She clamped her lips tighter, determine not to make a sound and give Cyclops any satisfaction. She’d given that name to the bastard with one unravaged eye in his ugly mug who took joy in his task.
She hoped the other eye had been gouged out with a dull spoon. He didn’t physically compare to the giants of ancient lore. This creep topped out at just short of six feet and with a wiry body that smelled worse than any homeless person she’d ever met.
He liked flexing his muscle when he had a defenseless woman hanging by her arms.
Sweat inched down through her eyes, taking its time annoying her.
Cyclops had been musing once more over his assortment of torture tools laid out on a filthy table. He turned to her with excitement rising in his soulless eye. A thick black mustache hid most of his toothless grin. She hoped his disgusting body stench would not fill her last inhale.
Before he arrived, she’d been hung for an hour. Her feet had turned numb in the icy water. She lifted weights and trained constantly to be in shape. Her arms could handle the pain if that was all she had to endure.
As if. This was not as bad as it would get.
“Again, puta?” Cyclops asked in a seductive voice as if he intended to massage her and not fry her body.
Can’t think about that. Think about anything else but the pain. “Never give into victim mindset,” Coop had told her if she ever got caught.
Glaring down at Cyclops, she saw him as a tiny man. A nobody. That wasteland of humanity was only a tick on the back of the mongrel she hunted.
Much better. She had to keep coming up with ways to feel powerful.
Cyclops enjoyed taunting her, convinced he could wield a psychological game when he lacked the brain cells to bob for apples.
She hoped her glare televised that insult.
He scoffed at her. “You think you are better than me. Many have this foolish notion at first.” His heavy boots pounded the cement floor as he circled her like a land shark closing in on its prey. He went out of view on her right and returned on her left, never slowing his drivel in a heavy Latin accent. “But none ever outlast me. To withdraw intel while prolonging your life, this is an art. Not what you see in movies.”
She sighed, expecting his resume next.
Neither of them had time for this. She’d overheard two men talking a short while ago. One was Russian, a language she was adept at interpreting. He addressed the second man as Collector, who talked about their next move.
This idiot below her smirking clearly could not translate Russian and thought he’d been left in charge after the Collector told him to take his time and call when he had everything.
What the Collector and the Russian had discussed was the mansion being wired to explode.
If she didn’t get out of this jam soon, she’d end up dying with Cyclops. Now, to just magically remove the ropes cutting into her skin and she could escape.
She’d get on that any minute now.
Cyclops rubbed his hands together. “Just remember, I give you chance to end this quickly and you waste it.”
She tried not to shiver and encourage him, but this was a dank basement despite being late summer in South America plus her icy foot bath.
Shock from the pain wasn’t helping either.
Cold was cold no matter what you were doing.
He paused, seeming to weigh a decision, then reached for the two battery clamps he clicked against each other. Sparks flew. Plenty of power.
Lifting the leads slowly, he started for her.
She worked on sending her mind somewhere else, somewhere far from this place, to withstand what she had coming.
That hadn’t prepared her for the first time he’d shoved the ends into the water. If not for being dehydrated, she’d have embarrassed herself.
Her first electric shock had been just a tease. She’d bit down hard and flinched, keening in pain.
He’d howled with pleasure as if he’d personally created that form of torture. The Collector and the Russian had entered, interrupting him. Cyclops had stood at attention, his gaze fixed on a spot high up and behind her. Sounding as if he stood at the top of the stairs behind her, the Collector told this idiot he’d have thirty minutes once the green light flashed on the wall Hallene faced.
