Page 97 of Prohibited

The distance between the car and the station that had felt so far when she’d started walking had suddenly vanished, and she was standing in front of the building. A couple of cops were standing out front, chatting with another officer who was sitting in his car. One of them nodded toward her and they all looked, chuckling while they eyed her greedily. Evie gave them a small smile and then hurried inside, not wanting an ounce of trouble.

Feeling small and stupid, she went to the secretary at the front desk. “Is Lieutenant Roberts in this evening?” she said, trying to look and sound far more relaxed than she felt.

The tired looking woman eyed her with some wariness and curiosity. “No, the Lieutenant isn’t in this evening,” she said. “I can take a message for him if you–”

A young officer walking by with his hat in his hand stepped forward. “Pardon me, ma’am, but he’s in. I saw him not too long ago.”

“Can you find him for me, then?” the secretary said, giving the young man a piercing look.

“Oh,” he said. Clearly, he hadn’t considered that he would be assigned this responsibility when volunteering information. “Well, yes–”

“Off you go, then,” said the woman. She looked back at Evie. “Who should we tell him has arrived to see him?”

“Mrs. Colter.” She hated how small her voice sounded. “Tell him Mrs. Colter is here to see him.”

The woman looked at her more closely and the young officer also looked fairly astonished. They exchanged a look that Evie pretended like she didn’t notice.

“Please take Mrs. Colter to Lieutenant Roberts’ office to wait,” said the secretary after a moment of silence. “And then please find Lieutenant Roberts and tell him she is here to see him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the young man. “Please follow me, Mrs. Colter.”

Chapter thirty-four

Ryan

A wild, animal fear tore through Ryan as one of the coppers approached him with the handcuff key in his hand.

But he seized that fear and drew it back into himself. Took his deep, steady breaths through his nose. Just like in the war, he told himself. When the bombs were falling, when they had to leave the trenches and crawl out into the open across the deadly plane of No Man’s Land in the dead of night, when men around him started dropping under the deadly hits from sniper rifles in the forests of France. He just breathed.

His body felt lost to him, something he existed outside of when the toadie unlocked his right hand. Fucking dammit, his dominant hand. The other toadie dragged the table over until it was right next to Ryan.

“Hold his arm on table. And don’t let go.”

It was futile, but Ryan fought them both. One arm against two men wasn’t very effective, and they pinned it to the table and held it, easily as a mounted butterfly. Ryan gritted his teeth and breathed through his nose.

The lieutenant walked around Ryan and drew a knife from the belt of one of the coppers holding onto him. Then he walked back in front of Ryan and gave him a good look at the blade. It was a bayonet knife, just under a foot long. He almost laughed at the vicious irony of a weapon of his own army being used against him now, on the soil of his own country. His own state. His own city.

He felt cold, detached while the Lieutenant walked to the table and scraped the blade across the back of Ryan’s hand.

“Reconsider?” the Lieutenant said, then set his mouth into a hard line.

“Never.” A surge of adrenaline went through him, but he forced himself to stay perfectly still.

“Hold him,” the Lieutenant said. And then he brought the blade down onto Ryan’s finger and pushed.

Blinding white agony. Pain that radiated through his body and turned all of his nerves to thin, melting agony.

Ryan jerked, couldn’t help it, as the pain moved through him and tried to wrest control of him. He clenched his teeth together so tightly that his jaw ached, especially where he’d lost the tooth. He made a low, animal sound in his throat that he couldn’t hold back and contracted into himself, holding his body so tightly that it shook. And he tried not to look, didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to look at the hand. At the table where a black puddle of blood was forming around his fingers. Crimson staining them now. Staining Robert’s hand, which held down every finger except the small one that had just been butchered.He’d taken only the top phalange. The bastard was going to take it piece be piece.

Roberts looked at him, hair in his face, veins in his neck standing out. His eyes blazed with a ferocious animal elation that violence could bring out in men.

“Shall we try again?” Roberts said, breathing heavily.

“I’m not telling you shit!” Ryan gritted his teeth and steeled himself for more agony.

Roberts didn’t wait a moment before chopping off the middle portion of his pinkie. Again, his body contracted to hold in the scream that leapt to his throat. Again, a small, ragged sound managed to escape him. His whole body was shaking now, turning to cold liquid. Sickness was churning in his stomach from the pain, from the idea that parts of him were being taken from him and there was nothing he could do about it.

Except to talk.

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