End Game

CHAPTER TWENTY

Graham’s world had no meaning. After shooting the Markhams, his captors had descended upon him. It was five against one, maybe more. He couldn’t resist as they shoved some kind of cloth into his mouth and sealed it in with a long strip of what looked and felt like duct tape. They passed three loops around his head, and then he was silent. He’d tried screaming, but the sound went nowhere. Next, they pinioned his arms behind his back. They wrapped something — rope, maybe, but it felt wider than that — around his wrists, and then they wrapped more of it around his elbows.

With his mouth and arms taken care of, they’d pressed lumps of what felt like moist clay against his eyes and wrapped them in place. Then they did the same thing with his ears. The final step was to bind his knees together, and then his ankles. He was blind, deaf, and dumb. As time passed, and his limbs fell asleep, he was also paralyzed.

He’d lost all track of time. Someone could have told him he’d been wherever he was for hours or for days, and he wouldn’t be able to argue. All he knew was that he was in a vehicle of some sort, and he only knew that because of the constant bouncing movement. He also smelled the faint aroma of gasoline. Nothing strong or nauseating, but definitely there.

There was also the stink of his own sweat and his own fear. He didn’t think he’d pissed himself, but the smell was definitely there.

God, it was hot. He was soaked through with sweat. He’d hoped for a while that the sweat on his face would loosen the tape around his mouth, but he’d had no such luck. Not yet, anyway.

His nose was clogging up, and he was terrified of suffocating. He kept blowing out hard and then trying to inhale easily. God only knew how much snot he’d blasted all over himself and his surroundings.

These people wanted him dead.

Or did they? Killing him would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. They didn’t hesitate for even a second before killing the Markhams. How difficult would have been to shoot him in the head just as they’d shot Peter and Anita?

The Markhams, he thought. I killed them. If it hadn’t’t been for me, they’d still be alive. Even as the thought formed in his head he knew that it wasn’t true — not completely, anyway — but it was true enough not to be false.

How many more people had to die because of this ridiculous code? What could possibly be so important, so vital, that a stupid, random string of numbers and letters was worth killing for? And what had the Markhams done to deserve being shot and left in the grass to be found by animals?

Out of nowhere, images of wolves and buzzards appeared in his head, tearing and picking away at the Markhams’ dead bodies. He tried to will the images away, but they wouldn’t go. He knew that wolves didn’t even live in this part of the country, but that didn’t stop the horror-movie footage from playing in his brain. They rooted deeply into Peter Markham’s gut, pulling out intestines and—

The car hit a huge bump, big enough to make him bounce, and it seemed to be slowing. In fact, there were a lot of bumps, making him wonder if they’d gone off-road.

Oh, shit. No one will ever find my body!

Graham shook his head and thumped it against the floor. He had to quit thinking things like that. He needed to become more like Jolaine, more logical. Not everything was a huge crisis. Not everything spelled his imminent death.

“Settle the hell down,” he said, though the words came out as a muffled, jumbled mess. He remembered Jolaine’s words: Always think, and wait for an opportunity to take action.

But what action could he take when he couldn’t even move?

That couldn’t last forever, could it? Sooner or later, they were going to have to at least free his mouth. They wanted information from him, after all. If he couldn’t speak, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for him to say, was there?

He decided that the first and only thing that he would say was that he wouldn’t say anything until they untied him. He’d heard that arms and legs could get gangrene or some such thing if they didn’t get enough circulation, and gangrene meant getting the arms and legs cut off. Well, that for damn sure wasn’t going to happen to him.

The motion stopped.

Graham didn’t know whether he’d felt the vehicle stop, or if he’d just noticed the stillness for the first time. He sensed movement, and then hands were on him and he was being lifted. Unable to kick his feet, he tried an inchworm motion that seemed to loosen their grip, but only for a second before someone got a good hold on his bound knees. From there, he was destined to go wherever they decided to take him.

After a minute or two of manhandling, they rested him on a hard surface. It felt cold against his sweat-soaked T-shirt. The chill was a relief at first, but then not so much. It was a little too cold. They laid him faceup so that his bound hands pressed into the small of his back, hurting his thumbs and stretching his spine backward past the extent it was supposed to go.

Graham knew that people were talking around him, but there were no discernible words, only muffled rumbles that had the rhythm of speech. He jumped as someone touched the bare flesh of his knees, and jumped again when they touched his ankles. When hands fumbled at his head as well, he understood that they were in the process of untying him. That in itself was a relief until he realized that the serious business of why he was here was about to begin. For the time being, they needed him alive. That gave him a few more minutes, anyway.

They freed his ears first. He felt the pressure of the bindings releasing from around his head, and then there was a soft pop as the clay stuff was pulled away.

The tape didn’t come off easily from around his mouth. The effort jerked his head first to the side, and then off whatever surface he was lying on. When the final loop came free from around his mouth, it hurt like hell. He wondered if they’d torn skin off with it.

“Ow!” he said through the gauze in his mouth.

“You can spit that out,” the man with the accent said.

Graham tried, but his mouth was so dry that the edges of the material stuck to his lips. Ultimately, he had to force it out with his tongue.

“I would help you,” the familiar voice said, “but I fear that you would bite me. Then I would have no choice but to pull all of your teeth out with a pliers. I wouldn’t want that. I don’t think you would want that, either.” The man spoke the horrible words with such an easy tone that Graham didn’t doubt one bit that he would do exactly as he said.

