Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

Her attacker was not prepared. He choked, his hands flying of their own accord to his throat, his blinded eyes. She whirled,.38 already drawn, and shot, aiming for his kneecap. She hit him in the left thigh instead.

He crumpled to that side and rolled into Angel, who was thrashing in earnest now, straining to pop the zip ties from his wrists. They were heavy-duty restraints, but he was a strong man.

She couldn’t handle them both. She was going to have to make a choice. Quickly.

Angel’s head was the closest thing to her. She fired twice into the top of it. He went limp.

Hector was gasping and scrubbing at his eyes at the same time as he was trying to roll away from her toward the stairs. She sprinted after him, hugging the wall to avoid his reach. He wasn’t in control enough to make a grab for her yet. She pulled the bolt cutters from her waist and clubbed the back of his head. His convulsing jerked to a stop.

This was all going to be a wasted effort if she’d killed him, but she had to secure him before she could even check for a pulse.

To be safe, she put an additional bullet through his left kneecap, then threw the.38 over the banister to the floor below. It had only one bullet left anyway. She used another zip tie to attach his uninjured right leg to the railing at the ankle and the knee, then his right arm at the wrist and the elbow. He wouldn’t be able to do much with his left leg. For lack of a better option, she zip-tied his left hand to Angel’s big black boot. Angel’s inert form had to weigh two seventy, at least. It was better than nothing. She touched Hector’s wrist, marginally satisfied to locate a steady pulse. He was alive; whether or not his brain function was preserved, she would have to wait to see.

She decided to double the cables, just in case. While she was tightening the second tie around Angel’s boot, she heard the change in Hector’s breathing as he came to. He didn’t cry out, though he had to be in tremendous pain. That wasn’t a good thing. She’d interrogated other hardened soldiers with good control over their reactions to pain. It took a long time to break them.

But those men had loyalty to their companions or their missions. She was confident this was a hit for hire. Hector would owe nothing to the people who’d given him the job.

She scooted a few feet away with the Glock gripped tight in her hands, watching to see how well her containment system would perform. It was too dark. She got up and backed toward the bathroom doorway, keeping her eyes on the figure on the ground. She felt behind her until she found the light switch and flipped it on.

Hector’s face was turned toward her; his dark eyes, although still tearing, were intensely focused. His face showed no evidence of the pain he was in. It was a disconcerting gaze, though his face was in other ways one of the most ordinary she had ever seen. His features were even and nondescript. He wasn’t attractive, but he wasn’t ugly, either. It was the kind of face that would be extremely hard to pick out of a lineup.

“Why haven’t you killed me?” he asked, his voice hoarse from the chemicals. Other than that, his voice was unremarkable. He had no accent at all. He could have been a network news anchor – no hint of where he came from in his inflections.

“I want to know who hired you.” Her voice rasped through the mask, slightly distorted. It sounded a little less human. She hoped that would throw him.

He nodded once, as if to himself. She saw minute shifts in his hands as he tested his bonds.

“Why would I tell you anything?” He didn’t say it angrily or as a challenge. He just sounded curious.

“Do you have any idea who I am?”

He didn’t answer, his face neutral.

“That’s the first reason why you should tell me what you know – because whoever sent you out here didn’t give you the information you needed to be successful. They didn’t prepare you for what you were facing. You don’t owe them anything.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” he pointed out, still in a polite, conversational voice. His fingers stretched downward, trying to reach the zip tie.

“No, you don’t. But if you don’t talk to me, I’ll hurt you. That’s the second reason.”

He weighed that. “And the third reason… if I talk, you’ll let me live.”

“Would you believe me if I promised you that?”

“Hmm.” He sighed. He thought for a moment and then asked, “But how will you know whether to believe what I tell you?”

“I know most of it. I just want you to fill in a few details.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you much. I have a manager; he works as the middleman. I never saw the person who paid for this.”

“Just tell me what your manager told you.”

He considered that, then twitched his shoulders as if to shrug. “I don’t like your offer. I think you could do better.”

“Then I’ll have to persuade you.”

He watched with a poker face as she stuck the Glock in its holster and retrieved the bolt cutters from the floor by Angel’s leg.

She’d considered bringing the welding iron. Fire could be more painful than almost anything else, and many people had related phobias. But Hector was a professional. She didn’t have the time to break him down with pain; his resistance would be too high. What would frighten him more than agony would be losing his physical edge. If he didn’t have a trigger finger, he couldn’t do his job. She’d start with something less vital to him, but he would be able to see the inevitable coming. If he could survive tonight, he would want to do it with functional hands. So he would have to talk to delay her.

Hector’s left hand was most convenient. As she fit the metal blades around his pinkie finger, he curled the rest into a fist and fought harder against the ties. She kept a tight hold on the handles, knowing what she would be thinking in his position – if he could get control of the cutters, he would have a chance to free himself. Sure enough, he tried to kick out with his left leg, despite the excruciating pain it must have caused him. She dodged the blow, moved a few feet higher, then refit the cutters to the base of his folded finger.

These were made for cutting through rebar, and she kept the blades sharp. It didn’t take too much muscle on her part to snap those blades together.

She watched his reaction. He thrashed against the ties ineffectually. His face turned dark red and the vessels pulsed in his forehead. He gasped and panted, but he didn’t scream.

“Sometimes people don’t think I’m serious,” she told him. “It’s good to get that misconception out of the way.”

Right now, Hector would be thinking about the amount of time that could pass before it was too late to reattach a finger. He could live without a pinkie, but he needed his hands, and he must know she wasn’t going to stop there.

She would emphasize her point.

She snagged the warm, bloody finger off the floor and backed to the bathroom, keeping her eyes on him as he writhed in his bonds; even the best zip ties weren’t foolproof. She made sure he was watching as she dropped the finger into the toilet and flushed. Now he knew that she wasn’t going to leave him options. Hopefully it would encourage him to give her what she wanted quickly.

“Hector,” she told him as he stared, gritting his teeth, fighting to control the pain. “Don’t be stupid. It’s not going to hurt you to tell me what I want to know. It is going to hurt you if you don’t. Your trigger fingers are next, then the rest of them. This is what I do, and I can keep it up for as long as I need to. Don’t you see? They sent you after the wrong people, Hector. They told you nothing about what you were up against. They just handed you to me. Why protect them?”