"No, he wouldn't have." Triplett tossed the beer can he'd been holding into the trash bin beside him.
"Something's happened to him."
Rhianna nodded. "Something or someone."
"We'll put an APB out on him," Triplett suggested. "Darling will go along with that."
"This isn't like him." Rhianna shook her head. "Not like him at all. It's been five days since anyone's
seen him."
Cortesio sighed. "We aren't gonna settle anything tonight." He stood up and reached for his coat.
"Might as well get some rest and start looking again tomorrow."
"Where? We've called everybody he knows." She flung her partner a damning look. "Including that
bitch of a sister of his."
"There isn't a snitch within four counties we haven't hit on and nobody knows nothing!"
"If they do," Donne put in, "they ain't talking." He flinched when Rhianna turned and glared at him. He
shrugged. "You know how snitches are, Rhee."
"What about the woman?" she asked.
"What woman?"
"The woman he was with the night he was supposed to have come by my place!"
Cortesio held out his hands. "He didn't say nothin' to me about no woman." He looked at Triplett. "Did
he tell you anything about a woman?"
"He wouldn't have told me." Triplett snorted. He glanced at Rhianna. "I'd be the last one he'd be
talking to about a woman."
"She set him up," Rhianna said, nodding. "Sure as I'm standing here, she set him up."
"For what?" Donne asked.
"Who the hell knows, Dave?"
Cortesio and Donne exchanged a look. "He could be on a binge," said Cortesio.
Rhianna shook her head vehemently. "He was trying to quit."
"Ah, come on, Marek!" snapped Donne. "You saw him the other morning. Did that look like the
stupid prick was trying to quit? He had one mother of a hangover and wasn't even fit for duty. Why the
hell do you think Darling sent him home?"
"She did it," Rhianna said. "Whoever the hell
she
was, she caused it."
"Let's go," Cortesio said to Donne. "This ain't gettin' us nowheres." He scowled at Rhianna. "She
wants to think he's been waylaid by some_ femme fatale_, let her think it." He thrust his arms into his coat
sleeves.
"He's your partner and you don't seem all that worried about him," accused Rhianna.
Cortesio jammed his ski cap down over his ears. "I know him, Marek. He's probably shacked up with
some hooker, drunk outta his gourd and having the time of his life."
"I won't accept that. Something's happened to him."
"Believe what you want." Cortesio pointed at Triplett. "I'd hold off with that goddamn APB if I was
you. Wouldn't even mention it to Darling until next week. The man is mad as hell at Nolan as it is and one
more feather in that pillow is gonna get that Mick shit canned."
"Don't worry about it," snapped Rhianna. "You just go on with your pat little world and leave finding
Conor to us!"
Cortesio opened his mouth, started to speak, but shook his head, spread his hands and bowed. "Have
it your way, Marek, but don't say I didn't warn you when he shows up Monday morning looking like
something dragged his ass through turpentine."
"I pray to God you're right," she said, her mouth tight. "I'll kiss your wop butt in front of the whole
squad room if he does."
"And if he doesn't?" Triplett asked quietly, catching Donne's eye. "What then?"
"Then," said Cortesio, his gaze flint hard, "we worry."
*Chapter Ten*
It was dark.
And cold. So very, very cold.
And soundless.
He reached out with the only means available to him and encountered only the dark and the cold and
the silence. The loneliness was unbearable and it pressed down on him like tons of dirt. The pressure of
his aloneness was a physical hurt that overshadowed the cold invading his body.
Yet there was another pain, far more agonizing than the frigid cold in which he was encased. It was far
more excruciating than the helplessness and loneliness that surrounded him. He experienced this pain with
such a degree of horror and hopelessness that it left him screaming soundlessly in his mind.
How long had he known this terror? He thought wildly as he struggled to swim up through the layers of
cold. How long had he lain here, enduring this agony that drove red-hot spikes through his brain and
spinal cord, the pain that clawed at his belly and oozed through his veins like crawling insects? How long
would the torture continue before he gave in?
"You must be taught," the man he had come to realize must be a Colombian had promised.
Striving hard to block the agony, Conor tried once more to reach beyond this hell into which he'd been
cast. For one brief, hopeful moment, he had sensed contact, but the pain came down on him so hard, it
drove him back, whimpering with defeat.
He slunk back, away from the hellish reprimand, and burrowed himself once more into the icy
wasteland that was now his mind. Crouching there, driven back into his unendurable loneliness, he felt
himself crying silent tears that ran like blood from his sightless eyes. He could not give in to what had
been demanded of him; he would not. His life was already forfeit. He could not allow his soul to be taken
as well.
"How strong are you?" they had taunted him. "Let's see how much of a man you are, pretty boy."
He heard the words in the deep recesses of his agonized brain and they sent shivers of hate through
him. They would never let him go, he knew. They had stolen his very life and he despised them for it.
The withdrawal symptoms started again.
"Oh, God," he moaned, feeling the cramps begin in his gut.
Were they coming? Was that the scrape of a footstep outside? Were they bringing the needle to jab it
into his thigh and douse the flame in his gut? Or would it be like the day before when he'd had to endure
the fires of hell as they withheld the drug for more than twelve hours before the black man came in to
stop his mindless screaming? Or the time several days before when he'd gone a full day in agony as his
addiction cried out to be relieved. How many times had they done that to him? Ten? Twenty?
A day here of blessed relief; a day of violent desperation when no needle pierced his flesh.
He was in agony again. Were they coming? Were they
ever
going to come?
The drug often made him hallucinate. It blurred his vision, caused a bitch of a headache, and made his
joints ache. Was he imagining the scuff of footsteps outside the silo door?
There it was again!
