Page 40 of Edge of Secrets (The Edge Trilogy #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nell

S tabbing pains in my head woke me. I was confused. Terrified. It was horrifically dark, and I couldn’t get any air. I was buried alive—dirt and rot in my nose. Air. God, I needed air.

I started struggling. Found that my arms were wrenched back, wrists bound. I was curled in the fetal position. I couldn’t move. My own weight made my hyperextended shoulders burn and throb. The vibration confused me. A bump slammed my head against the floor.

Ah. Yes. I was folded up in the trunk of a car.

Panic would not help. I tried to relax, took the slowest, shallowest breaths I could. Lack of oxygen explained the headache. Carbon monoxide, maybe. Or both.

The car began to rattle and bump. We’d left the asphalt and gotten onto a rutted dirt road. It stopped. A muttering of male voices. Car doors popped open. The vehicle’s weight lifted and shifted as men got out.

I tried to remember how many I’d seen at Elsie’s. Four, maybe.

Elsie. A fresh wave of emotion jolted me. Oh God, poor Elsie. And Wesley, too. They’d shot him and just left him there.

The trunk opened with a hollow pop . Daylight filtered through the filthy, stinking burlap that shrouded me.

Rough arms grabbed me under the armpits, giving my shoulders an agonizing jolt.

I was jerked out, legs bumping over the lip of the trunk.

The ground whipped up and smacked me a blow that loosened every sinew.

“Take her into the building,” said the harsh, cracked, aged voice with a thick accent. “And tie her to a chair. Tie her carefully. I’m tired of rude surprises.”

I was hoisted up and dragged—feet bouncing over rough ground—into an enclosed structure. The sunlight I’d felt outside didn’t penetrate here. It was humid, and cold, as if I were in a cave.

The man dragging me dropped me onto a straight-backed chair. My arms were jerked tighter, fastened to my ankles, twisting me into an agonized pretzel around the chair back. I gasped from the pain.

“The rest of you, out. Go keep watch,” ordered the man with the accent. There were mutters, tramping feet, and a large door creaked and banged shut. The light filtering through the burlap diminished sharply.

A latch fell into place. Clunk.

Silence. My teeth chattered. I shook—huge, seismic shudders, as if I were freezing to death. I trembled so hard, the chair rattled against the floor.

The two remaining men stood there, watching me. I could sense their enjoyment.

“Take off the bag, John.” The German-sounding man’s voice oozed satisfaction.

The bag was wrenched off, whipping my head forward against the brutal pull of my tied arms. I coughed, dragging in big gulps of air.

My hair was over my eyes. I tried to shake it back, but the slightest movement made my head throb. I just stared through the veil of tangled hair, like a captured prehistoric cavewoman, face dirtied, mouth open, eyes staring and wild.

It wasn’t bright inside that room, but it still took a moment for my eyes to readjusted. By some miracle, my glasses were still clinging to my face—askew, but still there.

Two men. One old and collapsed in on himself, with a flabby, jowly face. Watery blue eyes peered out from puffy bags of unwholesome flesh. His lips were an unhealthy, blotchy purple. He leered at me.

So did the other man—the one who fit Nancy’s description of Snake Eyes. Burly, with deep-set eyes glittering with concentrated evil in the flushed, tightly packed fat of his heavy face. His lips were wet from being constantly licked.

Both were loathsome. Neither seemed concerned about me seeing their faces. They didn’t expect me to ever have a chance to identify them.

I pushed that unhelpful thought swiftly out of my head.

The old man stumped forward, and tipped up my chin. “Antonella,” he crooned. “In the flesh. And such lovely flesh.” His hand crept down my chest, groping. He found my nipple and pinched.

I did not allow myself to yelp. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Ulf, my dear—Ulf Haupt. And this is my assistant, John, who your mother and sister have met before. But I am the one who will ask questions today. Not you.”

“Wh-what do you want from me?”

The light in his eyes was pure insanity. “Information, my dear. Of course.”

My stomach plummeted. That commodity of which I had so little. The other man, whom Ulf Haupt had called John, rummaged in my blouse, groping my boobs until he got his fist around my pendant.

He wrenched it until the chain broke. “We’ll add this to our collection,” he said.

“John’s been eager to question you,” Haupt said.

“Yeah, since this morning,” John agreed. “When you broke up with the prick.”

He waited for a reaction, laughing at my shocked expression.

“Yes, I heard it all,” he taunted. “I bugged your computer, you stupid cunt. You wanted him to declare his love, huh? Wanted him to grovel, suck your toes? I almost found it in my heart to pity the guy—if I hadn’t had to listen to him fucking you for the last two days. ”

I recoiled. He leaned forward, until his face was inches from mine. “I heard it all. You dirty little slut. Heard you screaming and coming.” He slapped me, rocking the chair so hard it teetered on two legs. “You love it, don’t you? Filthy whore?—”

“Enough, John!” The old man’s voice was sharp. “Don’t get carried away. She must not lose consciousness before we get the information we need. Play later.”

John subsided, muttering something under his breath about cunts and sluts. His fists were clenched, his mouth open and wet, breath rasping fast. Irrational hate shone in his eyes. I was tied to a chair with a pair of raving maniacs.

Haupt patted the cheek that John had slapped, as if I were a little girl and he was a hideous parody of a benevolent grandfather. “So, my dear. Tell us what you know about the sketches.”

