I’m in deep shit.
When you work a job like mine, you know that someday you’ll probably meet a bad end. You just hope it will be quick—a bullet to the back of the head that you don’t see coming. A slash from a knife that bleeds you out in moments.
What you don’t want is to be captured by the Bratva.
Because once you’re captured, you’re at their mercy.
And the Bratva don’t have any mercy.
My father knew a thing or two about interrogation techniques. It’s part of the standard CIA training.
He used to tell me, “It’s impossible to withstand torture. Any decent torturer, given enough time, will break you. All you can do is resist interrogation by preparing yourself for the methods they’ll use to manipulate you.”
My father was tall, with sandy-colored hair and blue eyes. In pictures of his younger years, he looked a bit like Steve McQueen. But by the time of that conversation, he’d grown thin and haggard, his hair too long and his face half-hidden by his dark blond beard. He wore tactical clothes almost all the time, so he could keep knives, firearms on his person, even when we were at the grocery store.
“Tell me how they’ll try to get you,” he said, his frantic eyes boring into mine.
I was thirteen years old. Skinny, needing braces, but moving cities too often to see an orthodontist regularly.
I listed off the techniques, counting them off on my fingers. “Sleep deprivation. Torture. Mind-altering substances. Diet manipulation. Sensory deprivation.”
My father nodded, his head jerking with each one.
“And the psychological techniques?”
“Suggestibility. Deception. Humiliation. Pride and ego. False friendship.”
While we spoke, I was trembling slightly. Because we were down in the basement of the house we were renting, and behind my father I could see a bench. A cloth. And three gallon-jugs of water.
“You can’t withstand it,” my father kept repeating. “All you can do is resist as long as possible, until your information is no longer useful.”
He’d made me practice withstanding pain before.
But I knew that waterboarding was nothing like holding my hand in a bucket of ice water.
As he became more and more agitated, I kept looking over his shoulder. I was so scared of those jugs of water. I was so scared of what I knew was coming next.
Even though it humiliated me, even though I knew it might only make him angrier, I started to cry.
That time, and that time alone, my tears seemed to snap him out of his manic state. He looked at me. He seemed to actually see me for once—a frightened teenager, snot-nosed and red-eyed. His face softened.
“It’s alright, Sloane,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “That’s enough for today.”
The next time we went down to the basement, the jugs of water were gone.
Now I’m down in the basement again. But not at my father’s house. I’m in the catacombs of Ivan Petrov’s compound. He carried me down himself, slinging me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Then he set me down on a chair in the middle of this tiny room, my wrists bound behind me and my ankles tied together.
He used several more zip ties to secure my arms to the backrest of the chair and my feet to the legs. Then he disappeared upstairs, leaving me alone in this small, barren room, lit by a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling.
Other than the chair I’m sitting on, there’s one other equally uncomfortable wooden chair, a stripped mattress in the corner, a sink, a toilet, and four blank walls. The floor is made of hard-packed dirt, and the walls look like plastered stone.
There’s a camera in the far corner of the room, nestled up against the ceiling. I’m tempted to make a face at it, but I resist.
Fear always brings out the most obnoxious side of me.
Rudeness is my coping mechanism.
It’s not a very good coping mechanism.
As soon as I’m alone, I try twisting my wrists and hands, seeing if there’s the slightest slack that might allow me to slip my hands free. But this isn’t the first time Petrov’s used a zip tie. I’m trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and I’m not getting free.
The anticipation is awful. I try not to let myself imagine what’s going to happen when Petrov returns. My father always said this was the most effective thing of all: letting the captive wait. Letting them drive themselves mad with fear.
But it doesn’t matter if I understand the techniques Petrov might use, or if I can prepare myself for the pain of torture.
Because the problem is, I don’t have the information he wants.
I already know what he’s going to ask me.
He wants to know who hired me to kill him.
I honestly don’t know the answer.
That’s why the contract comes through a broker: so the client doesn’t know me, and I don’t know them. It protects the client, so I can’t spill their secrets. And it protects me, so they’re not tempted to cover their tracks by getting rid of me once the job is done.
That’s the way it works.
But Ivan Petrov isn’t going to believe that.
I don’t know which alternative is worse: him believing me, or him thinking I know nothing.
Because the only thing keeping me alive right now is his curiosity.