He cocked his head toward the sound. It had to be either the black man or the Colombian. He could
not take another minute of this torment and hope to keep his sanity.
He lay there, panting from the pain. His belly cramped and rumbled and his mouth watered. He licked
his lips.
"Please," he called out. He held his breath and waited. He understood they liked to hear him beg.
The door to his nightmare world opened. "What you want, pig?" It was the black man whose voice
sounded so much like that of James Earl Jones.
He bit his lip, his breathing shallow and quick as he shifted impatiently. His mouth flooded with saliva.
"I hurt," he admitted and saw the man nod.
"I expect you do." There was laughter in the rich bass voice.
"Please," he asked again, hating himself, but knowing all too well how the game was played. "I need it,
man."
"I'll see what I can do."
The door closed, shutting out the light.
It was always the same answer. Conor understood that, too. It was part of the game. They could be
back in five minutes or five hours. At times like this - when he was waiting for the blessed relief of the
drug and not knowing if he was going to be given it or not - his mind took him to Rhianna and the only
bright ray of sunlight in his shadowed existence. Thoughts of her had gotten him through the worst of it.
He hoped that would help now.
Just to touch her, he thought. That was all he really wanted to do. Just to assure him she was all right,
handling this situation as best she could. He had no doubt that Joe and Trip were taking care of her,
seeing to her immediate needs. And Steve Trevor, his lawyer. He would have spoken to her by now,
maybe even given her the letter.
The note he had written her, Conor thought with a lurch of his heart that made tears pool in his eyes.
How could he have forgotten that pouring out of his feelings? _Oh, dear God, no! Don't let Steve have
given her the letter yet!_
"Rhianna," he said and his voice broke with need.
He could see himself writing it that morning. It was like a motion picture playing across the screen of
his mind. He could even smell the coffee brewing as he had sat on the couch and tried to put into words
how he felt.
It had been a long time in coming. There had been many attempts and countless wadded up sheets of
paper dumped into the trash can before that day. He doubted if he could ever have said the words to her
face. Writing it had been hard enough but he knew she'd never read it unless something bad had
happened to him.
Something bad
had
happened to him. Something so bad he could never have imagined it or prepared
himself, or her. That was what the message had been about, preparing the two of them for a time when
he was no longer there. Looking back on it as he lay helpless on the cot, he supposed he should never
have written the damned thing. He wished to God he hadn't. It was a selfish thing to do; an arrogant
assumption that Rhianna Marek loved him as much as he loved her.
Did she? He thought she loved him. There had been signs even an idiot could read. But if she did love
him, how much would those words hurt her now?
_Selfish, Nolan._ Such selfishness should be punished and what better punishment than the one he
suffered now?
The things he had written came out of the darkness at him and he cringed. They terrified him, but he
couldn't look away from his declaration.
_"My Pretty Lady,"_ the words began to tumble off his tongue into the silence around him. _"If Steve
has given you this letter, then I'm no longer around. You don't have to read it if you don't want to. I'll
understand if you don't. I guess I'm writing this more for me than you, but I hope you'll understand
because I need to say a few things I couldn't say before._
_"I don't know when it happened, Rhianna. When it started. I've lain awake at night trying to pinpoint
the time, but maybe that was impossible. Maybe it happened a little bit at a time and finally just reached
up and slapped me between the eyes so I'd notice. Whenever, however, it happened, I don't regret that it
did. I might not have welcomed it, might even have tried to prevent it at first, but now, now that it's
damned well too late, I find myself embracing it fully and wondering why I ever fought it._
_"I love you, Rhianna Marek. With all my heart and all my being; with every breath I take and every
pulse of blood through my veins. And, as Browning said: 'If God choose, I shall but love thee better after
death.' I guess I'm about to find out if that is true or merely poetic license._
_"No tears for me, Pretty Lady. Please. Get on with your life. Find a man who'll do right by you, but
warn him if he doesn't, I just might find a way to make him!_
_"Goodbye, Rhianna. Never forget I love you. Conor"_ "Selfish," he whispered. Pure, unadulterated
selfishness. No, he should never have written the letter. He had placed a burden of guilt on the one
woman in all the world he had truly loved and, in the doing, scarred her for all time. "Bastard," he called
himself. "If I could just do it again…"
"Talking to yourself again, brown eyes?"
He had been so engrossed in his own memories, his misery, he had not heard the door open again.
Looking up, he shielded his eyes from the glare of light streaming in.
The Colombian stood in the doorway, the syringe in hand, but that didn't mean he was going to inject
Conor with the payload.
"You're not going to give it to me, are you?"
A light snort of laughter burst from the Colombian. "No, I am not."
Conor closed his eyes, biting his lips until he tasted blood. He would not beg anymore - even if he died
screaming in agony, he would not beg again.
Almost as though the Colombian had intercepted that shaky vow, he moved further into the room.
"You've been here three weeks, now,
amigo,"
Conor's tormentor said in a conversational voice.
"You've got awhile to go yet before I'm finished with you."
"Before you kill me."
"Oh, I have no intention of killing you." The Colombian seemed shocked by Conor's statement. "That
has never been my goal, I assure you."
Conor opened his eyes and looked up at the man standing over him. "You just want to drive me
insane, is that it?"
"Not so insane that you are not aware of what is being done to you." The Colombian reached down
and captured Conor's chin. He bent over and peered into the prisoner's eyes. "You must suffer first. That
is the way." He tugged on Conor's chin. "Then you will appreciate the freedom you will have when the
deed is done."
"I don't understand."
"I know you don't, brown eyes, and it is not yet time for the party to begin." He stroked Conor's
cheek. "It will not be long now before the drug in your veins will completely control you and you will do