That was what the docs had always called it. Which more or less covered what the drug was meant to do: make a subject relax to the point of making friends with his or her captors. Making friends and sharing stories.
For the captors, the trick to using this drug was simply to be nice. The interrogation manuals Claire had read went so far as to recommend adding the smell of fresh-baked bread or chocolate chip cookies to the room.
For the captive—one that was trained, anyway—the trick was to make the most of those periods of relative lucidity. To do your critical thinking when you could, and to consider your options, if you had any. There had even been close-quarters combat training for each particular drug, since things like balance and depth perception were affected differently by each one. If you were going to slam the blade of your hand into the pressure point below someone’s ear, or break his neck, you had to compensate for the distortions in your fine motor control. Claire had rather enjoyed that part of the training.
She was in the middle of one of the lucid spells now. It had rolled in a couple of minutes ago. It would roll back out in a couple more. She used it, as she’d been doing for hours, to take stock of her predicament.
She was tied to a wooden chair. Her hands were behind her, bound to the spindles of the seatback. Her ankles were bound separately, one to each of the chair’s legs. She was in the middle of a room; the walls and floor were made of rough-surfaced planks. There was a doorway leading to another room, and there was a window looking out on a dense woodland of old-growth pines, with no other buildings visible. The window was single-pane, the thin glass old enough to have ripples in it—real ripples, not just the sort her mind was whipping up right now.
Of the next room she could see very little. A bit of floor and wall visible through the doorway, nothing more.
Her captors called this place the cabin. She had seen only this single room—she’d been hooded when they brought her in—but she could tell there was at least a bit more to the place. There was an upstairs, she knew; she heard men talking up there sometimes, and heard the old beams groan when someone walked above her.
She had seen only three people all day. Two were the men who had driven her here from the Mojave. They were both thirty, give or take, and had a hard look to them. They reminded Claire of guys you saw on those prison documentary shows.
That left Cullen. Cullen was fortyish, and very big, and he had much more than just a hard look to him. Whenever she happened to meet his gaze, Claire had the impression she was looking into the eyes of a machine. Something with no concept of empathy or restraint. A crude simulation of a human being.
The three men had watched her all day so far, sometimes all three of them in the room, other times just one or two.
They didn’t quite seem to know the correct use of this drug—they weren’t being especially nice, and they sure as hell weren’t baking cookies—but so far, at least, they weren’t physically hurting her. Not yet.
Her wrists and ankles were sore from the bonds. She could feel abrasions on her skin, and her hands and feet were partly numb from cutoff circulation. She wasn’t sure exactly how many hours she had been bound to the chair—keeping track of time was difficult with the drug in her system. There had been a single bright point in the day, some time ago now, like a star seen through a break in an overcast. One of her two original captors had been in a nearby room, talking on his phone. Claire had discerned a single line of the conversation, spoken louder than the rest, torqued by stress and confusion: They had him zip-tied.
She hadn’t necessarily been at a peak of lucidity just then, but she had understood what it meant all the same. Sam was free.
Which was a silver cloud with a dark lining: If he was free, he was trying to find her. He was taking risks to do so.
Claire blinked and lifted her gaze. At the moment only Cullen was in the room with her. He was seated at a card table against the wall, playing solitaire. The deck of cards looked like it had been handled by a mechanic right after an oil change.
The other two were off in some other part of the place. Claire had heard them upstairs, maybe ten minutes ago.
The shimmers intensified. She watched them rise up off the floorboards like little ghosts. She knew what it meant.
The clearheadedness was leaving her again. Peak to trough. Down she went.
If there was any consolation, it was that this lucid spell had actually yielded an idea.
A very bad idea.
Maybe, but it was better than nothing.
The colors swam and churned against the muted browns of the cabin. Claire gave in and let her thoughts blur all the way out.
*
Another peak. Another lucid spell. How long had she been under?
Cullen was still alone with her. He still had the greasy cards spread out on the table, though at the moment he was watching her, smiling a little. The smile did nothing to ease the coldness of his features. Quite the opposite.
Claire looked away, but not before catching the satisfaction that rose in his expression.