Page 234 of Deep Cover

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Cole

She screamed.

At least that was something.

She screamed and then I was pouring water over her ankle, neutralizing the sting of the alcohol.

She was there behind her eyes again.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Annie, look at me. What happened?"

It felt like a very long time that she looked at me before she said, "Everything."

I'm not a psychologist. I'm not even a doctor. I stopped before going down that road. I'm a pharmacist.

There was no way for me to know if it was a good thing that it all came rushing out of her, everything, the drugs they'd knocked her out with, the flight, the blindfold, the SUVs, the different countries she thought she was in before realizing Vincent wasn't really moving them, just making her think that. Because everyone would think that. It was completely logical to think anyone with his ego would display her where I could see her and then run again.

He'd been right about that.

She told me about the weird party he took her to, parading her whip marks in the backless dress. Then she told me that the exam table I'd seen, the second he'd had her on, this time had been for a medic to work on her back.

Strangely, that felt like the Vincent I knew. It didn't make me care that he was dead, except to wish I'd been more responsible for it. But for Annie herself, I was glad. That touch of kindness or caring or just logic when it came to dealing with a piece of property may have been significant in her staying sane through her ordeal. She'd been knocked down by the addition to fentanyl. She'd been further taken down by my systematic destruction of her ego, breaking her down to build her back up, different and stronger along the sites of the breaks.

The kidnapping would have stressed all those places. Like putting too much pressure on a bone that hasn't healed all the way from a break.

She told me about Kie coming to take her for a run and her terror at it but that was all it was.

"Not like we bonded," she snarled. "Because then she did it again."

I didn't close my eyes when she told me about the jalapeno and the torture, about the milk and the neutralizing and the pain and Kie, later, screaming as Vincent did whatever he did to her.

"I never saw her again," Annie said, her voice shaking. "That was it. I don't know what he did to her, the son of a bitch, he hurt her too, we were both victims, it – god, Cole, the way she screamed. I hated her so much. But the way she screamed."

She buried her face against me and I wished I had a shirt on or even a towel across my shoulders, something for her to breathe into, to hide her eyes in.

"It's going to take a while to get past this," I said, both hands on her shoulders, trying to make her take a step back.

Instead she froze, just looking at me.

"There's no coming back from this," she said.

I left her in the room because she promised me she was safe. I left her there and I didn't search for sharps in the room because that's overly dramatic and ignores the fact that a determined suicide will find a way.

I didn't think she was a suicide though if she wasn't careful, no matter what she thought, it was possible she'd end up that way.

Slamming the door to her room behind me, turning blindly in my rage. She thought I was angry with her. Nothing could be further from true. I was angry all over again at Vincent. At Kie. At myself.

I knew Vincent was dead. Ultimate price paid, except that I'd actually be pleased if he was alive although only if he were in my control.

Annie knew he was dead. But she had no proof of Kie's death. How did I help her with that? My men had disappeared her. It would be foolhardy to go dig up the place they'd left her body.

I left her in her room.

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