The redneck jerked out the knife just in time.
“Fuck!” Will shook his head violently. The grip on his arms got tighter. He shook his head again. The blood was still moving inside his ear.
The redneck laughed as he folded the blade back into the handle. “Take off your clothes.”
Junior and number three released him. Will jammed his pinkie in his ear and moved it like a clapper in a bell.
“Take off your clothes,” the redneck repeated.
Will glared at him. “Go fuck yourself.” He headed toward the door, but Junior stopped him.
The redneck offered, “We can do this the hard way.”
Junior pushed Will into his partner, who in turn slammed Will into the wall.
The redneck asked, “Hard way, easy way?”
Will couldn’t think about the beach anymore. He couldn’t think about Sara or anything else but staying alive.
Bill Black could handle this. He had been in his share of back rooms. He had dealt with lowlifes and bad guys all of his life. According to his records, he’d been a lowlife and bad guy all of his life.
Will didn’t know what boot camp was like other than what he’d seen in the movies, but he was very familiar with the intake process at the Atlanta jail. Bill Black would’ve been one of at least a hundred new inmates the guards checked in that day. They’d stripped him, searched him, shaved him, deloused him, then thrown him into a five-by-nine cell with another man and an open sewage pit for a toilet. There were communal showers. There were occasional cavity searches. There was nowhere to hide.
Undressing for a bunch of violent hicks was not something that would faze a guy like Bill Black.
Will ripped open his shirt. Some of the buttons popped loose. His T-shirt came next, then his jeans. Will used the toe of one boot to brace the heel of the other as he stepped out of the shoes. He kicked off the jeans.
The room went silent but for the muffled beats of club music.
They stared at him like an exhibit at the zoo.
Will didn’t look at his body much. As grateful as he was to Sara, he didn’t know how she could stand it. There wasn’t a part of him that didn’t tell some story of abuse—the cigarette burns around his ribs, the electrical burns that had seared a scattershot of black powder into his skin. The scars on his back where he’d been clawed by a woman who got high from huffing spray paint all morning and thought Will had bugs crawling underneath his flesh.
And that didn’t include the wounds that were self-inflicted.
Tony broke the silence. “Shit, Bud. What the hell happened to you?”
Will said nothing.
For once, the redneck seemed to view Will as a human being rather than a problem to be dealt with. He asked, “Iraq?”
Will considered his options. His scars were not part of his cover. The redneck had obviously managed to get his hands on Bill Black’s police record. He’d made some inquiries up the criminal food chain. Did the man have enough juice to get a military file? The GBI was good, but the United States government had offered only cursory support for Bill Black’s stint in the armed forces.
The redneck pressed, “One a them ragheads get hold of you?”
Instead of answering the question, Will turned his head and looked at the wall. He figured Bill Black would feel the same way Will did. Someone had hurt him really badly, and he wasn’t proud of it.
“Never mind.” The redneck seemed resigned to never knowing, but he wasn’t finished with his search. “Take off the shorts, too.”
Will gave him a hard look.
The redneck seemed almost apologetic. “I knew a guy got caught by a cop with a wire taped to his balls.”
Will knew he didn’t have a choice. Either he’d undress himself or the two henchmen would. He pushed down his underwear.
The redneck glanced down, then took another look before saying, “Okay, then.”
Tony raised his eyebrows. “Damn, hoss.”
Will pulled his underwear back up. He reached for his jeans, but they were snatched out of his hand.
Junior searched the pockets. Bill Black’s wallet and phone were found. The wad of cash he’d taken off Tony this morning was tossed onto the desk.
“Let’s see what we got,” the redneck held out his hand. He started with the wallet. The Velcro ripped open. Cayla’s handwritten address was in the photo sleeve. He flipped past it, checking the pockets. He found four twenties, two credit cards, and the speeding ticket that passed for Bill Black’s license. “Fifty in a school zone.” The redneck tsked his tongue against his teeth.
Junior handed him the phone. Will grabbed his jeans.
The redneck asked, “What’s the password?”
Will said, “Four-three-two-one.” He yanked up his jeans as the man dialed in the code.
The redneck was more proficient than Will as he scrolled through the various screens. His lips moved when he read. “Who’s the woman in Tennessee?”
Will pulled on his T-shirt. The hole in the arm had torn, ripping out the side seam.
Tony provided, “He’s gotta baby by her.” He felt the need to ask Will, “She the one into topiary?”
Will put on his Oxford shirt. There were three buttons left on the placket. He concentrated on closing them, though his fingers didn’t want to work.
The redneck seemed to be scrolling through every screen. Will had tested the phone himself when he first got it, trying to see if there was a way to accidentally reveal the cloaked apps. Each time, he was foiled, but every system had a flaw. Will had never tested the phone with the recorder turned on. Maybe there was a software glitch that would pop up the apps and make the redneck pull out his knife again.
“Where’s this?” He showed Will a photograph, one of the shots he’d taken from the highway.
“Off 16,” Will said. “Thought it looked nice.”
The man countered, “Geotag says it’s off 475.”
Will shrugged, but he felt his mouth go bone-dry. He’d forgotten about the geotags. They were part of the iPhone’s location service and showed the longitude and latitude of where the pictures were taken. He had no idea whether or not the GBI program cloaked them.
“You get these off the Internet?” He showed Will the naked women.
Will’s brief feeling of safety evaporated. He’d downloaded the photos from his computer in Atlanta. He didn’t know what the geotag would record—where Will was when he downloaded the photos or where they had originally been taken.
Will waited, watching the man’s finger swipe across the screen.
“Don’t like Asians myself.” The redneck kept scrolling.
Will buttoned the cuffs of his shirt, pretending like he hadn’t almost pissed himself. One of the buttons was dangling by a thread. It came off in his hands. Will didn’t know what to do with it. He put it in his pocket.
If he died, he wondered who would find the button in his pocket. Probably the medical examiner. Pete Hanson had retired a few months ago, but Amanda had brought in a new guy who was young and cocky and believed everything that came out of his mouth. Will wondered what he would make of the button. He wondered if Sara would hear about it. Would she think about Will every time she put on a shirt?
He took the button out of his pocket and tossed it onto the floor.