him.
The freezer bag of diamonds twinkled in the ornate chandelier’s glow.
“There are your diamonds. Next to them, you’ll find snapshots of Hawker. He’s been neutralized. Now, where’s my daughter?”
Arthur leaned forward and picked up the photos, taking his time to scrutinize them suspiciously before dropping them into the briefcase and lifting the diamonds out.
“What is this? Some kind of joke?”
“What do you mean? Those are your diamonds. Now it’s time to end this charade. I’ve done as you asked. Time for your end of the deal. Where’s my daughter?”
“That’s only…maybe a quarter of them. Do you take me for a fool?”
“That’s what he had. I looked online and calculated the number and carats. It’s over fifty million, wholesale. It’s all there. Now, where’s Hannah?”
He stood and pulled the pistol from his pocket. “This is all he had?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Now put the gun down, tell me where my daughter is, and get ready to hand me a million dollars.”
“Not so fast. I need to verify they’re real.”
He hadn’t dropped the gun.
“Fine. They are. That’s what he had. You can pay me once you check them. But for the last time, tell me where my daughter is.”
His skin tightened as he grimaced, and she realized he was smiling. He raised the Ruger and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
His eyes widened as he tried to chamber a round, but the gun was empty.
“Now that definitely wasn’t the deal,” she said, pulling her silenced Beretta from behind her and leveling it at him. “I didn’t think you’d honor your part of the bargain, but I figured I’d at least give you the chance. More than you gave me.”
Arthur flung the Ruger at her and sprang for the hall. The impact of Jet’s feet slamming into his side sent him reeling into the wall with a crash. He dropped to the floor, groaning.
Jet got up, brushed herself off and then walked to the table and closed the briefcase, locking the latch with a soft snap. She eyed Arthur’s quivering form and approached him.
“Now we’ll do this the hard way. I actually hope you don’t tell me where Hannah is until I’ve had a real opportunity to convince you. I’m usually ambivalent about torture, but in your case, I’m looking forward to it. I suppose all that expensive surgery on your face will get destroyed by the acid, but before it does, you’ll wish for death a hundred times over.” She kicked him, hard, in the stomach. “I even went shopping for items to use. You know, I once kept a subject alive for six hours before his heart gave out? I mean, he was unrecognizable as anything human by then, but still. It’s an art, really. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. By the time I’m done, you’ll have not only told me where Hannah is, but you’ll have told me anything and everything you can think of just to get me to stop.”
She moved to the dining room and lifted a shopping bag from behind a chest, then brought it to the living room and set it near the coffee table before putting on a pair of gloves.
“You have no idea what you’ve gotten into. You’ll be dead by morning,” Arthur snapped.
“Oh, you mean the drug ring? Is that what you’re talking about? Guess what. I know it all. I know about the heroin you’ve been importing from the Golden Triangle. I know about the heroin from Afghanistan you’re shipping using military transports as well. I know about the cocaine and meth from the Mexican cartels. The ecstasy. I know everything.”
Arthur’s eyes took on a veneer of worry for the first time.
“How…”
“Seems like Hawker had the goods on all of you. Briggs. You. Everyone in the ring. Documented.”
“You’ll never prove it. You can’t prove anything.”
“You mean nobody will believe that the Central Intelligence Agency is the biggest drug trafficking organization in the world? You sure about that? Sure a paper or TV station or three wouldn’t be interested? Maybe Congress?”
“You have no idea how high this goes.”
“Right. Higher than the associate director? And the director?”
“It’s bigger than you can imagine.”
“Arthur. Look at me. I know everything,” she said quietly.
“Then you know you don’t have a chance.”
“I know that if you get between a female lion and her cub, you can expect no mercy. Which brings me to the part of the show where I start peeling your skin off and feed it to Mitzi. That’s gotta hurt.”
The timid little dog gazed up at her from where it was hiding behind an armoire, alert at the mention of her name. Jet withdrew a cattle prod from the bag.
“I modified this so it’s capable of delivering a continuous current. I hear you use them for torture. Nice.” She placed it on the table and then held up a syringe. “This will completely incapacitate you so you’re incapable of movement, but can feel everything. Curare — crude yet effective, wouldn’t you agree?” She placed it on the table next to the prod and produced another hypodermic. “And this is a little favorite that heightens the synaptic response so sensations are magnified exponentially. I’ve been told that it can make a paper cut feel like you’re being disemboweled. My thinking is I start on your eyes. You won’t need them any longer. Then I move to your genitals. Not that you probably get much use out of those, either. Then, when you think it can’t get any worse, I’ll use this.” She extracted a bottle and placed it carefully next to the syringes. “Acid.” She fished the final item from the bag and held it up — a soldering iron. “I watched David cook a Mossad traitor with one of these. Just the smell is enough to make you gag. I can’t even imagine how it will feel after the injection and acid wash.”
She picked up the cattle prod and walked towards him.
“This is your last chance, and then I zap you till you’re twitching, inject you, and start on your eyes. Think very, very hard about your answer. Because once I start, there’s no going back. You know my history. Make your choice. Honor our agreement or become hamburger.”
“You’ll never do it. You’ll never kill me,” he spat. “You won’t get your daughter back if you do.”
“Why, Arthur. Perhaps I need to work on my communication skills. I have no intention of killing you. I’m going to leave you paralyzed, with no tongue or eyes, in permanent agony for the rest of your hopefully-long life. Nothing — no amount of money, no specialized treatments — will ease the suffering. Think about it. Blind. Pooping yourself. Every nerve amplifying your pain tenfold. The injection is irreversible. The best you can hope for is that I’ll take pity and kill you once you’ve told me where she is. Because you will, Arthur. You will. Nobody ever holds out once this gets underway. You’re no different. You of all people should know that. Again, I really, really hope you decide not to cooperate.”
Arthur looked panicked, her message finally having hit home.
She waited, but he didn’t say anything, preferring to glare at her with raw hatred. Jet shrugged and moved towards him with the cattle prod and pressed it against his face, then engaged the current.
Arthur bucked and jerked for ten seconds, foaming from his nose and mouth, and then she cut the power, his limbs twitching spasmodically from the lingering effects.
“You should start regaining the ability to move in twenty seconds or so. By then I’ll have injected you with the nerve agent. Imagine what you’re feeling right now, the agony, amplified immeasurably. Have I got your attention?”
She picked up the smaller syringe and pulled the orange cap off, then squirted a little into the air for effect.
“You’ll get nothing,” he growled, laying his last card on the table.
Jet shrugged and knelt next to him, then drove the needle into his leg, depressing the plunger before pulling it out and tossing it aside.
It took half a minute for the full effect to hit.
“Argghhh,”Arthur screamed, writhing in agony as the full force of pain arrived.
“That’s what I thought. Now I’m going to cut your eyes out. You ready?” She flipped out a combat knife and