“Now, sit up, Graham,” the man said. “Let’s give your arms and shoulders some relief.”

They helped him roll to his side, and as he did, he jumped as his feet and legs fell.

“You are on a table,” his captor explained. “Do not be afraid. We will not let you fall.”

Graham relaxed a little, and then realized how stupid that was. They could just as easily push him down on his face as live up to their promise.

Only they didn’t push him down on his face. Hands gently leaned him forward as they worked first on his elbows and then his wrists.

“There will be some discomfort in your arms,” the man said. “They will feel stiff, and your hands are swollen from being tied. Do not worry about that. The discomfort will not last for long.”

After his hands were freed, Graham tried to flex his fingers, but they wouldn’t work. It was as if they were frozen open.

“That is the swelling,” the man said.

The compresses were lifted from Graham’s eyes, and his first instinct was to look at the swelling. His fingers were the size of sausage links, and they were purple. His heart skipped.

Gangrene.

“Do not look so frightened,” the man said through a heavy accent. Graham realized now that he was the same guy who had chased him down in the woods. The same man who had killed the Markhams. “You might have guessed that I have done these things many, many times. The swelling is really perfectly normal.”

The smile on his face matched the smile in his voice. Relax, kid, I’m a professional torturer. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll only hurt you as much as I need to, and not a bit more.

Graham squinted against the yellow light of the room. The table he sat on was made of metal, and it seemed to be in far better, cleaner shape than anything else in here. The room itself was maybe twelve by twelve feet, and except for the other men in the room — all of whom wore beards and burned hatred in their eyes — the table was the only furniture. Dozens of sharp, menacing hooks hung from the ceiling. They looked like fishhooks for a whale, only without the barbs. It took him a while, but Graham recognized them as meat hooks.

He shot a look toward the man who’d taken him.

“This is a meatpacking plant,” the man explained. “Or, it was at one time. Now it is merely a playground for people who do my kind of work.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at the array of hooks. “Frightening things, aren’t they? I imagine that they would hurt wherever I put one of those, but I can think of a few places where they would hurt particularly bad.”

The man shifted his eyes to Graham. “I bet you can think of some of those places, too. Yes?”

Graham felt a chill, and he started to tremble. “W-who are you?”

“I am nobody,” the man said. “I am just a soldier in an army you’ve never heard of.” He seemed amused by his words, broadening his smile. “But I understand that names are important. Call me Teddy, then. As in a big cuddly teddy bear. Do you like the name Teddy?”

Graham had no idea how to answer the question. He worked his mouth, but the resultant squeaking sound embarrassed him.

“I understand that you are frightened,” Teddy said. “And for good reason. Here you are, away from home, away from your parents, and away from your nanny. You’re in this frightening place with so many sharp hooks. They used to hang cow carcasses from those back when the factory was still in business.”

Moving with the speed of a striking snake, Teddy grabbed the nape of Graham’s neck and enclosed it in a viselike grip, squeezing hard enough to make the fibers of the muscles in Graham’s neck feel as if they were being pried apart. With his other hand, Teddy poked his forefinger under the boy’s jaw, in the soft spot just behind the point of the chin.

“This is my favorite spot to put the hook on people who do not cooperate with me.” He pressed hard with the finger. “The point goes into the flesh and out again under the tongue. People can hang that way for longer than you probably think.”

Graham found himself crying. He feared he might throw up.

Teddy let go and Graham coughed.

The torturer smiled again. “I know that the table is not very soft, but try to make yourself comfortable. Sit back. Relax.”

Graham didn’t move. He didn’t know if the man’s words were a trap, or if he really wanted him to do something. In the end, it seemed not to matter.

“You know, Graham Mitchell, we are very nearly friends. Did you know that?”

Graham shook his head.

“Sooner or later, you will need to speak words,” Teddy said. “Now is as good a time to start as any.”

Graham cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know that we are friends. I don’t remember ever meeting you before.”

“I overstate by saying friends,” he clarified. “You spoke with a colleague of mine this morning. You called him with a message, and then you hung up without giving him the information that you were supposed to give. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Graham nodded. “Y-yes. But like I told him, I forgot what the number was.”

Teddy landed him with an openhanded slap that felt more like a closed-fist punch. Graham saw stars and smelled blood. He damn near fell off the table.

“Now, you see, young man, I believe that was a lie you just told. Lying is a sin, and I cannot abide liars. You disappoint me.”

Teddy glared at Graham for what felt like thirty seconds, and then he changed. Tension seemed to leave his shoulders. He looked to the four other men in the room. “Come,” he said. “We should give young Mister Mitchell time to think about his options.”

As one, the men all moved toward the heavy metal door that led out into what appeared to be a concrete hallway. Teddy was last to leave. As he got to the door, he paused and looked back at Graham, who hadn’t moved from his spot on the table. “Try to stay warm,” he said. “This is, after all, a freezer.”

Teddy stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

A heavy lock slid shut on the other side of the door. Graham was trapped.

Somewhere behind the walls — maybe from up in the ceiling — a motor started. Within seconds he felt a breeze of frigid air pouring out of three huge vents that hung too high to reach.

To avoid the direct blast of air, Graham lowered himself from the metal table onto the tiled floor. He pulled his legs up, Indian style, and he pulled both arms out of the stretched-out sleeves of his T-shirt and he hugged himself. He’d stay as warm as he could for as long as he could.

This is, after all, a freezer.