But Lucy’s “please” didn’t arouse him. Instead, it made him want to help her. Comfort her.
How bizarre.
“Want to rest for a minute?” he asked.
She nodded.
They parked their sorry, lame, mutilated bodies on a decaying bus stop bench.
“Need more meds?” Donaldson asked.
“We’re going through them too quickly.”
“I know. But we can deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes. If tomorrow comes. Let’s worry about today, today.”
They each dry-swallowed two Norco.
The rain had stopped and the sun was setting. It was almost pretty.
“What do you want to do, D? When this is over?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what next? We’re escaped fugitives, and it’s not like we can blend into a crowd. We can’t run forever, can’t hide. They’ll find us.”
“Canada,” Donaldson said.
“How are we supposed to make it on our own? Get jobs?”
“Why do you assume we’ll be together?” Donaldson asked. It came out too harsh, not like he’d intended.
“You mean, when this is done, we split up?”
“We’ve been forced to work together, Lucy. Once we finish this, we can go our separate ways.”
Donaldson waited, hoping she would object, wondering why he cared so much.
“If that’s what you want, D.”
It wasn’t what he wanted. In fact, it was the last thing he wanted. He wondered why he’d said something so stupid.
“We’ll, uh, talk about this later. Right now we have business to attend to. You up for it?”
Lucy nodded.
“Gonna be good to kill someone again, don’t you think?”
She put on a pained smile. “Definitely.”
They walked another block, their shadows growing longer and then disappearing along with the sun. The only flashlight they had was the novelty one, shaped like a frog, on the car keychain.
Donaldson was conflicted. He knew he needed to keep his mind in the game, on what needed to be done, but his head kept running through what he’d said to Lucy, over and over again. He needed to set it right. At the same time, a big part of him was worried she’d reject his offer. He had no idea why that scared him so much, but it did.
Donaldson cleared his throat, but the lump remained.
“Look, I was thinking. It probably is best if we work as a team. Stay together.”
“You sure about that, D?”
“Yeah. We could hitchhike up to Canada, killing drivers along the way, taking their money and credit cards. When we get there, we get some fake IDs, saying we’re citizens. They got socialized medicine. All the pain pills we want, courtesy of the government.”
“I’d like that,” Lucy said.
In the darkness, her hand found his.
Donaldson hurt.
He hurt like hell.
But right then, in that moment, for the first time in ages, he didn’t mind the pain so much.
• • •
They pressed on for another ten minutes, their progress slow and interrupted by frequent rest breaks.
“D, look.” Lucy was pointing toward a wide expanse of nothingness, dotted with the occasional tilting light pole—an abandoned parking lot.
“What?”
“You don’t see her?”
He stopped and stared into the distance, and when he finally saw what Lucy was pointing at, he felt first a thrill, and then a pang of amazement. How the hell had his one-eyed partner spotted this from several hundred yards away in the semidarkness of early evening?
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Lucy said.
From this distance, neither the height nor the hair length and color would’ve confirmed it, but the woman’s protruding belly certainly did.
A pregnant woman was limping across that parking lot toward a brick warehouse.
“Yep,” Donaldson said, “that’s Jack Daniels.”
He heard a door opening, and then Luther Kite was standing in the dungeon room, staring at him and Harry.
“I’m a rich man,” McGlade said.
“So am I,” Luther replied. “You think your money means anything to me?”
“No. But it means a lot to me. I was hoping you’d let me go so I can spend my money on stuff. Like a vibrating stripper pole.”
Luther’s dark eyes settled on Phin’s. “Does he always do that? Make jokes in times of crisis?”
“Yeah. All the time.”
“Doesn’t it annoy you?”
Phin stuck out his jaw. “Where’s Jack?”
“She’ll be by shortly, to watch you both suffer. I just want to do some last-minute tests to make sure everything is working properly. Those chairs you’re strapped to are quite ingenious. They were designed to inflict pain of varying types. This control panel here,” Luther walked up to a metal cart installed with a laptop, “can deliver heat, cold, pressure, electricity, perforation, and abrasion. In other words, you can be burned, frozen, shocked, cut, and scraped, in a variety of agonizing ways.”
“Nice,” McGlade said. “You get that at Psychos ‘R’ Us?”
Luther picked up two objects from the cart. He walked around Phin’s back and placed one in his hand, and then did the same for Harry.
“This is how the game will work,” Luther said. “We’ll start with electroshock. You each hold a remote control with a button. If pressed, it will send electricity to the other chair.”
Phin was suddenly seized by a white-hot jolt of pure pain, vibrating every nerve in his body.
It was over in an instant.
“Sorry, buddy,” Harry said. “Just seeing if it worked.”
Phin blew out a breath. “Goddamn it, McGlade.”
“How bad was it?”
Phin blinked away the tears. “Bad.”
Luther’s mouth formed a thin smile. “Here’s the game. Only one of the buttons will work at once. If you press your button, you’ll shock the other person and stop the flow of electricity to your chair. Soon Jack will be watching you, from behind the Plexiglas there.” Luther pointed to the far wall. “I want you to put on a good show for her. Show her who’s stronger. Oh, and burning ash will be falling down on you the entire time.”
“No contest,” Harry said. “Phin’s stronger. I cry watching reruns of Family Ties.”
“Then Phin will take the suffering for both of you.”
Phin steeled himself. That one-second electrical jolt was damn near the worst pain he’d ever experienced, and he and pain went back a long way.
But he’d spent over an hour trying to get McGlade to stop sobbing. Phin remembered the last time they’d been in this situation, with Alex cutting off McGlade’s fingers.
Poor Harry had endured the worst of it that time.
Phin was prepared to take the worst of it now.
“Let’s try it out, shall we?” Luther said, getting behind the control panel. “We’ll start with you, Phin. And I must apologize in advance for pairing you with such a coward.”
Phin took a deep, calming breath, and let it out slow.
“Harry McGlade is my friend,” Phin said, his teeth clenched. “And he’s also the bravest man I ever met.”
“You mean that, buddy?” McGlade asked. His voice had gone soft.
“Yeah.”
“You want to play this asshole’s game?”
“Hell, no.”
“Me neither. Ready on three?” McGlade asked.
Phin stared at Luther, and grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
“One…two…fuck you, Luther…three!”
Phin began pressing the button rapidly, knowing McGlade was doing the same. That way, they both took intermittent, rapid shocks, neither of them bearing the brunt of it.
Still, the agony was blinding. Phin felt like his entire body was becoming a giant charley horse. But it was sporadic, not constant, only happening every other second.
He heard screaming, realized it was Harry.
When the screaming got louder, Phin realized he’d joined in.
“Stop it!” Luther yelled. “This isn’t how the game works!”