Chapter 19

NINETEEN

"You!"The single word was all my brain could come up with as I looked FBI Agent Lance Cooper in the eyes. He looked older than the last time I'd seen him, which hadn't been that long ago, maybe three or four months. He'd popped into Agent Stone's office when I was there for my quarterly check-in meeting. But the intervening time, however short, hadn't been kind to him.

"Where is the file, Felix? I'm done playing games."

"I don't know."

The sound of the slap as he hit my cheek hard enough to make my neck snap to the side reverberated around the warehouse.

"Stop fucking around. I need that goddamn file!" He was close enough that spit sprayed from his lips and landed on my face. I desperately wanted to wipe it away, but I had no way to manage the simple task.

"I don't have it." As long as I thought about the file's whereabouts in absolutely literal terms, I could lie to him with a straight face.

He grabbed a hank of my hair and pulled my head back roughly. "You're lying. I know you took it. I was the one that sent you on that little wild goose chase to hack the FBI archived servers. I thought you'd pick some nothing file to take as proof, but instead, you took the only thing I actually needed you to leave alone."

His grip on my hair made my eyes water, and my head was torqued back enough that it felt like my vocal cords were collapsing as I gasped out, "That sounds like a you problem."

I knew I shouldn't egg him on. I had no way to free myself or fight back, and I knew there was at least one other person that wasn't on my side somewhere in the warehouse.

Agent Cooper's answering laugh made my skin crawl. "It's very much about to be your problem."

He released his hold on my hair, and the second I righted my head to look at him, his fist connected with my eye. Something cracked, and the swelling was almost instant as my body reacted to the assault. But I barely had time to take a breath through the pain before he grabbed the back of the chair and used the leverage the position gave him to drive his knee into my chest, forcing the air from my lungs.

I was already dizzy from whatever sedative cocktail they'd dosed me with, and the room swayed as I tried to remind myself how to breathe.

"When we met years ago, I told you my specialty. Do you remember what it was?"

I started to shake my head, but my eye pulsed with pain.

"Interrogation tactics." Cooper smiled, but there was no joy or humor in his expression, just cold, calculated menace. "I think this was a good chat, don't you?" His voice held the eerie calm of someone who had nothing left to lose.

And that gave away the biggest piece of the puzzle.

He wasn't the endgame.

He didn't want the file for himself.

He needed it for someone else.

The question was, who was pulling the strings?

It still hurt to breathe, so I didn't respond.

"I think we'll have another of these friendly conversations every hour until you tell me what I want to know." He casually shrugged a shoulder. "I'll get what I want, even if you give it to me with your last breath."

Cooper reached out and patted the cheek he'd slapped hard, making the swelling in my face throb.

"You think about what your life is worth to you. Your hour starts now."

He turned and strode back into the darkness. I watched him go even after I couldn't see him and jumped when the metal door to the office on the catwalk banged shut.

My left eye was now swollen shut, and I closed the other. For a brief moment, I let myself grieve the future I would never get to have with Nero because every moment that I spent tied to that chair was a moment closer to never seeing him again, and that more than Cooper's threats nearly broke my resolve.

But there was no way in hell, even if I gave him the drive gift wrapped and with a bow on top that he was going to let me walk out of that warehouse.

I was on borrowed time, and the thing that sucked worst of all was that I finally had something I didn't want to lose.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into the unforgiving silence as my heart shattered.