Page 73 of Thorn

Thorn put his forearms on his thighs, leaning slightly forward. “Tell me about quiet not being peaceful, I’d like to learn.”

That was an odd turn of phrase. She ran her sentence through her head again as a question.Why isn’t quiet peaceful?

Juliette decided to open her mouth and see what came out. “I was thinking the word silent when you said quiet, and they’re really not the same at all.”

“Interesting,” Thorn said. “What’s the difference?” He reached out and his hand came back with a cloth that he used to wipe over Juliette’s mouth and forehead.

It was soothing.

“Okay silence, the human brain is not well equipped to deal with silence. There are places that are built for exactly that purpose − rooms that absorb sound waves − they’re called anechoic chambers. There’s a lab in the mid-west in America that has a noise decibel level below zero. It’s supposed to be the quietest place in the world.”

Thorn nodded.

“It’s a terrible place. I was in there once…” Juliette stalled. Did she read it? Did she watch a documentary? No. This seemed like a memory. Her body reacted with agitation. Her legs flutter kicked, and her hands clasped and kneaded the blanket.

“It’s safe for you to tell me the story,” Thorn said. “We’re nowhere near there. You won’t go again unless you want to.”

But Juliette’s agitation wasn’t about the place, but that this information came from before the accident. She pushed on to see if she’d didn’t have some kind of revelation, forcing herself to be brave and stand in front of what felt like a tidal wave. “Yes, there was a penetrating, horrible silence. And then it was crazy sounds that I could hear. I mean like spiders crawling over your skin horrific. I could hear my lips rubbing across my teeth when I moved my mouth. Swallowing was so loud that it hurt. I could hear my pulse throb. It was…gross. Awful. Torturous.”

And when she said torture, she gasped in horror. She was back in a room, tied down so she couldn’t move. They showed her a candle, then they said they planned to melt her skin. The pain of it. The horrific, world-collapsing pain of it. She had to promise her cooperation. And if she didn’t, they had her sisters. Whatever torture happened to her, they’d perform the same on her sisters. “Comply or suffer,” he had said in a thick Russian accent. Juliette didn’t speak Russian yet. Now she could. After years under the men’s power she could.

As those thoughts bubbled to the surface, Juliette’s stomach rumbled and burbled. She threw herself to the edge of the bed.

Thorn in one swift move swung a waste basket under her mouth with one hand and lifted her hair away with the other.

Her body heaved, and she couldn’t get anything out.

Long minutes of cramping and hacking and no relief.

Thorn had tucked her hair and had his hand on her back. He was crouched by the side of the bed. “Say what you just remembered out loud. Get it out.”

She did as he said, word for word. And amazingly, as the last words came out, “Comply or suffer,” her stomach stopped its violent attack. She collapsed, panting. Her sweat-covered body started trembling.

Thorn touched her hospital gown then got up and opened a cabinet. He came back with a fresh one folded in his hand. He shook it out, then showed it to her, before he helped her get changed.

Modest by nature, Juliette realized she didn’t have an ounce of embarrassment around Thorn.

She remembered the last time she was in the hospital and her dad was introducing himself to her. “I’m your father. David DuBois.”

“What was that thought?” Thorn asked, adjusting her sheet and blanket around her hips. “Better out than in right now.”

“I have scars on my leg and feet. My father told me that I got the burn mark on my thigh when I was a little girl, and my mother had saved me from a fire. And that later, in the accident when she died, I got the burn scars on my feet. But I had a flash of memory. That’s not how I got any of those scars.”

Thorn’s face was a study in calm. But since Juliette had lost a lot of her hearing, she’d learned to watch and read faces. The muscles around his eyes and at the corners of his lips tightened. There was a fierceness − a protective fierceness − that swelled his chest. Thorn said he was here to protect her, and in this moment, Juliette felt right down to the marrow of her bones that this man would throw himself in front of anything coming her way. She was safe with him. It was such a painfully, surprisingly, crazy thought that she gasped.

Thorn stilled and focused his gaze on her eyes, then bent around to snap the back of the gown.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’ll feel better now that you’re not damp.” He got up and tossed the old gown in a receptacle. “Go on with your story about being in the anechoic chamber. You hated being in perfect silence because your body made its own creepy noises. What kind of sound makes you feel peaceful? Do you have a happy sound memory?”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Thorn

Paris, France

Monday, Zero Dark Thirty

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