Sketches? I seesawed frantically, wondering what would get me killed the fastest—admitting ignorance or feigning knowledge. Either option looked bleak.

“I don’t know anything about any sketches,” I said.

Haupt’s eyes hardened, and his fingers tightened on my cheek, pinching. “Do not lie. We read the Contessa’s letter, you stupid girl. She said the three of you could solve the puzzle, so you must know something!”

“But I’m alone. I’m not with them.” I shook my head to clear it, blowing hair up and out of my eyes. “And you took the letter, so we never got a chance to read it ourselves. And Lucia never had a chance to?—”

Another vicious slap. My head rang. Tears sprang into my eyes.

“So the Contessa never told you how her father died?”

I shook my head, gulping. “No,” I whispered.

“You want to hear the tale?” Haupt sounded eager to talk.

“My father knew the old Conte de Luca, you see, back in their youth. In the thirties, before the war. They attended the art academy together in Rome for a time. They became close friends. Such good friends, the Conte even invited my father to visit his ancestral home. To show off the family’s art treasures. ”

“Ah. I, um, see,” I said, although I didn’t.

“And then, the war. And the Reich,” Haupt went on.

“My father was a high-ranking officer in the SS. He arranged to be headquartered in de Luca’s palazzo during the occupation.

One of his duties was to appropriate the cream of the art pieces for the glory of the Reich.

But the Conte de Luca was greedy. He kept aside his greatest treasures.

He hid them, but drew a map describing where to find them. ”

I was hypnotized by the pale, mad eyes of the ruined old man. Spittle landed in my face as he talked. I silently willed him to go on and on. All day, all night.

As long as he was talking, they would not tear me to pieces.

“The war ended,” Haupt went on. “My father fled to Argentina after the war, but he never forgot. He paid de Luca a visit fifteen years later, but the sketches were still hidden. Would you like to know what my father did to the Conte? In his efforts to convince him to reveal the hiding place?”

“N-n-no,” I quavered. “Thanks, but no.”

“Do not be insolent!” Haupt shrieked. “Perhaps if I tell you that you will share his exact same fate, it will spark your curiosity, hmm?” He slid his cold, puffy hand down over my arm, my breasts. “All that smooth, flawless skin. So pale, and soft and perfect. A pity, really.”

Delay, delay. “And, ah, wh-what about M-m-marco?”

“So you know about the Marchese Barbieri? Worthless old turd. He had the map—little good it did him. My father, and later I stationed domestic spies in the Palazzo de Luca for decades, watching him search, but he never found the sketches. And then, one fine day, he climbs on a plane! And flies to America! What a curious thing, eh?” He rubbed his hands together.

“John was there to meet him. That was how we finally located the elusive Contessa. But John has an impulse control problem. I call it, ‘kill now, ask questions later.’” Haupt shot a poisonous glance at John.

“The Marchese and Contessa were dead before we could find out what he brought, or where he hid it. So be a good girl, Antonella, and maybe John won’t be so harsh with you, eh? ”

I swallowed. “I will cooperate. As much as I can.” Which wasn’t very goddamn much. As they would discover soon enough.

Haupt held up both necklaces. Nancy’s sapphire pendant, and my ruby one. They swung and glittered in the dim light filtering through the cobwebby windows.

“Tell me the secret of the necklaces,” he commanded.

I winced. “I don’t know. I only saw an incomplete draft of the letter you took. It said that only the three of us, working together using our love of art, could open some sort of key, but we never figured out exactly to what. I’m sure she meant to tell us more before she?—”

Crack , another slap. My nose was now dripping blood.

“Do not lie!” Haupt shrieked. “I know you know more! We have researched you, Antonella. The bitch Contessa had you study Italian and Latin. You were being groomed to take over the search! Admit it! Why else would you study a dead language? Have you seen the map? Have you read it? What does it say?”

“No! I-I-I haven’t s-s-seen…” I floundered, stammering. My imagination was failing me. How could I justify a passion for language and literature for its own sake to subhuman monsters like this? They wouldn’t understand it. They didn’t even know what beauty was. How could they imagine loving it?

John stepped up, with a businesslike air. His next blow knocked my chair off balance. It teetered on one leg, tipped. The room swirled as I tumbled backward, onto my tied hands. Crunch . Wood splintered beneath me—and oh shit, oh dear God, my hands … oh, that hurt ? —

A long broken shard of wood from a piece of junked furniture had stabbed into the pad of my thumb. I wrenched my thumb loose from the shard, again, groping with my fingers feeling blood flow, slippery and hot. Felt for the shard. There it was. My hand closed around it, and clenched.

Snap. I broke off the tip. Small, but sharp, hidden in my fingers. A few inches long.

John hooked the back of my chair and heaved me upright. “Let’s try that question again, Antonella.” He leaned down, the whites of his eyes showing, and slid the point of his knife under my blouse. A few sharp jerks, and the fabric gave, gaped. Buttons flew, skittering on concrete.

He dug the knife tip under silk cord that held my bra cups together, flicked the knife.

This time, he nicked my skin. Blood welled up, trickled down my belly.

Blood dripped from my wounded hand, as well.

I clutched the splinter, hard enough to hurt, to ward off the squirming nausea, the waves of sick vertigo.

The knife gleamed in front of my wide, hypnotized eyes.

“Now, Antonella,” he said, companionably. “Let’s talk about art.”