Page 89 of Man of the Year

“So I’m askingyou, Nick. Or should I call you Eric Fisher? Or Jordan Ruff?”

No one—no one!—can possibly know so much about me or my previous aliases.

My mind is spinning fast as I try to wiggle my arms, testing the restraints, but they are tight, making me completely immobile.

Julien could be with the CIA. But then, there’d already be others here. He wouldn’t be interrogating me here. He wouldn’t be alone, with a gardener by his side, or whoever this guy is. So it’s just the two of them, then.

Julien’s gaze is cold, as always—this is astounding. I thought he was just a meticulous Tin Man. Turns out, he has a different background. Military, if I were to guess.

The gardener walks to the door, picks up what looks like a folding bench propped against the wall, and takes it to the bathroom.

My eyes follow—what in the hell is that?

Julien fists the front of my shirt and jerks me off the couch, onto my feet.

“Let’s go,” he says, dragging me toward the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” I hiss, trying to protest as he pushes me into the bathroom.

The portable bench is unfolded and set up in the middle of the bathroom. It’s almost full-body length, tilted to one side. I see a rope on the floor and a jug of water.

“Wh-what is that?” I ask as Julien forces me down onto the bench, into a lying position, face up.

“This could’ve gone easier,” he says, staring down at me, pushing the sleeves of his black shirt up. The gardener picks up the rope and ties me to the bench, my head tilted down. “But since we really need those passkeys, we will get them out of you in a different way.”

Julien retrieves a stopwatch out of his pocket and checks it. “We’ll do twenty-second intervals,” he says to the gardener. “Three breaths in between.”

The hell?

The gardener picks up a cloth, which turns out to be my old t-shirt, and spreads it over my face, blacking out the view.

“Wait!” I shout against the fabric, realizing where this is going. Bench, cloth, water—this is waterboarding, an interrogation technique. It’s torture. And they are about to use it on me.

“I hope you like water, Nick,” Julien says. A click of the stopwatch follows. “Start.”

I open my mouth to protest, but suddenly water starts pouring over my face, clogging my nose, eyes, and mouth, and cutting off my breathing.

SIXTY-EIGHT

NATALIE

I try the door of the library, but Julien locked it from the outside.

Great.Sure, Julien has a plan—whatever it is—but I can’t just wait this out while the guy who tried to kill me and Cara might get away with it.

“Heeeey!” I yell.

Where’s Rosalie? Where’s the maintenance guy? Anyone? Rosenberg, for that matter?

It’s dark outside, must be close to midnight now. I have to do something.

“Well, I swore I’d never do this again,” I murmur, “but…”

Desperate times require desperate measures.

I pull a hairpin out of my hair and carefully stick it into the door lock, feeling for the pins inside the lock.

The downside of growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere is boredom. The downside of boredom is doing a lot of stupid things that potentially can land you in jail. Don’t ask me how many locks I picked as a teenager. Among other things, much stupider, that I did with friends for fun or while intoxicated.

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