“Let’s piss at the same time,” Tate said.
“Okay.” Anton readied his bladder.
“On the count of three. One, two, three.”
Anton closed his eyes in relief as the piss ran out of him. He didn’t even care that it soaked his pants and pooled in the crotch of his boxers. This was the best feeling he’d had all day.
“Fuck, man.” He let out a contented sigh. “That felt good.”
“Yeah, man. Anton?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a tough motherfucker. It’s an honor to be in this shithole with you.”
“You, too, man.”
“Do you think we’re gonna get out of here?”
Tate’s question floated in the darkness. Anton could taste the need in it.
Finally, he said, “Eventually. It will probably be in a body bag, though.” If Russians even used body bags.
“Yeah.” Tate’s voice was faint. “That’s what I figured. Think we could figure out a way to get them to speed things up?”
This just might be the best idea either of them had had all day. “We could give them a fake location.”
“Think they’d buy it?”
“We have to make it convincing.” Anton considered this. It was nice to have something besides his aching body to focus on. “What about the old cistern near the dam?”
Twenty-five miles north of Bastopol was a big dam. It was a popular place for hiking, fishing, camping, and boating. The Cecchinos and Craigs had family campouts there a few times when they were kids.
Tate didn’t answer right away. Anton wondered if he remembered the time they played tag around the old cistern. Jim had accidentally punched Tate in the nose when he was trying to tag base.
“The old cistern,” Tate said at last. “Good idea. Then maybe they’ll shoot us and get it over with.”
They lapsed into silence. Anton closed his eyes and dozed fitfully. It was a welcome respite from the agony in his body.
It was the pain in his wrist that woke him up. The side of the chair, weighed down by his body, made it feel like his entire hand was going to be sawed off. He had to move.
With a soft groan, he heaved his aching body. After a few attempts, he managed to roll—which just meant he was on his knees, his forehead resting against the concrete.
“What are you doing, man?” Tate asked.
“Just getting comfortable, dude.”
Tate chuckled at this, his voice raspy. “Good luck with that.”
Anton attempted to shift his weight from his knees to his feet. His bound ankles made it difficult. After several attempts, he let his head sag back to the ground. At least his wrist didn’t feel like it was being gnawed off by a coyote. That counted for something.
His mind drifted to Leo. Where was his big brother now?
He didn’t even know what day it was. It felt like they’d been in this hellhole for an eternity. How long had it been? Was it day or night? There was no way to know.
He decided Leo must be at Luma Bridge by now. He’d blow the thing up soon. Let the Soviet rat bastards chew on that. Anton almost hoped he was still alive when they received the news that their bridge and all their people had been blown to hell.
Leo was probably making out with Cassie when no one was looking. It didn’t take a genius to know he was totally into the chess nerd. Anton hadn’t seen Leo so crazy about a girl since Jennifer. It didn’t even seem weird that Cassie was Jessica’s sister. The two girls were nothing alike.
“Do you remember that time we had a sleepover on Leo’s tenth birthday?” Tate’s question floated out of the darkness.
“I remember you guys being punks and locking me out of my own bedroom.”
Tate chuckled. Anton smiled in spite of himself, recalling his eight-year-old self pounding on the bedroom door while the older boys laughed their asses off inside. The memory was soft at the edges. It was a good one. Jim had still been alive. Anton’s biggest worry in the world had been figuring out how to get on the other side of that bedroom door and making sure the older boys included him in everything.
“It was Dal who finally let you in,” Tate said. “He was always nicer than the rest of us.”
“Remember when we tried to make Lena wet the bed?”
That had been later in the evening, when Leo and the older boys had grown tired of taunting him. They’d hatched a plan to try and make Lena wet the bed. There had been a rumor circulating around the upper grades about sticking a sleeping person’s fingertips into a bowl of warm water while they slept. Supposedly, this would make a person pee while they slept.
“God, how could I forget?” Tate said. "Leo got a face full of wet water. Nonna was furious at us for waking up everyone in the house.”
“Mom made us do Lena’s chores for an entire week.” Even that was a happy memory.
“Wasn’t that her week to turn the compost beds?”
“Yep. It was her week to scrub toilets, too.” Funny how being tortured made the little shit seem rosy. Anton clung to the feeling, drawing comfort from it in the cold darkness. He missed his family more than anything. Dredging up that old memory made him feel closer to them, most especially his parents.
He never really talked about how much he missed them, his mother especially. He’d been close to both parents, but even more so to his mom. She got him in ways his father never did.
“Don’t compare yourself to Leo, sweetie,” she used to say when no one else was around. “You’re each special in your own way.”
“But everyone expects me to be like him,” Anton complained. God, she must have gotten sick of him saying that every day.
“That just means you get to surprise them.”
Even after all these years, Anton remembered what it felt like when she ruffled his dark blond hair.
He still hadn’t figured
