Page 72 of Talk to Me

The moment I’d released the locks, they’d rushed in. I barely had time to hit the lock on my system. Even if they could get in, it would take them far too long to do it there. Nothing was absolute. Too long without my actual password though would kick in a default setting that would erase the drives.

Better safe than dead.

“Six,” I said. “I think. Six men—” I tested the way that tasted on my tongue. All of them had been much taller than me. “Definitely men or very tall women.” I wasn’t precisely short, but I wasn’t really that tall either. I was fairly average.

“Six men to bag you, Patch?” McQuade rubbed at his chin.

“Six men inside the secure perimeter of the house. They shouldn’t have been inside. I had security and redundancies, particularly when I was on the line. I couldn’t afford to be interrupted.” It could cost them their lives if I was.

Even if a delivery came while I was in the secure room, the buzzer wouldn’t ring through. Instead, they’d have to leave it on the porch or follow my delivery instructions to return later.

It wasn’t usually a problem, I scheduled everything to prevent those kinds of disturbances. Eyes closed, I tried to replay those moments following the rush inside. But the only thing I got was acid crawling up my throat.

“I think they must have knocked me out immediately.” My throat went dry and it took a couple of swallows of coffee to ease. “Six men. Moving in pairs. There were two just right there when I started to open the door. They shoved it inward, I stumbled back a couple of steps. I hit the lockout for my system. It was already shutting down for the night, but the lockout requires a series of tasks in order to get back into the drives.”

The only person who could do all of them was me. For the most part.

“Two grabbed me as I hit the desk. One wrenched my arm. Two more came in right behind them and there were at least two in the hall. Six men.” Yeah, that felt right. “I don’t know how they got me out or what they did in the house. The next time I came to, I was in a cell.”

“Did they identify themselves?” Locke asked. “I know they didn’t when they rushed your office, but once you were in the cell?”

“No,” I told him. It was a direct response. It also wasn’t a lie. They never told me specifically who they were, but I had a fairly concrete idea. If not their identities, I knew exactly what they wanted. “They asked questions. A lot of questions. Questions I refused to answer.”

“So they resorted to torture.” Remy’s soft voice belied the subject matter. “How is your stomach tolerating the food?”

The shifting topics didn’t seem odd at all. “Yes and so far, I’m fine.”

Another sip of coffee and I eyed the second sandwich. I kind of wanted to eat it, but I also didn’t want to risk upsetting what delicate balance I’d already achieved.

“Pure torture for torture or were they interrogating you?” McQuade honed in too close on a subject I didn’t want to discuss.

“Both,” I admitted. “There were days when my hosts seemed quite determined to just make me scream. Not that it did much good. If I denied them, they worked harder. If I indulged them, they prolonged it.”

It was a lose-lose proposition.

“Torture is not an effective way of gathering information or intelligence,” Remy stated. “You could have answered anything to make the pain stop. At least until they could verify it.”

“I presume they could verify it, whatever it was?” There was something eerie in the way Locke picked up on Remy’s lead and followed it so easily. These men weren’t supposed to know each other, yet here they were, working in concert.

While they weren’t quite to the stage of finishing each other’s sentences. They weren’t far off.

“Presumably,” I deflected. “I didn’t break… even when I did, I didn’t. I sang songs and told them stats from high school sports.”

“You know stats from high school sports?” McQuade looked more intrigued than surprised.

“No,” I said, giving in to the smile tugging at my lips. “But they didn’t know that and the numbers sounded good.”

“They went to a great deal of trouble to acquire you,” Locke pulled us back on topic. “How likely are they to try and reacquire you?”

Too damn likely.

That was the other problem. Even with my escape, all we’d done was delay their next attempt at acquisition.

“Is there a chance that they will go for another target to get what they need?” There was care in the way Remy phrased the question.

“There’s always a chance,” I said. What they wanted, however, was not available to anyone else. “Please don’t ask me what it is.”

“Okay,” McQuade said. “For now.” Acceptance and a warning. “Sometimes information is need to know…”

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