No one even looked at her.
“Where’s Iris?”
She’d aimed her words at the man from the parking garage, but he remained silent.
“Where is she?”
She tried to plant her feet just short of the doorway, not wanting to go anywhere with them until they answered her questions. But it took only a halfhearted shove from the guy on her left to keep her moving across the threshold and into a narrow hallway.
The corridor was only wide enough for one man to walk beside her, so one of the brutes moved behind her, while the garage man took the lead. There were two light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, metal reflectors with dome wire cages on the bottom. Above them several pipes ran the length of the hallway, covering most of the actual ceiling. As they walked, she kept being bumped into the wall. It was hard and cold like the door of her cell. Metal, she realized.
The garage man opened the door at the end of the hallway, then stepped through. Marion and her escort followed.
They were in another corridor, this one considerably wider. Its walls were also gray and made of metal.
The doorways, that was it.
A door ahead opened and two men dressed in military fatigues and armed with rifles stepped out. As Marion and her escort neared, the men moved to the side of the hall, and nodded at the garage man like he was someone important.
Farther down the corridor, another soldier appeared, then another behind him.
Marion could feel her hands and feet go cold.
Whatever hope of escape she’d been clinging to slipped away like it had never been there at all.
“Who have you told?” Mr. Rose asked again.
The Dupuis woman was crying now. Tears poured down her cheeks as she wordlessly pleaded with Tucker’s boss to stop.
“Who have you told?”
She sobbed. Tucker could see she was trying to get words out, but nothing was coming. Mr. Rose nodded at him.
Tucker turned to one of his men, Linden. “Give her another.”
Linden touched the controller, and sent another jolt of electricity down the wires attached to the woman. She grew rigid as her muscles contracted, the restraints the only things keeping her from falling to the floor.
When the sequence ended, she slumped in the chair.
“Who have you told?” Mr. Rose asked again.
“Just Henrick Roos,” she said, naming her friend at the UN.
“Who else?”
“Noelle. Noelle Broussard in Cote d’Ivoire. That’s all.”
“I don’t believe you, Ms. Dupuis. Someone else knows. Someone else has been trying to help you. Who are they?”
She tried to look at him, her eyebrows furrowed. “I… I don’t know … who you mean. I’ve been alone. No one has …”
Her last words were lost as her head fell forward.
“Who have you told?” Mr. Rose said.
Her shoulders began moving up and down as her tears returned.
“More?” Tucker asked.
Mr. Rose stared at the woman. His face was scarred and wrinkled, his slicked-back hair pure white. On bad days his hands shook so much he had to drink from a straw. But his eyes were always like laser beams, cutting into whatever he was focused on. And his voice, that was the clincher. Strong, manipulative, and unrelenting.
“Who have you told?”
But Marion Dupuis seemed unable to respond.
The laser eyes turned to Tucker. “Again.”
The woman looked up, her eyes growing wide in fear.
“No. No. I’ll—” But the renewed current cut her off.
This time when the cycle ended, she fell forward against the restraints, unconscious.
“Goddammit,” Mr. Rose said.
Tucker moved in and checked the woman’s pulse. She still had one, which was almost a surprise. They’d been at this for a while now. He’d seen others who hadn’t lasted as long, needing to leave in a body bag instead of on their own feet.
And with all they’d given her, she hadn’t broken. Whoever the others at her house in Montreal had been, she
