She’s had enough.
She sits on the cold concrete floor, slumped forward as far as she can because her arms are tied behind the four-by-four post and her legs are sprawled out in front of her. Her head hangs low, stretching her neck to its limits and causing her matted and blood-crusted hair to hang over her face, so I can’t see the misery in her eyes. Yeah… she’s had enough.
Kayla throws an icy bucket of water over the woman, but she doesn’t even flinch.
Not satisfied by that lack of reaction, Kayla draws her foot back and kicks the woman in the thigh.
No reaction.
Bending over, I grab a hank of her gnarled hair and pull her head up. She’s completely lax, eyes closed and mouth hanging slightly open, but she’s not feeling anything at this moment. I slide my gaze over to Kayla, who looks at me expectantly.
“She’s had enough today,” I tell her.
“Maybe another bucket of water will wake her up,” she suggests pointedly.
I shake my head and release my hold on her. Her head flops back down, and I ignore the roil of acid gurgling low in my belly. Shaking my head, I tell her, “Nah. Try again tomorrow. Maybe using a knife on her again will get her to loosen her tongue.”
Kayla gives a cackle of glee over my suggestion, and her eyes turn darkly clouded with wicked desire. Desire to continue her sick torture or desire for me, I can’t tell. She licks her lips as she looks at me, and I have to repress the shudder that wants to overtake my body.
Instead, I lift my chin up at her as if I share her delight in tormenting this woman. Kayla gives me a mischievous wink and says, “Tomorrow then. I’ll start with the knives.”
My eyes snap open, but they don’t see a damn thing. The room is pitch black at first, but then the soft glow of moonlight off the Atlantic Ocean starts to lighten my surroundings. I scrub my hands over my face briefly before kicking off the covers and rolling out of my bed. The floor is cold because I didn’t bother turning the heat on last night. Even though it’s May and spring is in full gear, it still gets chilly at night. My heart rate is only slightly elevated from that nightmare, but my skin feels like it’s crawling with ants.
I don’t dream of Maggie often, but when I do, it’s that particular dream. I’m not sure why that dream plagues me because while it was definitely horrendous what we did to her, it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve done. On top of that, I broke every protocol in the book for an undercover agent by rescuing Maggie from that basement where Kayla was torturing her. I did it in the dark of the night when everyone was asleep, and I did it knowing I could be blowing three years of undercover work just to save one woman’s life.
In hindsight, it worked out, but also in hindsight, it was probably a stupid decision. That is what I’m having a hard time reconciling. Probably why I keep dreaming of it.
I pad out of the small room to the bathroom just one door down, flipping on the light and momentarily blinking against the harsh glare. Bending over the sink, I turn the cold water on and let it run for a few seconds before cupping my hands under it. It’s icy and abrasive and exactly what I need. I splash three handfuls on my face and give a hard rub to my eyes before I straighten up and look at myself in the dingy mirror above the sink.
Dead, bleak eyes stare back at me. The lightest of blues… practically colorless. They had never held much warmth in them to begin with, but coming out of the dregs of my memories, they seem to almost shimmer with a frostiness that matches the cold feeling inside my veins.
The man staring back at me is named Kyle Sommerville.
Well, that was his name as of last October, but then he was shot, execution style, in the back of the head. That’s the official story that was given to my only living relative, my sister, Andrea. She was told her brother was an undercover agent, a hero, and that he sacrificed his life to take down Mayhem’s Mission. The day after I “died,” I became someone else. I kept my first name because I was told it would make it an easier transition for me, but I had no say-so in my new last name.
And frankly, I didn’t care.
It was just a name, so I became Kyle Harding.