The Gift Shop by Armstrong Charlotte

Author:Armstrong, Charlotte [Armstrong, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

Varney had returned, walking softly. He pulled the broken door as nearly closed as it would go. He listened. It seemed for a long time.

Then he came, decisively, and ripped the gag away. When Jean stopped retching and had succeeded in bringing a little moisture back into her mouth his big cruel hand was poised to punish her face again, so she did not yell.

“Okay,” he said briskly. “The yokels are going to be stirring any minute. So we’ll make this fast. What about pigs?”

She stalled. She kept working her mouth.

“Come on.” He hit her face, hard. “Beckenhauer put something in a piggy bank, eh? I didn’t see him do it. But you saw him.”

“No.”

“Yes, you did. Quit with the lies.” He slapped her. “What did he put?”

“We guess it’s a message.” (They knew this anyway.)

“You’re not telling much, are you?” He hit her again. “And the pigs got sold, like to the kid in Amsterdam. And you know where.”

“No.”

“Come on. You missed in Amsterdam. There’s one here. Up in the castle, naturally. That’ll be taken care of. What I want from you is how many more pigs and where are they?”

“We don’t know where.”

“Yeah? You’re chasing around the whole damn world and you don’t know where? How many pigs? Where? And hurry up.” He hit her again. It hurt.

Jean said with sudden spunk, “If you hit me once more, I won’t say anything.”

“That so?” He put a cruel hand on her and it hurt terribly. When he let her go, she was sobbing. She struggled to stop it. It was degrading. It was shameful. He knew how to hurt and shame a woman. He chose to wait her struggle out. He knew what he had done to her. Finally he said, “Seeing the light?”

She said, “Oh, I certainly do see the light. There’s no use in this. I tell you the truth. You just hit me again. So there’s nothing in this.”

“Nuts to that stuff.” He hit her face angrily and then his hand was poised to hurt.

“I can’t win,” she gasped. “But neither can you. So do what you’ll do. I can’t stop you. That’s what I see.”

Oh, she had seen through to the whole truth about this torture business. There was no such thing as “instant safety.” There was no kind of safety. Only pain. Therefore there was no pressure whatsoever. So she waited for the inevitable pain, hearing her own frightened heart, remembering mercy, in the form of fainting, that would come and could be trusted.

She seemed to hear a sound. A syllable? A voice?

He had heard it, too, because his hand froze. His head turned. He shifted his legs, preparing the spring in his knees. Something rustled, very softly. Something clicked. A fingernail on stone?

Jean wasn’t breathing. The man rose. He was powerful enough, the big body under the civilized blue suit was animal-strong enough, to do this slowly and silently. He went away from her, across the dirt floor to the broken door. He listened there.

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