“Looks like the game just changed in our favor,” he says with an air of excitement. “She may have met her match.”
“That’s what worries me,” I say, staring at my warped reflection in the silver elevator door. “Nora was right about Fredrik—he won’t break. So, if he can’t break her, we’ll never know where she’s holding Dina. And he might kill her.”
“Oh, I think Mr. Gustavsson will definitely break her,” he says with confidence and a smile in his voice.
“I’m not so sure this time…” I say distantly, worried.
“Well, either way,” James says, “things just got more interesting.”
“Yeah…they have…”
17
Izabel
I burst through the door at the end of the hall, engulfed by bright lights and shiny tile and white walls. James is behind me. As we’re hurrying down the long stretch of hallway, I see three tall figures appear at the other end—Fredrik, carrying a briefcase, is in front of Victor and Niklas. He’s dressed in a posh black suit and shiny black shoes; a gorgeous, frightening man who was once my friend and who I loved like a brother.
My breath catches when his eyes sweep over mine so briefly that I begin to question if it ever happened at all. My steps slow as we draw closer. I feel like this is my first time ever laying eyes on him, as though I never laughed with him or helped him when he was at his weakest—he is a different man, I’ve known this for months, but only now am I seeing just how different, because I feel like I don’t know him at all and never did. He scares me. In the deepest depths of my soul, he truly scares me…but I still love him.
Victor and Niklas look at me simultaneously as I walk up; Niklas with a grim look in his eyes full of anticipation but little hope; Victor with…nothing, as usual, and now more than ever it’s really beginning to bother me.
Fredrik punches the code on the door panel and says nothing as he disappears inside the room with Nora. The sound of the door shutting softly is the only sound for a long time as the rest of us just stare in the direction of where Fredrik just stood. We look at each other once more, all wondering the same thing—can he break her, and if not, will he kill her? The answer is yes to at least one of those questions.
Without a word, I break into a full-on run down the hallway, dashing past Victor and Niklas and heading toward the elevator. But then as I approach it, I take a sharp left and go for the stairs instead because I think I can run faster to the fifth floor than the elevator can take me there.
In under a minute, I’m pushing my way through the surveillance room, around a rolling chair and to the television screens on the tables.
Victor, Niklas and James join me shortly after.
“Where’s the volume on this thing?” I ask anxiously, running my hands along several different buttons and then the computers. I know where it is, have even used it myself before, but my mind is so scattered right now by the turn of events that I’m not thinking straight.
Calm down, Izabel…this is the worst time to lose your head.
Victor steps up next to me and clicks a computer mouse a few times until Nora’s voice gradually fills the surveillance room.
Fredrik says nothing.
Calmly and methodically, he opens his black briefcase on the table pushed against the wall. A shiver moves up my spine and an uncomfortable chill settles in the pit of my stomach when I see his ‘tools’ and syringes and the stuff of nightmares, all fixed perfectly inside the case, each piece placed in its spot with fine precision.
“Izabel,” Victor says beside me, “you shouldn’t get your hopes up on this.”
I glance over. “Why? Because even if Fredrik breaks her—or confesses—you’re going to be the one who gets Dina killed?” I look back at the screen, not knowing if my accusation cut him or not.
I love Victor—I love that man so fucking much—but right now, I can’t even look at him.
And the only faces I see, or want to see, are Nora and Fredrik’s.
Leaning on the table with my palms pressed against it, I stare into the middle screen, consumed by what’s going on in that room, but afraid to watch just the same. I feel like I’m in a movie theatre, watching a horror film, knowing that at some point I’m going to have to cover my eyes and watch through the slits in my fingers. I’ve never been able to stomach seeing the things that Fredrik does to people during an interrogation. And I never will. I may be a killer, I may have seen and experienced many horrific things, but some things you just never can get used to.
“What shall I call you?” Nora says from her chair with a deep smile in her voice and equally on her lips. “The Specialist? Interrogator? Or perhaps,”—she narrows her eyes and looks at him in a sidelong manner, preparing to push a button—“The Jackal?”