Private Wars

Ruslan was dead, or if he’d escaped.

Both seemed just as likely.

“Dead,” she managed to say. “You killed him.”

Zahidov frowned, examining her leg, then running his fingers along it, over her shin to her knee, stopping at midthigh, close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. She fought the shudder caused by the touch, not wanting to give it to him. He lifted his hand, then brought it down again on her bare shoulder, tracing the strap of her bra with a finger.

“Where is he?” he whispered in her ear.

Chace pulled her head away, again struggling against the bruiser’s grip on her ankles, again to no avail. Despite the chill in the room, she felt herself beginning to burn with the humiliation of the posture, the helplessness, the touch.

“I told you, you killed him, he’s dead. The last I saw of him he was lying in the dirt by the river.”

“You planned the escape.” Zahidov continued to stroke her shoulder. “Where did he go? After the river, where did he go?”

“There was no after the river, he fucking died at the river. He died, I ran, you caught me and his son.” She turned her head, meeting his smiling eyes. “Where is he? Where’s Stepan?”

“With his aunt.”

“She likes them that young, does she?”

Zahidov swore at her in Uzbek, bringing the pipe down on her shoulder once, twice, then a third time, and Chace screamed from the pain of it, swearing in return, thrashing against the cuffs and the chair and the fingers gripping her. She kicked herself free, felt her foot hit the bruiser again, and screamed louder from the impact. Something hit her alongside the head, a fist, and her vision went again. There was cursing in Russian, in Uzbek, and she was struck alongside the head this time, and this time both she and the chair went over onto the floor. She felt blood leaking from her mouth.

And she wanted to laugh. They were going to torture her, and they were going to do it until she was dead, Zahidov had said as much. They were going to rape her and beat her and mutilate her, do everything in their power to destroy her entirely. She had no illusions, she knew the purpose of this room, and she knew she couldn’t resist. At the best, one survived torture, but no one ever endured it. It was why torture was ultimately useless as an interrogation technique; hurt someone enough, and they will tell you that, yes, they murdered Kennedy, Princess Diana, and Thomas More, just please, God, please, make it stop.

Chace was terrified, but that was all right, because she’d have to have been insane not to be. Yet in the midst of her terror, she’d found her anger, and that was what she wanted to hold on to now, what she needed now. To be angry, and to stay that way. To stoke it and fuel it and tend it so that when the worst came, she could still find it.

This ends only two ways, she told herself. You tell them everything and then they kill you, or they kill you before you can.

She didn’t want to die. She absolutely didn’t want to die. At that moment, more than anything, what Tara Chace wanted was to live, to go home, to her home. Not Barnoldswick and its alien world but Camden and London, and to have her daughter there with her. She wanted her job and her life, and to find a way to make them both work together. She wanted to be Minder One again, Head of the Special Section again, and then one day to leave the field and become D-Ops. She wanted to watch Tamsin grow and learn and live, and to see Tom Wallace in her every time she looked her daughter’s way.

She did not want to die being tortured in Tashkent.

But if she had to, she would. And if Ruslan was alive, if he was on the run, she hadn’t failed. The more Zahidov and his brutes stayed focused on her, the better it was for Ruslan, the farther away and safer he would become.

Zahidov had given her a way in, had shown her the exposed nerve. All Chace had to do was keep her anger alive long enough to fully ignite his.

The bruiser came around, righting her in the chair once more. Chace shook her head, trying to clear it, then spat out a mouthful of her own blood. Zahidov watched her, the older man still at the table, waiting by the toolbox. When the bruiser came around to grab her legs again, Zahidov motioned him back with the pipe.

He extended his free hand again, running his fingers over her shoulder, then down across her chest, tracing the edge of her bra along the swell of her breasts. He kept the touch light, watching her for a reaction, and Chace stared back at him. The bruiser laughed, said something in Uzbek.

“He says you like this,” Zahidov remarked. “That it’s making you wet.”

“No, but clearly it’s how you get your rocks off.” Chace met his eyes. “What’s the matter, Ahtam? Not getting any at home, you have to keep feeling me up?”

He backhanded her across the face, striking near her wounded eye. She saw blood on the back of his hand as he brought it around again.

“You really think Sevara’s going to let you keep fucking her after she’s President?” Chace taunted him. “What’s the endearment form—Sevya, is that it? You think little Sevya’s really going to let you bang her in the big house in Dormon?”

His expression flickered, and she saw the hand coming up again, the one without the pipe, and Chace turned her head to roll with the blow. It hit hard, rocking her in the chair, and she realized he’d pulled it at the last moment, that he’d almost lost it. The pipe would do it, she realized. If she could get him to hit her in the temple with the pipe, that would do it, that would end it.

“We’re not talking about her,” Zahidov said. “We’re talking about Ruslan. You’re going to tell me where he went, who his contacts are.”

Chace tried to laugh, a sound that came out like a croak. “Little Sevya, she’ll find two dozen more just like you but younger, ones that don’t need yohimbe to keep them going at night.”

He brought his fist up again, and she braced for the blow, but he didn’t strike. “Where did he go? What was the route? Was there a second helicopter?”

“Maybe he went to see his sister.”

“Why? Why would he do that?”

Chace grinned at him, feeling blood rolling off her lower lip. “To get shit on his dick.”

It took him a second to parse the language, and then Zahidov roared, throwing down the pipe so it clattered on the floor, ringing throughout the room. He punched her in the side, grabbing hold of her hair, shouting in Uzbek. Chace tried to shift forward, to get to her feet again, and this time he shoved her, and she went down face-first, feeling the cement ripping her skin. He was still shouting, and she saw the bruiser’s—Tozim’s—feet coming around, the Adidas sneakers he was wearing navy blue and new. There was a clattering of keys, and Chace tried to rise, then felt the air being crushed out of her as someone, Tozim or the older one or Zahidov himself, bore down on the chair.

They freed one of her hands, then twisted it, cuffing it to her other wrist before unlocking the second set. The chair was knocked away, she heard it bounce, then slide, and the bruiser jerked her to her feet, then dragged her to the table.

Zahidov was still swearing at her in Uzbek, yanking off his jacket. The older man had moved around to the other side of the table, and he grabbed her wrists by the chain of the handcuffs, yanking her forward. Chace twisted, trying to roll, and felt Tozim’s hands on her shoulders, pinning her down.

She felt another pair of hands on her skin, Zahidov’s, and they ran along her sides, down to her hips, and she howled in outrage, kicking back at him. Through her blurred vision she saw the metal door past the older man slam open, two figures, out of focus. One stayed outside, turning away, but the other entered, big, blond, out of focus, in a suit like the others but somehow not like the others.

The man said something in Uzbek, and everything in the room froze. The blond man spoke a second time, more bite in the words, and the hands holding her down left her body. First the bruiser, Tozim, then the older man, and then, finally, Zahidov.

Chace tried to right herself at the table. She heard herself wheezing for breath.

The blond man cast his eye around the room, and through the distortion of her vision, Chace thought she saw naked disgust on his face. He pointed in the direction of the video camera, speaking once more. Zahidov came past Chace, caught in her periphery, smoothing his shirt and tie. He spoke to Tozim, and Tozim moved to the