It’s hard to tell how much time is passing. There are no windows in this room, and I can hardly hear anything from above, except the odd bump or creak, which might be a chair moving or someone walking around, or just the bones of this ancient building shifting in the wind.
As impossible as it might seem, with the peril and physical discomfort of my current situation, I’m starting to get sleepy. That’s the effects of the adrenaline wearing off. I’ve been in a state of high anticipation for hours now. My body can’t sustain it. I’m just plain tired.
The ancient wooden door creaking open snaps me to attention.
It’s Ivan Petrov.
He’s back. And he’s alone.
He stands in the doorway, the harsh overhead light turning his face to a mask of sharp lines and shadow. His dark eyes are boring into me, drilling right down into my soul. It takes everything I have to hold his gaze, to keep my face steady and still.
No matter what happens, I’m determined that I’m not going to break down like I did when I was thirteen years old. I won’t blubber and cry.
Ivan Petrov approaches slowly. I can hear the heavy sound of each footstep. He’s put on a white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose his thick forearms with their covering of dark hair. He’s wearing slacks and polished black loafers. He’s combed his dark hair back from his face. Probably showered as well—his hair looks slightly damp.
He takes hold of the empty chair, then drags it closer to me. He sits down so that we’re facing one another.
He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and his hands loosely clasped in front of him, knuckles facing upward. His change in posture sends waves of movement across the slabs of muscle on his shoulders and arms, beneath the thin material of the dress shirt. His hands are huge, the knuckles slightly misshapen. From pounding, hitting, breaking bone.
I’m all too aware how strong this man is. Up in his bedroom, he overpowered me in moments. It was like trying to wrestle a lion—he and I aren’t even the same species. I didn’t stand a chance against him then, and I certainly don’t now, tied up and locked in this tiny room with him.
He’s silent, staring at me.
That means the interrogation has already begun.
As my father always said, “He who speaks first loses.”
So I keep my mouth shut, as the tension stretches out between us.
At last, Petrov says, “Why did you come here tonight?”
He has an extremely deep voice, with a harsh edge to it. Anger simmering right below the surface.
I can tell he’s just as keyed up as I am. I have no intention of playing games.
“I came here to kill you,” I reply.
His right eyebrow quirks upward. He’s surprised I admitted it so readily.
“Why?” he says.
“I was hired to do it. That’s my job—it’s nothing personal.”
“It’s a little personal to me,” Petrov says.
There isn’t a hint of a smile on his face, but I hear the amusement in his answer all the same. This man is a brute, but he has a sense of humor.
“How did you get in?” he asks me.
I consider if I should answer.
If I do manage to escape this room, the tunnel would be my best route out of the compound. If I tell Petrov about it, he’s sure to close it off.
However, I don’t have a good lie prepared. If I tell him I scaled the walls, he’ll check the security tapes and see that’s not true.
“There’s a tunnel into your compound, from a well out in the woods,” I tell him. “I can show it to you, if you like.”
I want him to untie me and take me out of this room.
But Petrov isn’t fooled that easily. He stays sitting exactly where he is.
“Maybe later,” he says.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out my syringe. He doesn’t have the cap for it (that’s still in my pocket), so he’s put a piece of cork over the tip. The transparent, amber-colored fluid is pretty enough, but it has a sinister gleam to it. Like snake venom.
“What’s in here?” he says.
“My own little cocktail. Mostly paralytics.”
“Not very sporting of you,” he says.
That edge of fury is back in his voice. I need to choose my words carefully.
“Well,” I say, “as you saw, I’m not much of a brawler.”
“You know how to fight though,” Petrov says, tilting his head to examine me. “Where did you learn that?”
He’s genuinely curious. I can tell he didn’t plan to ask that question, but he wants to know the answer.
I need to walk a fine line here. Giving a captor personal information can be a good way to gain their trust. Still, I don’t want to tell Petrov too much. I’m holding onto a shred of hope of escaping this mess. If I get away, I don’t want him tracking me down afterward.
So I say, “I learned from my father. He was in the military.”
“Here?”
“No. In America.”
“You’re American?” he asks, surprised again.
“Yes,”
“What are you doing in Russia?”
I’m not telling him that. I just shrug.
“I’ve lived a lot of places.”
Petrov folds his arms across his broad chest, the syringe still clutched in one large fist. He’s looking me up and down, trying to figure me out. I can see his thoughts whirring by behind those deep brown eyes. He’s intrigued, and that’s good. Intrigued is better than enraged, or worse of all, bored.
