Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (41 page)

He felt Dax draw near at one point, but not near enough that he could take him out with his legs, assuming his legs could still function. Bedsprings creaked, telling him that Dax had settled onto a nearby bed. Silent for a while. Watching him. Alone in the room as far as Hugo could tell. If only he would come near.

“You know what we do,” Dax whispered suddenly. “You know how it is.”

Hugo’s heart thundered. Was he talking to him? Did Dax know he was awake? No, he couldn’t know. Hugo stayed still, regulating his breathing to mimic sleep. He had the element of surprise; he wasn’t about to lose it.

He knew only one thing: Zelda wouldn’t have wanted this. She would stop it if she could. So where was she?

Hugo felt the fire flow into his limbs.

S
he awoke in
a dim, cavernous space, tied upright to a bench of some sort, head lolling to the side, throbbing with pain from the blow.

From the scent on the air and the sounds outside, she guessed she was in El Gorrion’s compound. Her wrists were bound behind her to two cool metal poles—slender and squarish with notches in them. Her legs were tied straight out in front of her on a padded bench; ropes cut into her thighs and calves, even through her jeans. She could make out a corrugated metal roof in the dim light. A shed? A garage? She shifted around, realizing that she was on a modified weightlifting machine. Which meant it was very unbreakable.

Not good.

She sensed other people around, possibly behind her, so she stayed quiet as a mouse as she went to work wriggling her hands and wrists. Not a lot of wriggle room, but sometimes if you wriggled enough…

Voices behind her. Three men, maybe four or five, some distance away. Then footsteps, light on the dirt ground. Her heart sunk.

“Ella está despierta,”
he said.
She’s awake.

The footsteps continued and she found herself face to face with El Gorrion.

She gazed up at the shaft of light coming down from a skylight, working her hands.

He addressed her in Spanish. “You know how to find Kabakas. It’s all we need. All we want. Tell us, and you’ll be on your way. We know now that he is the farmer, Hugo Martinez. Tell us where he went.”

“
Nunca
,” she hissed.

He knelt beside her.

No way would she send El Gorrion’s men to the hotel. The Associates would have Hugo chained up—he’d be a sitting duck, especially if they had him in a room alone. And El Gorrion’s men would have the element of surprise over the Associates. Good agents could die.

He moved to the end of the bench—near her feet. Horror speared through her. He couldn’t know—he couldn’t. He began to untie her boot, watching her face.

He knew.

She swallowed, fighting to keep her expression neutral, trying to keep her pulse from racing. Not that it would matter.

El Gorrion focused on her intensely, almost clinically, as he loosened the laces, just as Friar Hovde had. He continued on, seeming fascinated with her lack of reaction. Or maybe he saw some reaction. Surely he saw the pulse banging away inside her throat.

“What should we do now, do you think?” He loosened the leather, pulling apart the sides, freeing the tongue. He pulled off the boot with sickening gentleness.

No jerking,
she told herself,
no sounds.
She would give him nothing, and most certainly not the intimacy of her fear. She’d broken down with the Friar, screamed and begged. Never again.

She swallowed as he yanked her sock off. Her foot was bare and vulnerable to him at the end of the bench, now. And she so wanted to scream.

Instead she worked furiously at the knots binding her wrists. Tying bad knots wasn’t a mistake El Gorrion’s men would make, but she went for it anyway, just to have something to focus on. She couldn’t do this again, she
couldn’t
.

Stop thinking like that.

He began untying the other boot, watching her in that eerie way, like a vampire, almost, feeding on her fear. She’d gotten the sense that Friar Hovde had no interior life, and El Gorrion seemed like that, too. He spoke to her in Spanish. He’d learned everything about her, apparently. “It’s a known fact that people who crumble under pressure once are ten times more likely to crumble again. Did you know that?”

“If that’s what you need to believe, go for it,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel.

His knuckle grazed her stocking foot as he worked, sending a sickening shock through her. Even the brush of the sock set her nerves going. How would she handle the blade?

He continued on with those gentle movements.

The gentleness was horrible in just the same way that it was horrible to extend kindness to a man you were sending to his death. It was something about the contrast—the lavish last meal followed by the electric chair. This killer’s light caress before the cutting. Removing the boot so gently.

Her heart pounded.

He had access to the report, like a treasure map to her weakness, her cowardice, her frailty. He knew everything.

Nothing bad has happened yet
, she told herself, but it was a lie. Something bad
had
happened. Something bad would happen now. Finally El Gorrion had both of her boots off. Even in the socks, her feet felt naked. The air was warm and humid, but it felt cold on her feet.

The socks would be next.

Would he start where the Friar had left off? Threatening to sever her Achilles heel, the thick, fat tendon that connected her heel to her calf? Or would he clip off the tips of three toes as the Friar had? Would he take an entire toe?

