Page 30 of Silver Lining (The Diamond Trilogy 3)
The prisoner’s dilemma has one fatal flaw. Thinking of Holly reminds me of that. The prisoner’s dilemma assumes both prisoners want the best deal for themselves. I don’t want that. I’ve known from the minute they dragged me in here that I wasn’t walking back out again. So a good deal for me is the least of my worries.
Holly’s freedom is the only thing that matters.
The only thing.
I ignore the grasping, aching urge to touch her again and spend a few more moments pretending to compose myself. The one thing they haven’t tried is offering to let me see her again. It strikes me as a huge oversight, but then again, Blue Shirt is an idiot.
“I shot the colonel.” I keep my eyes on Blue Shirt’s while I say it. He’s the kind of fool who will take the eye contact at face value, even after all the fun time we’ve spent together. “I brought the gun to the apartment, planning to take that bastard out.”
“That’s not all you did.” Blue Shirt rubs a hand over his knuckles and I swallow a sigh. I’m already confessing. Jesus Christ.
“Hell no. I kidnapped Holly.” I let a big, crazy smile spread over my face, showing them bloody teeth. It’s a half-genuine smile. Being with Holly at all, for any amount of time, is what makes this bearable. “I kidnapped her and I held her hostage.”
A sneer curls the corner of his mouth. “You sick bastard.”
“I raped her. So many times. She was my best victim.” I think of her in the church. Before we drove away in the SUV. Before she decided to be a hero and shoot the colonel for me. Before that, I fucked her, hard and relentless, and she loved it. She was as pink and breathless as a doll when it was over. I focus on the feeling of my fingers between her legs. “It was an international crime. I raped her in several countries and forced her to cross the borders against her will. I forced her to do everything.”
I want to lose myself in thinking of her. It’s too early for that. Saying a confession out loud is only the beginning of the act.
I clear my throat and it brings up fresh blood. Not the most positive sign, but I should have enough time left to do what I have to do to save her. “Write it up.”
Blue Shirt narrows his eyes and glances over to his buddies. He looks like he wants to beat more confessions out of me. A goddamn hammer instead of a scalpel, this guy.
The government is getting sloppy, but it doesn’t really matter. Not when you have billions of dollars in a defense budget and enough nukes to destroy the world ten times over.
Even sloppy wins.
“Write it up and I’ll sign it.” I taste more blood along with the words. It tastes like the truth. I’d sign anything if it means Holly lives. I’d sign anything to let her go free.
14
Holly
The water has been running in the sink for so long that I’ve lost track of the time.
My kitchen sink. Running.
The sound snaps me out of whatever reverie I’ve been in. At some point, I came over here to do something involving the sink. I turned on the water. Something caught my attention out the narrow kitchen window. It has a partial view of the alley next to the building, and a partial view of the street.
I don’t know what I was looking at anymore.
Was it a white van that I saw or a postal truck? I have a hazy memory of both things. But, given the evidence of the sink, I’m not sure my memory is reliable at all.
I reach to turn off the water and find a mug in my hand. Right. That’s why I came here. To pour out tea gone cold and clean the mug and put it in the rack to dry. My plan was thwarted by my still-constant search for Elijah.
He’s gone.
There’s no trace of him in my life. It’s as if he never existed. As if I never hopped on a plane to France to find my sister. As if I never found him in the basement prison of a medieval church. All of it, erased.
Even the marks on my ass that perfectly matched his fingerprints have faded into nothing. I was sure they were there. I looked at them every day in the shower until they were gone.
I put coffee in the machine by the sink and set it to run. Now I’m the robot. I’m the one going through the ordinary movements of an ordinary life. It makes my skin crawl.
Everything about this life is fake, a facade, a charade. Or worse, everything that happened before was a hazard of imagination.
The part about being imprisoned by the government seems real enough. It ended with a knock on the door of the concrete room. The man who had been interrogating me walked out without a backward glance. Another man came in to unchain me from the table. He walked me to the back of the building, where a police car waited, and a cop who didn’t speak to me drove me back to my apartment.
