Gregg Hurwitz - The Program

At night she couldn't even manage to recline; she sat in bed cross-legged, paperback bent open on her knee, watching the stubborn goddamn clock make like a snail on bennies. By dawn she could have powered the house's major appliances with the hum running through her body.

She called Bear for the umpteenth time. He picked up on a half ring.

"Anything new on the pickup?"

"Denley and Palton just did another drive-by. It's still bedded down." His voice sounded troubled. "The key was sticking out of the lock, like someone beat a hasty retreat. And Palton, uh…"

Her hand tightened around the phone. "What?"

"Palton spotted some blood on the ground. Near the car. Look, I shouldn't have even told you -"

Heat rushed into her face. "The fuck you shouldn't have."

"Could be raccoon meets fender, all we know."

"The raccoon put the key in the lock, too?"

"They called in CSI. It's still showering up there. The blood washed away before the van got up the hill. The criminalists lifted a thumb spread off the key, though – the oils on the underside held through the moisture. They'll scan it as soon as they get back to the lab."

Dray reached for the Beretta, her hand closing on the comforting grip. "Let's go in."

"We've been here before, Dray. And you're always the one to say the procedures don't apply selectively. Even if we could prove it was his blood, it was on public property. And if it wasn't his, it doesn't establish probable cause with respect to the ranch -"

"God damn it." She took a few deep breaths.

"We're covering every angle. Tannino's working the DA and the bench, Denley and Palton are sweeping the area, Thomas and Freed are here with me combing the files. Guerrera was ready to go Rambo -Tannino threw him up in an observation post just to get him to shut up. He's got eyes on the ranch's front gate – business as usual. It goes without saying, everyone's taking it personally." Bear kept his voice light, but his shaky sigh betrayed his apprehension. "I'm sure Tim's gonna pop up somewhere safe and sound and laugh at this circus."

She didn't want to ask, but the words came out anyway. "How much blood was there?"

The painful pause reminded her of the condolence calls they'd received in the wake of Ginny's death.

"A lot," Bear said.

They beat him to awaken him. They beat him to move him. They beat him with fists and rubber hoses. When they briefly left him, they propped a speaker against the wall to blare discordant sounds at irregular intervals – deafening hisses like static, screeches like rakes on chalk-boards. They kept on in shifts at first. Randall asked the questions, maintaining a low, calm voice even as he mopped crimson from his knuckles with a crusty throw rag. At this point they were careful not to break anything – this would be a marathon, not a sprint.

They needed to leave plenty of room for escalation.

The butt of Randall's gun had left Tim's right eye swollen shut. His clothes were torn, Will's watch smashed but still clinging to his wrist. Tim withdrew into himself as he'd been taught during SERE training – three summer months slapping mosquitoes in North Carolina heat, his instructor's West Point-ring-fortified knuckles pounding into him the four dire arts: Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape.

He started by reconstructing his and Dray's house, room by room, drawer by drawer. Itemizing the detachable heads to the spiral screwdriver in the second tray of his toolbox, he heard himself grunt and moan and yell, but he was pleased to note that he did not unmask Leah.

Randall was by far the most skilled, though Henderson surprised Tim, applying pressure to the tracheal cartilage, the brachial plexus, the hypoglossal nerve, all the while preserving a detached, scientific focus that Tim was impressed a failed podiatrist could muster. Chad had little stomach for violence; he rarely put his weight behind his punches and winced at impact. The only true break Tim got was when Winona took point on the action; he'd laughed the first time she hit him. Randall had stepped in to provide tutelage, demonstrating for her on Tim's ribs, and that had stopped his laughter pretty quickly.

When Tim's visitors drifted through the thick metal door, he caught a glimpse of the hall outside, Stanley John lying against a stack of empty wooden pallets, hands pressed to his shattered pelvis. The door's sucking back to the jamb severed Stanley John's howls abruptly. Someone, presumably the good doctor, had dressed his wounds, but he was sure to bleed out soon enough. At one point, when Tim feigned passing out, he was party to a hushed conversation between Randall and Henderson weighing the risks of a hospital trip. Whatever they decided, Stanley John's bandages grew soggy and his screams continued, growing ragged until Randall began urging him to be a man.

From what Tim could glean, he was in a janitor's room in the back of a commercial building. Like the walls, the floor was concrete, so cold he thought his bare skin would stick to it when he moved.

When they left him long enough for the blood streaming from his forehead to clot, he began groping on the floor, pressing his fingers along the dark seams of the room. He found a broken segment of the Cartier's case and began scratching at the wall with the protruding lug. His fingers ached. An inch-high pyramid of concrete dust formed on the ground near his elbow, though he barely made an indentation.

Randall entered, crossed his arms, and laughed darkly. "That wall's a foot thick and reinforced with steel. Keep scraping."

Tim felt Randall's hands close around his ankles. He was dragged away from the wall, laid out for Henderson, who watched from behind round spectacles, rubbing his soft hands.

When Chad pushed in through the door, Stanley John's hysteria rose to crescendo. He was pleading to be taken to an emergency room.

Exasperation showed in Randall's scowl. "Can't you get him to shut up?"

"He's in a lot of pain," Chad said.

Winona ruffled Tim's hair, her long nails scratching scalp. "Our boy Tommy here's in a lot of pain, you don't hear him impersonating a howler monkey."

Randall wrapped a rag around his bruised knuckles and stepped forward. "Give it time."

As Henderson calmly worked Tim's vital points, Randall interspersed questions with the pain.

"You came for Shanna, didn't you? You knew each other before? Is Leah involved with you? You were looking for financial records?"

When Tim emerged from the unlit tunnel of his thoughts, his eyes found Randall's, and he slurred through a swollen lip, "I'm going to kill you."

Something in Tim's voice made Randall blanch. He wiped the sweat from his forehead – it hadn't been there a moment ago – and continued.

At first Tim's captors had snickered and joked, but as the hours passed, they grew exhausted. The break times between sessions grew longer, leaving Tim more time to work at the wall with the ground-down watch lug, wincing through the sporadic blasts of noise.

Randall returned and appraised Tim's meager headway, amused. "How's the progress?"

When Tim didn't respond, he bound Tim's ankles and propped him in a chair. Chad bent back Tim's arms, pressing his wrists together so Winona could straddle his lap as she worked. She spent some time on his face, a stone-heavy costume ring augmenting her punches. Her eyes gleamed; her red mouth glittered. She was enjoying herself.

Randall began a soft repetition of the same questions. "Who are you?" His teeth clicked as they waited through the silence. "LAPD? FBI? What were you after?" A flash of anger stiffened his body, and he shouldered Winona aside, wanting at Tim – "Open your fucking hole and speak."

Tim barely had time to dip his head so Randall's fist would connect with his hard crown. Randall stormed out, Chad and Henderson trailing, Winona wearing a healthy flush and panting from the exertion. As he shoved out through the door, Randall grimaced at Stanley John's shrieking. Tim saw him reach for the. 44 on the table. The door swung shut, and a crack echoed off the concrete walls, cutting short Stanley John's last whimper.