Page 12 of Black Hearts

He picked up one of the towels from the cart and held it over my face. I screamed, but it was immediately muffled by the cloth as he wrapped it tightly around my head and under the table, presumably securing it with the rope.

Panic flooded me as he did something to the table so that it tilted back on an angle. My head and body were now lying slightly downward, held in place with the restraints. I couldn’t see what was happening, but my other senses were on high alert, and I could hear everything. Dwyer was now filling up another cup of water, and he stepped back over to me when it was done.

At first there was just a trickle of water as he tipped the cup over my face, but soon he was pouring it onto the towel fast and heavy, making me choke and gasp under the tight fabric around my face. I knew I wasn’t drowning, but it sure as hell felt like it. My airways felt like they were completely filled with water, and I could see colorful spots exploding in front of me, even though there was nothing in front of my eyes but darkness.

Dwyer pulled the towel up after about twenty seconds. After spluttering and fighting the urge to vomit, I gulped in deep breaths of air. “That was just a taste,” he said. “I have a question for you, and I want you to answer honestly. Unless you want some more of that.”

“What?” I choked out.

“Alex Magnusson. When I found you, you told me he originally took you because he was worried you remembered his face. But that’s not true. We both know it. He took you for other reasons, and you began a relationship with him, didn’t you?”

“I….” I gasped in another breath, still not fully recovered from the waterboarding.

Dwyer slapped me, making me shriek with pain. “Answer me.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, we were… together. Sort of.”

“Thought so. Now tell me, where is he?”

“Huh?” My eyes widened as the full weight of his words hit me. “You didn’t kill him?”

“No.” His nose wrinkled in a disgusted expression. “Not yet. The fucking idiots managed to lose him. They’re still looking, but he’s hidden himself well. Damn shame we can’t get the cops involved, really. He killed the only guys we had in the force years ago, like your dad, so it’s not an option unless we want to totally fuck ourselves. And there’s nothing I can personally do at the field office without raising suspicion. At least not right now.” He narrowed his eyes. “So that’s where you come in. Where is he, Celeste?”

“I don’t know.” Despite the stinging on my face and the burning in my throat and nasal cavities, I’d never been so happy in my life. I could almost see and hear golden angels singing ‘Hallelujah’.

Alex was alive!

I was right earlier—Dwyer never told the police or FBI about him. He wasn’t wanted by them, and they didn’t go anywhere near his house to try and arrest him last night. Only the Circle did, and they’d lost him like a bunch of bumbling amateurs.

I smiled to myself at the thought. For once, the twisted pricks had been forced to realize they couldn’t always be ten steps ahead of everyone else in the world, no matter what sort of power and influence they believed they wielded.

Dwyer put the towel back on my face and poured more water on me for another ten seconds. I took it happily. I didn’t care anymore. If Alex was alive and Dwyer and the rest of the Circle didn’t know where he was, then that meant he might be looking for me. I knew I betrayed him by choosing to leave him and not trust him, but surely he loved me enough to see past that and forgive me.

Please, Alex. I’m sorry.

“I fucking said: where is he?” Dwyer said, pulling the towel off again.

“And I said I don’t know!” I shouted. “But I hope he finds you and skins you alive, you sick fuck!”

That earned me another hard slap and another thirty seconds of water torture.

“You must’ve talked to him a lot,” he said after releasing my face from the towel for a third time. “You know things about him. Where would he go to hide?”

A germ of an idea formed in my head. If I played this correctly, I could pretend to give up eventually and faux-grudgingly give him fake information. I could lead him straight to a place in the middle of nowhere where I knew for sure that no one would be hanging around. That would buy me more time, and it would also buy Alex more time.

I knew the perfect place.

Years ago, when my mother was still alive and in the throes of her raging alcoholism, she’d spent a lot of money unwisely. She used to get blind drunk and commit to buying things online, and one time, she somehow managed to purchase a decrepit old hunting cabin near the state game lands just south of the national forest, despite the fact we weren’t hunters and never went near the game lands.

No one ever wanted to buy it from her, and so that little cabin had remained in our family’s name for years. I’d almost forgotten about it till now, because it wasn’t like it was going to sell at any point within the next twenty years.

“Please….” I mumbled, forcing tears to spring to my eyes. “Alex never told me anything like that. I don’t know where he’d go.”

Dwyer slapped me again. “Lying little bitch. Tell me right fucking now, or I’ll bend Samara over as soon as I find her, and I’ll ram a hot poker into her ass.”

“No!” I cried out. He slapped me again, harder this time, cracking right across my nose. I winced and pleaded with him as I felt blood seep out of one nostril. “Stop! Please! Promise you won’t hurt her.”

“Only if you tell me.”

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