William Bernhardt - Capitol Threat

“How can you know? He’s risen from the dead before.”

“I know. This time, I know.”

“What, like you have even more dirt you haven’t used yet? Don’t make me laugh.” Haskins stared at the cell phone, tempted to throw it across the room. “If I know nothing else, I know this: no matter how bad it is for Roush now, it couldn’t possibly get any worse.”

Roush was getting used to sitting alone at night. The price of fame, he liked to tell himself, as if he hadn’t paid that price enough times already. But he knew that this wasn’t what it was really about. This was his own fault. All of this mess was his own fault.

He’d known this could happen. He’d known it all along. He took the risk, he decided to keep the truth to himself, and now he was paying for it.

Of course, if he’d told anyone about the abortion, he wouldn’t be here at all. Wouldn’t have been considered at all. Had he made the right choice? It seemed so pathetically unfair to be automatically disqualified just because of a foolish mistake he made all those years ago. He was just a kid. She was just a kid. He didn’t even know who he was—obviously—or he wouldn’t have been with a woman in the first place. Why couldn’t the past remain in the past?

Asking himself rhetorical questions wasn’t getting him anywhere. He was rationalizing, trying to come up with excuses for—well, if not lying, withholding the truth. Funny. This whole thing began to go sour when he chose not to hide the truth, chose to be honest about who and what he was.

Without telling Ray first.

And now he was being hanged by one tiny thing he had kept to himself.

Ben had called three times today, trying to put together a strategy session. What was the point? He was smart, sort of, but naïve in so many ways. Ben still believed in him. Worse, Ben still believed he had a chance, when everyone else knew better.

Self included.

But then—he knew something Ben didn’t. He knew what everyone was thinking: it may look bad for Roush now, but at least it couldn’t get any worse.

But Roush knew that it could.

48

Pretty Boy slammed a fist into Loving’s face. Given the force of the blow, Loving should have fallen backward about ten feet, but the rope—Trudy’s rope, from the motel room—held him tightly to his chair. So Pretty Boy hit him again.

Blood gushed out of Loving’s nostrils. It looked as if the light in the storage closet at Action was blinking on and off, but Loving knew the only thing blinking was his tenuous grasp on consciousness.

This had been going on for almost an hour. His face was so cut, bruised, and bloodied that Loving suspected it barely resembled his usual handsome self. But at some point, even he had to worry about how much he could take. Or how long before Renny would get sick of the game and just kill him.

Renny stepped into the light cast by the low-hanging lamp descending from the ceiling. “Would this be a time when you would be feeling comfortable talking to me, my friend?”

Loving licked the traces of blood from his lips. He wanted to wipe away the blood dripping into his eyes, but his hands were tied behind him. “Never been much of a talker,” Loving managed. “But the ladies tell me I’m a great listener. Why don’t you do the talkin’, and I’ll just keep my ears open.”

“Fool.” Renny’s irritation was almost as pronounced as his cruelty. “You were tough and merciless when you had me strapped to your chair. Do you find torture for information so amusing now as you did then?” He snapped his fingers at Pretty Boy. “Hurt him some more.”

The next five minutes were not among the most memorable that Loving had experienced. Okay, they were memorable, he supposed, but nothing he’d remember by choice.

Could be worse, he tried to tell himself. Not too long ago, he’d been certain he was a dead man. He saw Max—no, Feodor—press the gun against his chest. He’d seen him pull the trigger, heard the action fire. When he’d lost consciousness, he felt quite certain it was for the last time. Except a funny thing happened. Turned out that gun wasn’t one of your garden-variety firing mechanisms flinging molded pieces of lead. It was a taser gun. About a trillion volts of electricity rocketed through his body. Renny was wearing a dog collar—an electronic homing device—on his ankle, like a criminal on parole, which explained how his paid assassins were able to find him so quickly. Loving woke up later in this tiny storage closet in the back of the club, with barely enough room for him and Renny and Pretty Boy.

“Perhaps I have not made myself clear enough to you,” Renny said, clipping off each word with a bitter emphasis. “These men here—they do not like you. My young son Wilhelm, he in particular does not care for you. It would seem that you have embarrassed my boy Wilhelm. Badly. At a public place. A shopping mall. In the ladies’ department, no less. It is all much too horrible to contemplate.” He leaned forward. “Confidentially, my friend, I am not surprised. I have tried to protect Wilhelm with experienced partners and big guns, but at the end of the day, some problems cannot be remedied.”

“Hey!” Wilhelm protested.

Renny waved a hand. “Do not bother. It is true and we both know it.”

“He’s not so great. All he did was sneak up behind me. Like a coward. He hit me with Alexander’s gun. It hurt!”

Renny shook his head, eyes closed. “Do not make it worse than it already is, my son. This man Loving—he has no need for surprise. Take away your gun and he could use you for a sledgehammer even now.”

“Not sure I could now,” Loving grunted. “But I like the sound of it.”

The corner of Renny’s lip turned up. “Let me cut to the chase, my friend, or we will be forced to continue cutting your face. Wilhelm would very much enjoy the chance to kill you, and I cannot say that this would cause me much pain, except for my own security and that of my associates. I would like to know how much you know and how you came to know it and who you have told about it. That is all. It could not be more simple. So there you have it. You tell me what I wish to know and you will live. You fail to cooperate and you will die.”

Loving spat out the blood dribbled between his lips. “Liar.”

“You do not believe me?” Renny said, a hand pressed against his chest. He feigned offense for a moment or two, then gave it up. “All right then. You are correct. There is in fact no chance that you will walk out of here alive. You have embarrassed me too greatly. Even if I was not concerned about the information you have learned—and I am—I could never let you leave. But I can very much rearrange the manner in which you die. One bullet to the cranium and it will all be over in an instant. Quick. Painless. Or we can make it a much slower, more protracted, more…memorable affair.” He leaned in close. “We will make you feel such pain that this simple torture you have undergone so far will be as nothing. It will seem like your mother’s sweet kisses compared to what will follow. So what will it be? The quick death, or the excruciating one?”

Loving grimaced. “Geez, I don’t know. I’ve always been a choosy shopper. Can I have some more time to think about it?”

“I think not.” Renny lunged forward and pinched Loving’s nostrils closed with one hand, covering his mouth with the other, squeezing so hard it hurt. Loving’s senses were immediately overwhelmed by the loss of air. He wanted to gasp for breath, but the fingers on his nose remained firmly in place. He soon depleted the remaining air in his lungs and worse, had no way to release the carbon dioxide building in his system. His head felt as if it might explode; his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. Blood trickled down his throat.