Page 74 of Code Name: Ember
The men move without any command from Pelham and then hands are hauling me up with a force that wrenches my shoulders, and the chair skitters backward across the bare wooden floor.I’m on my feet with no memory of standing.
“Wait—” I start.
Nobody waits.
They cut the zip ties only to drag my arms above my head.I’m being bound again at the wrists, this time with rope, then hoisted over a hook mounted in the ceiling beam.My heels leave the ground, and the full weight of my body drops into my shoulders.The pain is immediate and takes my breath.
I hang there and try to find purchase with my toes against the floor.I can just reach… barely.Enough to take a fraction of the weight off my shoulders but not enough to actually stand, so I’m caught between hanging and standing, neither one sustainable.The muscles in my arms and shoulders burn with a deeper, sharper ache in the joints.
Pelham walks a slow circle around me.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, coming to a stop behind me where I can’t see him.“We’re going to have a more productive conversation than the one we just had.And you’re going to cooperate, because the alternative—” He lets that sit for a moment.“The alternative involves letting my men have you and I’d personally prefer not to let that happen.”He moves again, and his voice comes from my left now.“I’m not a sadist, Tessa.I’m a businessman and I would genuinely like this to go quickly and cleanly for both of us.But make no mistake… I will use whatever means at my disposal to get the information I want.”
Fear surges within me so violently, vomit rises in my throat.I swallow it down, force out words of bravado.“I told you I don’t know anything and if you believe otherwise, fuck you.”
Pelham moves into my peripheral vision, the expression on his face like a father disappointed in his child for a bad grade.He looks to someone behind me and gives a subtle nod.
A hand grips the back of my blouse and I flinch hard, a full-body recoil that sends a wave of agony through my suspended shoulders.
“Easy,” one of the men says, almost gently, and then I hear the snick of a blade.My muscles turn to jelly, causing me to sag against the hook, but oddly, I don’t feel the pain in my shoulders anymore.I’m too scared to concentrate on that.
The fabric parts down the back and they peel my shirt off me like the husk on a cob of corn.It’s cut free at the cuffs and drops to the floor.My jeans go next.The knife is cold along my hip and the denim falls away.It’s done so swiftly, with so much skill not to cut me, that I know they’ve done this before.
I’m left hanging in my bra and underwear in a room that is not warm, and the exposure is its own particular trauma.
I will not cry.I set that in concrete somewhere in the back of my mind.I will not give them that.
Pelham comes back around to face me fully.His expression hasn’t changed and he never looks down at my near-naked body.He looks at me the way he might look at a document he’s assessing for accuracy.Clinical.Dispassionate.
Then he holds up something in his hand and it’s with dread I let my focus go there.It’s small, black, with two metal prongs at one end.A stun device of some kind and he holds it long enough so I can make my own guesses as to what it does.
Pelham continues to stare at me, but it’s to his men he commands, “Get the thermal scope up on the perimeter.If they’re lucky enough to find us, I want to know about it before they get within a hundred yards.”
The men nod and exit the room, closing the door behind them.
Pelham takes a step closer to me.I refuse to look at the weapon in his hand and instead hold his stare.“I’m going to give you a moment to reconsider your position.I want you to think about the questions I asked you and really consider that giving me a complete and honest answer will be far less painful than if you don’t.”He holds up the device, pushes a button to turn it on and it emits a short beep.He moves around me again, coming to stand right behind me so I can’t see him.My heart rate triples.“I want you to think about the fact that my men have been in the field for six days with very few comforts.And lastly, I want you to consider that I’ll eventually get the information I seek, and the only real unknown is how much pain and degradation you can handle before you give it up.”
He lets that hit hard.The man is terrifying in his level of poise in delivering his threats.I brace, waiting for pain, but before it comes, my situation gets infinitely worse.
He pulls a hood over my head and the darkness is total.The fabric is snug and smells of sweat.My world shrinks to only what I can hear, which is mostly my own labored breathing, and what I can feel, which is my heart about to burst from my chest.My toes find the floor and I push up and away, trying to put some sort of distance between me and Pelham, who stands at my back.
Nothing happens.My body twists and turns, unable to get balance hanging from the hook.My breath comes out in harsh pants and I force myself to stay still, opening my ears and trying to hear what Pelham is doing.
He has that device in his hand… is he going to use it on me?I have no clue because I can’t see and he’s being utterly silent, and that’s exactly the point.My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my fingertips.
Cole.
I say it inside my head like a frequency, like if I concentrate hard enough it becomes a signal he can track.
Cole, I’m somewhere east of Monroe, I’m in a cabin and I’m running out of time, and I need you to find me.
Pelham’s voice comes from very close, right at my ear, and I jerk.“The article,” he says softly.“Has it been filed.Yes or no.”
I feel the cold prongs touch the outside of my thigh and I brace, every muscle locking involuntarily.I hold my breath and—
The current hits and it’s not like anything I have language for.It’s not pain exactly.Not at first.It’s a sensation that predates pain, a warning to my nerves that something terrible is coming.It lasts for a second, maybe two, and then every sensory ending in my body lights up all at once.It’s hotter than fire, exquisitely sharp.It feels like my muscles are tearing apart, my bones are shattering and my skin is peeling away.I think I scream but I’m not sure, and then… it’s gone.
I’m gasping and shaking and my legs have stopped working.My full body weight hangs from my wrists now, but the pain in my shoulders is nothing to the agony I just felt.
