Eris, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet, butted in. “We don’t have to justify ourselves to you, Madison.”
I decided right then to puncture their balloon. “No, you don’t. But you’re not completely up to date. Vanderlin’s game has been solved and Tomas Zakar has the engraving.”
I’d taken a bold step telling them Tomas had it, but I got the response I was hoping for. The news came as a shock. To Ward especially. His inability to hide his anxiety told me how hard the information had hit him. He rubbed the side of his cheek as though he’d just been stung by a wasp. When he spoke, his voice sounded weak. “Where is he?”
I looked straight at him and tried to force a smile. “Your guess is as good as mine. Somewhere over the Atlantic I assume. He left Laurel and me out to dry. You’ve wasted your time by hauling us in here.”
“Don’t think, Madison, that my current good humor toward you means anything.” Ward nodded toward Eris. “Laurel’s already had a taste of Eris’s talents. She’s quite effective at teasing out people’s secrets.”
“Right. Like Hal’s. She certainly blew that.”
“He tried to end-run us,” Eris said defensively.
I masked my surprise. The pieces were finally falling into place. Laurel had been right. Hal
“He was willing to sell the piece. You didn’t have to kill him.”
“He wanted six million. Far too much. I didn’t achieve all this by being a fool,” Ward said.
“The engraving is worth way more than that.”
“Undoubtedly, but I like to be the one to maximize profits.”
I felt the fear. But you can’t be good at sales without reading people well, and something told me there was bluff mixed in with his threats. “A word of advice. Your time would be better spent tracking Tomas and letting Laurel and me go. Squeezing us won’t get you any further.”
He rounded on me, the supercilious smile finally wiped off his face. “I guess the afternoon we spent at my house gave you the wrong impression. The purpose of that cordial interlude was simply to allow me to size you up. You can buy your freedom only by telling us where Tomas is.”
I reared back from him. The sudden motion sent jolts of pain through my stomach.
“Tomas deceived me. I imagine he’s heading for Iraq but I don’t know for sure.”
Eris focused her cold gaze on me. “How did he get out of the country? He didn’t buy an airline ticket.”
“He flew in to a private airstrip in the States and probably left the same way.” I was still furious about the Zakars’ deception and wanted any repercussions aimed straight at them. Ward eyeballed me for a few seconds, trying to sort out whether I was telling the truth.
“I thought you had everyone under constant watch. How did he and Ari slip past you?”
“We gave you maximum latitude to find the engraving. We don’t have limitless resources, so most of our surveillance had to be focused on you. We knew Ari Zakar flew solo back to London and we lost track of Tomas.”
“You people are fools.”
Ward moved surprisingly fast for a heavy man. His backhand whipped my head around.
The room wavered. My brain felt like it had been shaken loose from my skull. I had to wait until the ringing in my ears faded before I could hear what he had to say next.
“Now, we have some business to finish. Tell me where Tomas took the engraving.”
“Not until I’m released
“I don’t think so,” he said. They herded me back to the elevator. We dropped to the basement. He and Eris marched me down a hallway and stopped when they reached the doorway to a small room. “Up to now we’ve been playing along with your puzzles. We had no intention of harming you, at least not irrevocably. You had your chance. That phase is done.”
They threw me inside. The room had a tiled floor and walls, no window, similar to the room in the video of Laurel. A weak light came from a fixture high up on the wall in one corner. The only feature giving the place any distinction was a niche cut into the back wall, arched at the top, about eight feet at its summit and four feet wide. It looked tailor-made to contain a life-sized sculpture. Inside it stood Shim, massive and silent. My own personal wrecking ball.
The door slammed shut with a clang of metal against concrete. I backed up to the wall farthest away from the Cyclops. He didn’t move a muscle. He just stared. The room was completely silent except for the jackhammering of my own pulse. I had no idea how long we stood like that, but we stayed in those positions, locked into a stalemate like the last two pieces on a chessboard.
They’d taken my phone and wallet, and with no watch or window to track the fading sunlight I quickly lost all sense of time. A few hours could have passed or the better part of the day. I focused on the tile floor and counted the squares, hoping to stem the messages of fright pummeling my mind. I noticed it was clean, almost too clean for a basement floor, and it smelled of bleach. I could see faint stains in the grout between the tiles.
At one point, my mind tricked me into thinking the brute really was made of stone. Shim was able to hold himself completely motionless. When not called upon to act, his mind simply shut down as if he were some giant windup toy. His one good eye stared unblinkingly straight at me like the homicidal gaze of a giant prehistoric bird of prey. I’d find myself dropping off, starting to slide down the wall I was propped against, when a surge of adrenalin would jolt me awake and I’d catch sight of Shim, who remained static, never uttering a sound.
I wondered what he’d been like before the explosion in his lab. A young genius anxious to make his mark on the world. Perhaps not even a bad man. He’d retained something of an emotional life. I saw that in his fierce attachment to Ward and Eris.
Every now and then I’d hear muffled sounds outside. Footsteps echoing down the corridor, two men’s voices in conversation, someone clearing his throat. Eerie, to hear those sounds of normalcy, imprisoned in this cell. What could be gained by prolonging my misery? Was this some kind of breaking-in exercise before they bled out every last drop of information they thought I had?
I heard the lock turning. Shim reached me in one giant step, forcing me against the wall, pinning my arms back. My shoulder screamed and my eyes teared up. I tried to prepare myself mentally for the torture I knew was coming. I was young and in reasonably decent physical shape. That would give them a fair amount of time before I broke down for good.
The door banged against the wall as Jacob Ward entered. “Let’s get started. You’ve had some time to think about your situation, so tell me where Tomas has gone.”
“I want to see Laurel first.”
“I thought we’d already dealt with that.”
“Not to my liking.”
A disabling pain hit my arm when Shim jerked it up. A gesture from Ward told him to ease off. “I’m willing to show some good faith,” he said. He motioned to Shim. The two of them led me out of the room and along a basement corridor to a similar room, but one with a cheap-looking cot and single chair.
Laurel lay on the cot. Eris rose from the chair beside the cot when I walked into the room.
I rushed over to Laurel, who lay face down, not moving.
“It’s John, Laurel.”
She stirred and rolled onto her side. I put my arm around her and helped her sit up, or rather, she slouched against my side, my body propping her up. Her eyes looked hazy; she blinked and peered at me as though she didn’t believe I was really there. I took her hand. It felt cold and sweaty. “Is it really you?” she said. “How did you get here?”
“They brought me here. I refused to talk to them unless I’d seen you first.”
She pulled away. “Don’t touch me.”
I remembered too late that her hands had been tied. “Your wrists must still be so sore.”
When she faced me I could see how angry she was. “What did you think seeing