I knew that, too, the second I saw her. She locked her eyes on to me and it nearly knocked me back a step.
I tried to look back. Then I tried to look away. It didn’t matter to Bernadette. She just kept watching me. She didn’t even blink. By the time I pulled my eyes off her, the crate was open. Boniface was hopping like a kid on Christmas, telling his guys careful, easy, merde, watch it, and then they had it out of the crate.
It didn’t look like much, just a big, heavy roll of some kind of off-white something. The pl
astic solution had soaked in, set, and dried, and I had rolled it up for shipping with the painting side facing in. When it had been carefully unrolled, Boniface stood over it and looked it over. He walked around it, gazing intently, pausing to admire a detail here and there, before he finally nodded. “You did it,” he said.
“Yes, I did,” I said. “Surprised?”
“No,” he said. “Astonished.” He looked at me with the first real smile I’d seen on his face. “You are a truly remarkable man, Riley. A genius.”
“Thanks,” I said. I mean, what else would I say?
He was looking at the fresco again, with an expression somewhere between a man in love seeing his sweetheart and a fourteen-year-old kid seeing his first strip show. “It’s truly amazing,” he said. “So beautiful . . .” He just stared at it for a minute, and when he looked up again there was actually a tear at the corner of one eye. No, really—a tear. “It’s wonderful,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. And because I was still feeling that rising sense of dread—feeling it stronger than ever now that I was facing Boniface and Bernadette—I added, “So I’d like to go home now . . . ?”
Bernadette made a noise in her throat that I can’t describe. It was the kind of sound an apex predator makes when they see dinner standing in front of them, and if I hadn’t known for sure before, I did now.
“I’m afraid not,” Boniface said.
“Not?” I said. I mean, I’d known it was coming, but— “What do you mean, ‘not’?”
He shook his head. “I mean,” he said, “that even though I am incredibly grateful for what you have done, betrayal has a price. And even if I could forgive you—Bernadette could not.” He smiled at her, and she practically purred at him. “And so, however much I might regret it—” He turned to the mercs and said, “Lock him up.”
For a second I thought maybe I could talk him out of it. Just for a second; that’s how long it took for his men to grab my arms, twist them behind my back, and start to march me away.
“Wait a goddamn minute!” I yelled. “I stole the fucking fresco for you—I even fucking delivered it! What the fuck is this?!”
“You did,” Boniface said, and he was back to being all ice. He walked around the guards and stood in front of me. “And please note that I am very grateful and that I respect you, Riley. Because of this, I will not even ask you when Bailey Stone will arrive. You would not tell me, would you?”
I couldn’t think of a single word to say. I didn’t even stammer. He knew. He had probably known all along.
“I didn’t think so,” Boniface said. He nodded to the guards. “Take him.”
40
I knew I was in deep shit. I had accepted that, and I was already working on ways to get myself into the shallow end. That was before it all got worse—almost as worse as I could imagine, and believe me, I can imagine some very bad shit.
The first was this:
Benny had come along with the mercs who marched me to my cell. It turns out that wasn’t so I’d have somebody to talk to. He came along to show me the sights.
The first tourist attraction was a real showstopper. About halfway down the last corridor that led to the cells, Benny called a halt in front of a door. It wasn’t locked, barred, or even closed. It was just a door, and it was open. Benny turned to me and smirked. “This here is Bernadette’s hobby room,” he said. “It’s gonna get real familiar for you.” Still smiling, he peeked in the door. “Oh, jeez, I hope you don’t mind company,” he said. “She got somebody in there already.”
He looked at me with a pretend-surprised face and gestured. “Take a look,” he said.
I really didn’t want to look. I had some kind of idea what I would see, and what it meant for me, and I didn’t need to see it to be scared shitless. Besides that, I could hear sounds from inside—a kind of gurgling, mewling sound that wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before, or ever wanted to hear again. Just this weird, mindless rising and falling sound that was as far from human as it could be. I wasn’t going to look. But one of the mercs gave me a shove, and I stumbled forward into the open doorway.
The first thing I saw was a worktable. There were a couple of big scoop lights hanging over it. They weren’t turned on, so it was a little dim in there. I didn’t see anybody, but the sound didn’t stop, and something was strapped to the table. It was about the size of a large sofa cushion. There was a stainless steel table on the side. It had what looked like hedge clippers on it, and a couple of other tools I couldn’t quite make out. I didn’t see what was making the noise.
Benny reached around me, flipped a switch, and the lights came on, and I could see what was on the table. It was the thing making the strangled cat noise, and it was a nightmare.
I’m pretty sure it had started out as a human being. It was nothing like now. Arms, legs, nose, ears—everything had been snipped off. All that was left of it was the torso. It wriggled, helpless to do anything else. And the final touch? Its eyes were wide open, because the eyelids had been cut away. And hanging directly above the table, where the permanently open eyes could see everything—had to see everything—there was a large mirror.
A mirror. Sure. So every hideous, agonizing, permanent thing Bernadette does to you is right there in front of you in living color, and you can’t look away. After all, where’s the fun if you can’t see what’s going on?
I heard a kind of gagging, choking sound, followed by a weird high-pitched giggle. The gagging turned out to be me. The giggle was Benny. I turned away from the thing on the table, and he was right there in my face, showing teeth. “She likes to take it real slow,” he said. “Cuts off one little piece at a time, cauterizes it. The fingers, one joint at a time—like I said, slow. So it lasts a long fucking time.”