“What’s your name?” he says.
“Sloane.”
“Sloane what?”
“Ketterling,” I reply, giving him my mother’s maiden name.
I see a flicker across his face.
Dammit. He can tell when I’m being evasive.
“Well, here’s the thing, Sloane,” he says, his voice low and soft. But not gentle—the very opposite of gentle. “I know that you’re aware of the predicament you’ve gotten yourself into. You tried to kill me. I think I’d be justified in returning the favor.”
Can’t argue with that.
“But we’re both professionals,” he says.
That’s an appeal to common ground. Someone trained Petrov in interrogation techniques as well, or he’s just a natural.
“I don’t want to have to resort to threats of violence.”
I think he just did.
“Instead, why don’t you just tell me what I want to know?”
“You want to know who hired me to kill you,” I say.
He nods, his eyes drilling into me. “That’s right, Sloane.”
“I would love to tell you,” I say. “But I don’t know the answer.”
A flush of anger across his face—this is a man who does not like being opposed.
“It’s true,” I insist. “That’s how the contract works. It goes through a broker. I don’t know who hired me—I never do.”
“Who’s the broker?” Petrov demands.
“I don’t know that either.”
That’s only partially true—I know a few things about Zima. I know he lives in the city. I could probably figure out where. But I don’t want Petrov tracking him down either.
Petrov senses the partial deceit. His fist clenches tighter than ever around the syringe.
I’m concerned that he’s going to use that as his instrument of persuasion. If he sticks me with even a tiny fraction of the liquid within, he won’t get a chance to ask me any more questions.
But Petrov tucks the syringe back in his pocket and reaches behind him for something else.
A knife, pulled from the waistband of his dress slacks.
It’s a DV-1, a combat knife from the Far East region of Spetsnaz. I have one very similar, back home at my apartment. It has an absorbent leather handle and a matte black carbon blade. But the distinctive part of this knife is the small, semi-circular indentation on the base of the blade. It allows you to rest your finger there, to get a better grip, as you pull the knife out of the body of your enemy.
Petrov stands up from his chair. He seems to be moving in slow motion as he approaches. He points the tip of the knife at me. He positions the blade at the base of my stomach.
Then he slices upward, in one swift, sure motion, cutting through the material of my shirt.
He slits the fabric from base to neck, and then with two quick slashes he cuts down the sleeves as well, pulling the whole top away.
Though he’s moving deliberately fast, showing me how easily he could cut me to ribbons, the same as he did to my shirt, he hasn’t left a single scratch on my body. I feel the cold metal whisper across my skin, but there’s no pain.
Crouching down, he pulls my shoes off my feet, and my socks. Then he slices away my pants.
Now I’m tied to the chair in only a sports bra and panties. He hesitates a moment, then he cuts the bra away too, the knife flashing upward between my breasts.
He takes a step backward, his eyes roving hungrily over my body. With my arms bound behind my back, my breasts are thrust upward for his perusal. I can feel my nipples stiffening from the chilly air, and from the heat of his gaze.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t meet his eyes now. I’m looking down at the floor, unable to hide the bizarre mix of emotions racing through me.
I’m embarrassed, yes.
Afraid, of course.
But also, inexplicably, horribly aroused.
It’s sheer madness. But I can’t help it.
I’ve spent years learning to suppress my emotions, to keep control of myself. I can’t be careless in my line of work, or impulsive. I can’t succumb to fear.
So, these days, it takes a lot to get a rise out of me.
Being tied naked to this chair, with this brutal, virile man looming over me . . . that’s doing it. That’s breaking down the barriers fast.
I have to get a hold of myself.
I look up at Ivan Petrov, forcing myself to meet his eye once more.
In my most saucy tone I say, “Well, that’s only fair. After all, I already saw you naked.”
I see a tug at the corner of his mouth, a sharp exhalation of breath that might almost be a snort of laughter.
I see the slightest tremble of his hand. Not the one holding the knife, the other one. I think he wants to reach out that hand to touch me . . .
But he stops himself. He scoops up my shoes, socks, the remnants of my clothes. He carries them out of the room and locks the door behind him.
I’m sure he’s going to search the pockets of my clothing, but he won’t find anything useful. It’s not like I carry around a driver’s license and a Rolodex.
For now, I’m left alone in the cell once more. It’s a lot chillier without my clothes. But somehow, my skin is still burning.