She told herself it didn’t matter. Torture was a kind of odyssey you entered into. Once in, degrees meant nothing. Soft and hard and painful and less painful—it was all part of the same hell.

She closed her eyes. There was one thing he wouldn’t know about—the injection to enhance the pain that Friar Hovde had given her. She’d never told anybody about it. Except Hugo.

Her throat felt thick, thinking about Hugo. Where was he now? How many hours had passed?

“It’s harder for them to hold up a second time,” El Gorrion continued, pulling off a sock. The cotton grazed her ankle as he pulled. It tickled her foot. “The pain has created neural pathways. As has the fear. As has the relief from cooperation. You know how to make it stop. You know it’s within your power at any given time.”

With that, he tossed aside the sock. He started on the other.

“You disagree?” he pressed when she didn’t answer.

He would get nothing from her.

She had Hugo’s back—her view of him felt so pure, suddenly. And she had the Association’s back—they were still her people. She would go down trusting the things that she knew in her heart.

H
ugo wanted to
kill this asshole Dax. He had the wild feeling that if Zelda were with him, she would feel just as enraged.

She would come if she could. In his mind he replayed her voice—that angry pitch, that volume. Enraged. Surprised. She was not complicit in this. What had they done to her?

He had to get free.

Another phone call. Dax stood, paced as he spoke. Through the haze of the sedative, Hugo spotted the outline of keys in the man’s pocket. If only Dax would pass near enough, he would attack him and take them. But Dax, this was not a stupid man; he was a ruthless man.

Dax would not draw close enough for an attack. Even if he did, he’d make a poor hostage because his ruthlessness would extend to himself—a man like this would kill himself just to neutralize his value. Hugo had met men like Dax at the farthest reaches of jungles and deserts and battlefields. So extreme as to be barely human.

Hugo shut his eyes as another male entered—with coffee, from the smell of it. Dax thanked him. They spoke on about the exchange. Transport. Transfers. Wrappers crunched. The scent of spiced meat and warm bread reached Hugo’s nose.

Another came—this one full of energy. “We’ve lost contact with Riley.”

“What?” Dax said.

“GPS shows him still at the overlook. I’ve sent Kendrick out to investigate.”

“That can’t be right,” Dax said. “He wouldn’t have kept her there.”

Her?

“What if he lost control of her?” the first one said. “If she was able to surprise him and disable him—”

“We’d know about it by now,” Dax said.

Lost control of her? Disable him?
Hugo pulled at his bonds, ready to rip them from the wall, rip his hands from his wrists.

She wasn’t in on it. He’d always known it. He had to get to her.

“Zelda can’t overpower Riley. I don’t care what kind of advantage…she’s out of practice and this is
Riley
.” Dax sounded upset.

They didn’t know what had happened, but Hugo had a good idea: El Gorrion had arrived. He’d taken out the Associates’ men, and he probably had Zelda now. The whole picture came together suddenly—El Gorrion had connected Zelda to Kabakas. They’d been tracking them through Bumcara. The buildup around the compound was about Kabakas. El Gorrion was looking to square off against Kabakas, somehow.

And if he was right…if El Gorrion thought Zelda knew who he was, where he was…

Another man came in. “Riley’s down. Shot, beaten up pretty bad. His vest saved him.”

Ice filled Hugo’s veins.

A flurry of activity followed—arguments, calls to people on the ground, calls into traffic surveillance.

Hugo slit open his eyes, knowing the focus was firmly off him. His heart pounded—he had to get to her. He wanted to shout and rage, but that would not help her.

T
he jowly sides
of El Gorrion’s thick neck vibrated slightly as he sat himself down on the stool he’d placed at the end of the bench Zelda was tied to.

He arranged a set of scalpels on the cracked red padding on either side of her feet, like a workman arranging his tools. This was part of it, of course, the anticipation. He held each item up, as if to inspect it, but it was really about showing her. Lastly he picked up a small switchblade.

He addressed her in Spanish. “The great Valencian muralist Sima once said, ‘steal only what belongs to you.’ Have you heard of him?”

Ah, the mindfuck portion. The torturer making himself the agreeable friend.

“He was speaking of subject matter. When you see something that belongs to you, you must make it your own. A rock on the hillside. An old man’s expression. Half the key to art is finding what belongs to you.”

Her blood raced as he flicked open a blade.

“The answer to my question—where is Kabakas—is trapped inside of you. It is this that belongs to me. You can give it to me, or I will cut it from you. I will not stop cutting until I have it. Do you understand? I will cut as the sculptor cuts the truth from the stone.” He tilted his head and looked into her eyes with his flat, cold gaze. “No?”