A whimpering scream burst out of me. “Wait-wait! I’ll tell you. Just quit doing that, okay?”
He reappeared in front of me again, still scowling. “So talk.”
“When we found out about the money, three of us went down to Belize and my computer guy put programs on your files. Sucked out all the money, just as the forty million was transferred to you, then to our accounts.” I paused to cough. “You got some water?”
A face full of ice water sloshed over me again, making me whimper. “Okay, man. No more messing around, really.”
Shit, hope he believed what I was going to tell him. Maybe he’d just end it. I gave my head a shake, forcing the cobwebs away. “Unfortunately, the FBI already had a copy of the information about your accounts. When the money disappeared, they followed its trail to us. Took all the money.”
He laid the pliers down and picked up a knife, eyeing me intently. “All of it?”
“Almost all.” I coughed, clearing my throat. “We managed to convince them to leave ten thousand as a finder’s fee, and not to prosecute us for what we’d done.” Jeez, hope his people hadn’t been able to find out what’d really happened to the money.
After staring at me for several seconds, he nodded. “Sounds plausible. But just to make sure…” A searing pain in my right shoulder had me whimpering while I tried to flinch away, making the pain worse.
“Let’s see if your story is the same after another round, okay?”
Ages later I felt the sting of a needle in my left arm. I roused enough to crack an eye open. “No more. Please.” I mumbled. My right shoulder felt as if it was in shreds, and my right foot was in screaming pain.
A quiet chuckling brought my eyes back to Willie, still in front of me. A crooked smile was on his face while he looked me over. “Damn, you don’t look too good.”
I tried to smile, failed. “Don’ feel so good,” I mumbled.
For the first time he threw back his head in a laugh. “Y’know, under different circumstances I think we might’ve been friends.” His face turned serious and he eyed me intently. “Now how about the money? Where is it?”
My head drooped. “Like I told you. The feds got it now.”
He grabbed my hair, lifting my head up. “Okay, I believe you. Unfortunately, though, I’m not going to kill you nice and clean like I promised.” His lip curled as the frown returned. “Forty-nine million is worth a lot of pain, in my book. So I do promise you this—you’ll suffer until I can’t wake you up anymore.”
My head began drooping, but a vestige of hate and anger sparked through me, bringing it back up. “Fuck you, maggot.” A blow to the side of my head knocked the chair and me to the floor.
“Oh, by the way. Just to cheer you up, thought you might want to know. We set fire to your office, with all your friends inside last night. Smoke must’ve got ‘em, since no one tried to get out. Either that, or they were too cowardly to face us.”
Gone? All of my friends? I shook my head, groaning in anguish. A deep feeling of defeat filled me, bringing tears to my eyes.
For what seemed like hours the pain came in waves. I lost track of the times I shrieked myself into blessed unconsciousness, only to be forced back into the pits of hell for another round. Eventually, all agony ceased and I drifted away entirely.
* * *
Aching pain crept back into my mind. I stirred, causing a fresh wave of throbbing in my right foot and hand to bring me fully awake. I creaked my head around, surveying the room. An eerie silence greeted me, nothing else. The lights were on, but no one was around. A red trail led from a large pool of blood into a room to the right.
I shook my head while coming fully awake, surveying my surroundings closely. There was a rectangular hole in the ceiling. It took a moment to sink in that a large ceiling tile was missing. I bent down, looking at the floor around me. A knife rested between my feet.
I straightened and noticed another anomaly. My hands and feet were now free. The left hand was still functional, but the right was slow to respond. A closer examination explained it- four fingers and thumb either broken or dislocated. A burning pain started in the hand, as if awaiting my notice before deciding to hurt. Careful inspection showed the right foot had four toes crushed. There were also several shallow stab wounds in my shoulder, but it could still move. Very sore and leaking blood, but otherwise okay.
After several minutes of extremely painful trial and error, I managed to crawl from the room, following the drag marks on the floor. Bare skin rasped across it, reminding me of my nakedness. Never realized how vulnerable I felt without clothes on. I made it into the next room, almost passing out when I bumped my injured foot on the door sill.
Once the pain subsided I looked around, gaping. Four bodies lay on the floor, each surrounded by a pool of blood. Three had died from a slit throat. The fourth one, the one that had been dragged from the room I’d been in, had me gagging. Willie hadn’t gone quickly. His stomach had been slit open and intestines pulled out to lie on the floor next to him. A rictus of horror was frozen on his face.
I crawled to the nearest corpse, going through his clothes until–Ah! A cell phone. Placing it on the floor, I turned it on and slowly punched in 9-1-1. “Please-Please help. They’re all dead.”
A woman’s voice echoed down the line. “What is your location, Sir?”
I glanced around again. Nothing to show where I was. “Don’t know. I’ve been injured, and someone’s killed everyone else.”
A
