Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 70628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Nancy’s countenance is stoic, her facial features nearly without expression. “Maybe, but we have an eyewitness—me—who will say one of you killed her. With her own gun.”
“Yeah,” Buck says. “An eyewitness who changed her name. Who we’ll be able to prove had something to do with Aspen’s abduction. It won’t work, Nancy. It’s over.”
“It’s not over until I say it’s over.” Nancy turns.
Buck grabs her. “We’re not going to shoot you. We won’t become who you are.”
“That’s smart,” she says, “because if you shoot me, no one will be able to lead you to Gloria’s killer.”
“Yeah, we’re smart enough to know that too. But the first thing we need to do here is get the rest of your story.”
“What if I don’t feel like talking?”
“There are a lot of ways we can make you talk,” I say. “As you can probably see by my body, I’m well-versed in the art of torture.”
21
BUCK
Aspen doesn’t quake. She doesn’t flinch. In fact, she raises her arm once more, holds the gun on Nancy.
“Aspen…”I say.
“Why the hell not?” Aspen demands. “Look at me, Buck. I’m still not exactly sure what she did, but it was enough to make her wife kill herself rather than face the music. Shouldn’t she endure something of what I endured?”
“Then you become no better than the people who held you captive.”
“Maybe I am no better than they are.”
I feign a sigh. “All right. You’ve convinced me. We’ll torture her until she talks.”
A frightened gasp comes out of Nancy.
I’m bluffing, of course, but it’s important that neither Aspen nor Nancy understand that I am.
Aspen looks at me with a question in her eyes. Maybe she knows I’m bluffing.
Mostly likely. She knows I’m a SEAL. We don’t torture.
Just like I know her. She may talk a good game, but when push comes to shove? She won’t be able to torture another human being.
She doesn’t have it in her.
This is a woman who couldn’t leave a dog to go to a shelter.
Nancy is far from an innocent dog, but Aspen still won’t be able to do it.
And even if she can? I won’t let her.
“Maybe we’ll start with a few cuts,” I say. “What kind of knives do you have in the kitchen, Nancy?”
“Please…”
“Please,” Aspen echoes. “I stopped saying please on the island. It didn’t do any good. But I said it a lot when I first got there. I pleaded. I begged. I promised to do anything they wanted if only they would stop hurting me. You know what? Please means nothing to me.”
“You have to believe me. We didn’t know what they had in mind for you.”
“That doesn’t really sway me. Sorry.”
“Just talk,” I say. “Talk, and you won’t ever have to know what Aspen went through.”
She gulps.
“Taylor said she had to protect you,” Aspen says. “Is that why she killed herself?”
Nancy scoffs. “Taylor offed herself to save her own ass. She wasn’t protecting me.”
“Well, she’s gone now, so no one is protecting you. You just sold yourself out.” Aspen’s voice never wavers.
“All right,” she says. “But you should know that there are consequences to me talking.”
“Do I look like I care?” Aspen says.
“No.” Nancy shakes her head. “I don’t think you care about a goddamned thing, Aspen. There’s a dead woman in my bathroom, and you don’t seem to care.”
“Funny,” Aspen says. “This is the second time I’ve seen death. Each instance gets a little easier.”
God, how her words ring true. And she has never even caused the death herself.
Each time, out in the field—each time it got easier to see a man bleed out. To see the rage of death on humanity.
Even when Amira was killed…
I never saw her body, thank God, but I could picture it in my mind. Though I loved her—though I would’ve done anything to have her back for one more moment so I could confess my feelings to her—the image in my mind of her exploded body made me less nauseated than the first time I saw death.
It does get easier.
It shouldn’t, but it does.
“Your wife is gone,” I say. “I’d say I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m not. I’m not convinced you are either. And if she had anything to do with putting Aspen on that island, then she got what was coming to her.”
“It wasn’t her idea,” Nancy says.
“Whose was it, then?”
“It was her contact. Her uncle. Her Uncle Greg.”
“Yeah, I figured that one out already. When I remembered the name and cross-referenced it.”
“Why did you change your name?” Aspen asks. “Why didn’t Taylor?”
“I just did what they told me to do.”
“Who the fuck are they?” I demand.
My phone rings then.
Fuck. It’s Raven.
I nod to Aspen. “I need to take this. You okay here?”
“I can get her to talk.”
That’s what I was afraid of, but I have to trust Aspen. Trust that she’s a good human being with a good heart, and I know she is.