So Ian twisted the bezel on the Rolex Submariner he’d been given as a prop, and in so doing, made it rain DEA agents, FBI, state police, Phoenix PD, and SWAT personnel twenty minutes later, just as Taggart and Roan had begun toasting.
We did our parts, got down on our knees, fingers laced behind our heads, and accused Roan and Cano and everyone else of setting us up. As we were cuffed and led away, Taggart blasted both Roan and Cano, swearing that neither one of them would last a day in prison once his father found out what had happened. He then started screaming that he himself would not serve a day behind bars.
It was impressive; he never once fell out of character, even when the state police officers were rough with him. The only people who knew we weren’t criminals were the FBI and DEA agents, and they were too busy taking Roan and Cano into custody to care what was done with us on the way from the house to the cars.
As Ian was being dragged away in cuffs after Taggart, I realized I was going in an opposite direction.
“Hey, what the fuck?” I snarled at the officers walking me toward a van. “I’m supposed to go with them.”
Ian heard me, strained to turn around, but only succeeded in getting a club to the abdomen as he and Taggart were thrown into the back of a government-issue black-tinted–window SUV. Once he was in there, I couldn’t see him anymore, and so, figuring my night had just gotten really long, I stopped fighting and let them take me to the scary stalker van, the one every woman in every police drama was kidnapped in.
As the door rolled open, I was surprised to see Agent Wojno.
“What the hell?” I asked before I was shoved hard and fell face-first onto the floor of the van. Rolling over quickly, sprawled at his feet, I glared up at him for a moment until I realized how horrible he looked. “Cillian?”
I had not used his first name since we’d gone to bed so very long ago, but it snapped him out of whatever was wrong with him.
“What’s the matter and what’re you doing here?”
He squinted. “I’m so sorry.”
“About what?” I asked as the van door rolled shut behind me.
“Me.”
Jolting, I twisted around, and there hovering over me was Dr. Craig Hartley. I didn’t even see anyone else and definitely missed whoever shoved a needle into my thigh.
“He’s sorry about me,” Hartley said, tipping his head and smiling. “Because, my dear Miro, he’s the leak.”
I tried to process that, tried to yell, tried moving at all, but everything sort of ran like raindrops streaming down glass windows. Everything dripped and was simply lost in a smear of color before I saw nothing at all.
WHEN I read about waterboarding, and even when Ian described it to me, how it was done, I had always kind of thought it was mind over matter. I figured I could take short gulps of air, breathe shallow, and not get too much liquid in my lungs. I’d never been so wrong about anything in my life. What was in my head and what actually happened were night-and-day different.
I never fought so hard in my life.
When water poured down my nose, when I was drowned and held down at the same time, I screamed myself hoarse.
My brain said I was drowning. I heaved for oxygen, my throat was raw, my coughing wet, and the terror of it—that I was dying, that I could not hold my breath another second—was a total mindfuck.
They did it over and over, and even when I inhaled to breathe, it felt like the soaked towels were smothering me.
When they finally let me up, I was dumped sideways off the cot and down onto the icy cement, sprawled there in my water- and urine-soaked dress pants. I’d never thought I’d be the type to piss myself, but the panic and adrenaline were too much for my bladder. I rolled over quickly and vomited until there was nothing left but bile, then curled into a fetal position. I wasn’t surprised when I started retching again moments later.
They never even asked me a question.
WOJNO SHOWED up after I was stripped naked, hosed off, and shackled to the ceiling of a small ten by ten cell. There were bars above me, so the only place to see anything but concrete was if I tipped my head back and looked up.
I was having trouble focusing on him, so I knew something funny was running through my system. “What’d they give me?” I asked, my words slurring when I spoke.
“Some lorazepam to calm you down and—”
“No. Before, to knock me out,” I insisted, wanting to know.
“It was hydroxyzine pamoate,” Hartley said as the cell door swung open and he came in. “But don’t worry, Miro, I would never give you anything bad.”