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His fist slams into my face again.
The pain ricochets through my entire jaw, which throbs angrily. Trembling, my head lowers to my chest as I try to breathe through the pain.
“Please, don’t.”
He paces in front of me. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll make it all stop.”
I should tell him, but I’m scared if I give up my leverage, he might kill me, so I keep quiet.
I brace for a hit, but it doesn’t come. He drops his hands to his hips.
“I’ll make you talk, but it won’t be a pleasant route to get there. Why don’t you just tell me what I want to know now, make it easier on us both?”
“I don’t know anything. There were lots of portraits in that storage unit.”
“You’d know it. It’s an ugly thing. It stands out.”
It is the picture I thought then. My stomach rolls, making nausea wash over me.
“If you let me go, I won’t tell anyone what you did,” I tell him. I know bargaining won’t help, but I need to buy time—enough time for someone to realize I’m gone and send help. I know my chances of being rescued are slim to none, but I have to have faith in the police. I have to have faith that I’ll be saved, because the alternative is to give up, and I’ve never been one to give up on anything in life. I’m not about to start by giving up on myself.
“I don’t remember any specific portraits. There were a few, though.”
“What did you do with them?”
When I don’t answer a flash of metal catches my eye before the hard steel of a blade is pressed against my throat. I tip my head back to stop the knife digging deeper and all my synapses snap to alert. This is where I die.
“I sent them away.”
“Where?”
I can’t give Harry up. I won’t, but I also need to live long enough to survive this.
“To have them appraised.” This is a lie. I only sent the ugly portrait, but I figure I can keep him busy for a while.
“Who did you send it to?”
“I don’t remember off the top of my head. It was some guy I found online.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose. “You’d better hope like hell that portrait is still safe.”
“Of course it’s safe.”
He digs his phone out of his pocket and pulls up a search engine. “We’re going to go through every single appraiser in the Louisiana area until you tell me where you sent it. And if you lie to me, I’m going to cut your fingers off.”
I swallow bile. I believe him.
