Page 95 of Tell Me Why
Tell looked over at Tina.
“I’ll be back,” he hissed. “I will. I’ll be back.”
An hour passed.
Two.
Three.
Tina felt tremors in her arms as she tried not to be afraid, tried not to imagine what they might bedoingto him, for all that time. Interrogation or simply chemical preparation?
She had little doubt it would be painful; how could something of either naturenotbe?, but she knew that Tell would hold up to it.
The way they’d shackled him.
She hadn’t anticipated thethoroughnessof it.
There was no good way to fight it.
There was nogoodway towalkin it.
Was Tell wrong? That there reallywasn’tany opportunity there for escape because they were much too vigilant and thorough to allow for it?
It had to bepossible, to incapacitate the human body such that itcould notrouse a legitimate offense.
Taking people prisoner was kind of an art form worldwide, and had been for centuries, or longer. It wasn’t as though they didn’tknowthe tools that a man would use to exact an escape.
Had Tell been telling her a beautiful lie to keep her spirits up, knowing that there wasn’t anything they could actuallydo, in hopes that someone externally would come and rescue her?
No.
No, she could out-think this.
Even if it wasn’tpossible, she wasn’t going to succumb to despair and spend the last two weeks of her life feeling sorry for herself and like death was inevitable.
She would watch.
She would learn.
She would find a weakness if it was there, and she would take her moment when it came.
Yes, there was scant little to watch, but it meant she was going to have to be all the more clever to learn it.
So she would.
She was going to beat them.
She wasn’t going to lose.
The sun came again.
Tell hadn’t returned yet, and Tina was more uncomfortable than she had been the first night in Nashville, where she had all but been able toseethe sun through the patio doors of the walk-out basement.
No.
Uncomfortable didn’t begin to capture it.
She was in roaring, searing pain. It would have been writhing pain, but she couldn’t writhe. She was pinned down and just… waiting. It was the certainty that it would end that kept her from despair, but even that wasn’t much comfort through the moments of the day.
