy, was suddenly standing next to her. She hadn’t heard him come down. He placed a hand on the small of her back and urged her forward.
“Have her stand in front of him, Billy,” Sebastian said. “And be careful of the blood—I don’t want her to slip and fall.” Then, to Ellie: “Sorry to have you get so close, but Anton’s having a little problem in the sight department. You okay to stand, Faye? Or would you like a chair?”
Anton’s head twitched when he heard her name. A low, guttural moan escaped his throat. Strings of red saliva poured from the torn, swollen mess of what remained of his bottom lip. He tried to look up, couldn’t because of the pain or effort or both, and his head slumped forward again, his chin resting on his chest, near a tattoo of a heart wrapped in barbed wire.
“You look like you could sit,” Sebastian said when Ellie didn’t answer his question. “Billy, go upstairs and fetch that chair.”
Ellie now stood less than five feet away from Anton, gagging from the stomach-churning stench and god-awful carnage when Frank came in from the kitchen, holding a large glass bottle of Pellegrino. He drank deeply from it as he strolled across the room and moved behind Anton’s chair. He leaned forward to put down his bottle, and when he straightened she saw a cordless drill gripped in his hand. The drill bit was long and thick and covered with blood and bits of skin—Anton’s skin. Anton’s blood.
Frank hiccupped. “Excuse me,” he said, then pressed a fist against his mouth as he sucked in air through his nose and held it.
Billy set up the folding chair behind her. Ellie sat, grateful to no longer be standing, but she continued to sway, like she was on a boat going through choppy water. She gripped the edges of the chair with her sweaty hands as Sebastian got down on one knee beside her. He draped an arm across the back of her chair.
“Now,” Sebastian said to her. “The gentleman he met yesterday, the person you said he called Paul—Anton here tells me he has no idea where Paul is. Says he hasn’t seen Paul or his muscle-loving butt buddy, a guy named Bradley Guidry. Was he there yesterday, Faye?”
Ellie’s eyes never left Anton. “I . . . I don’t know. He . . .”
“He what?”
Ellie swallowed, feeling cold all over. “There was a guy there, a driver, and some other guy who was watching us. A sniper.”
Out of the corner of her eye Ellie saw Sebastian exchange a glance with Frank.
Ellie said, “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Oh, I believe you.”
“I never saw him. I don’t know his name.”
“That would be Mr. Guidry. Like you, Anton says he’s never even heard the name before. I respectfully called bullshit, and Anton respectfully disagreed, leading to the mess you see here.” Sebastian sighed, shook his head. “He should get an Olympic medal for being a stubborn bastard. He comes by it naturally, though, him and his Communist people. Isn’t that right, Anton?”
Anton moaned, then began to gag, spitting up blood. Ellie couldn’t look anymore, didn’t know where to look.
“I know this is quite a shock,” Sebastian said to her. “A beautiful woman like yourself isn’t used to seeing such grotesque things, I’m sure. But, quite frankly, you have no one to blame but yourself. You wouldn’t be here—we wouldn’t be here—if you had simply answered Frank’s questions.”
Ellie’s heart was hammering, blood pounding in her temples.
“We could have looked into the matter, conducted business like civilized people, then taken the appropriate actions,” Sebastian said. “Instead, you turned stubborn yourself—which probably explains why Anton likes you so much. You’re like two peas in a pod.”
Figure out a way to get through this.
“My hope—and I sincerely mean this, Faye—my hope is you’ll be more forthcoming than Anton. If not—if I think you’re holding back something—well, I don’t think I have to explain to you what will happen.”
“Fresno,” Ellie stammered.
“What about Fresno?”
“Where he met Paul.”
Tell him about the blood pill.
Christ, she had totally forgotten about it. She hadn’t told Frank about it, hadn’t given it to him. She needed to tell Sebastian about it now, get control of the situation before it—
Something hard banged against the floor, to her right. Ellie whipped her head toward the sound, saw the distinctive shape of a flash-bang grenade, the kind used by LAPD SWAT, skidding across the floor, toward her.