Peril

STARK

He opened the door and the light swept over the crumpled parka, the dusty jeans, the wrinkled, grease-stained shirt, and up the bare naked feet that now trembled slightly against the white plastic bands that held them in place against the metal legs of the chair.

“Who sent you?” Stark asked.

No answer came, but Stark could hear the man’s rhythmic breathing. He lit a cigarette and blew a column of smoke into the blackness. He’d held the man all night, simply left him tied in a chair, sitting in the darkness, in his underwear, barefoot, vulnerable.

“I need a name,” Stark said.

The feet moved, but there was no other response.

“Who sent you?”

Stark waited for a reply, though he knew it would be incoherent, at most a grunt. The tape would make any more articulate response impossible.

“Are you the woman’s husband?”

The man strained against the bands that held him to the chair.

“Or do you just work for him?”

The man’s head trembled, and beneath the tape his lips fluttered briefly then grew still.

Stark stepped over and raked a single finger down the man’s jaw. “Who do you work for?”

The man made no effort to speak but only glared silently, his jaw now set and rigid, like a fighter readying for the blow.

“Did you really think you could do it?”

The man shifted his eyes to the right and stared at the room’s blank wall.

“Did you think I would lead you to a woman and then let you hurt her?”

The man drew his gaze back to Stark, staring at him intently, as if trying to see into the working of his brain. Then he closed his eyes.