Hostage Zero

“You’re doing good,” Jonathan encouraged. “The next part’s going to seem worse than it is, so don’t panic. Once my friend puts you down, just stand still. This will all make sense in a minute.”

In the dim light cast by a half dozen bare lightbulbs suspended from the twenty-foot ceiling, Boxers carried his charge to one of the twelve-by-twelve-inch hardwood columns that held the roof up. He rotated the kid off his shoulder into a standing position, and then held him tightly against the post by a massive hand pressed to the center of his chest.

“This is the scary part,” Jonathan soothed. “Just relax, and nothing will hurt.”

“Please don’t hurt me,” Jimmy begged. He couldn’t help himself.

Mr. Horne had driven an enormous nail into the center of the post, per Jonathan’s instructions, exactly six and a half feet off the floor. On it, he’d placed a thick leather dog’s collar, with a leash hanging from the built-in loop. Without saying a word, Boxers took the collar from the hook and looped it around the prisoner’s neck.

“We’re not going to choke you,” Jonathan said, getting ahead of the natural panic. “We’re not even going to cinch it tight. We just need you not to get away.”

The kid’s breathing rate doubled.

Boxers did just as Jonathan had promised, securing the collar with two fingers’ clearance around the skin of Jimmy’s neck. Then he secured the leash to the spike with enough slack to keep Jimmy from choking, but not so much that he might forget that he was helpless. They let him stand there for the better part of a minute, no one saying anything as Boxers returned to the van to retrieve his tools for the next stage.

Jonathan felt his own heart hammering as the big man leaned into the open doors and removed a heavy rubber truncheon. About the size and shape of a baseball bat, the weapon had enough flex that it wouldn’t break a bone, but enough heft that it would hurt like hell.

Boxers rolled his shoulders to loosen them up as he returned to his spot at the kid’s left and set his feet in a batter’s stance. He glanced to Jonathan for the final go-ahead, and when he saw his boss nod, he let loose with a homerun swing. The truncheon’s sweet spot connected squarely on Jimmy’s hip bone with a sound that reverberated through the barn like a muffled pistol shot.

Jimmy howled. It was a guttural, choking scream that was equal parts fear and agony. Blinded by the tape over his eyes, he couldn’t know what had caused the pain, and with his arms shackled and his neck secured, he couldn’t protect himself. “Please!” he shouted. “What do you want from me?”

Jonathan let ten seconds pass before he answered. He abhorred these kinds of interrogation techniques, but two children were missing, and he had neither the time nor the luxury to be subtle. By establishing a baseline for pain, he hoped that the one swat with the truncheon would suffice.

As he watched this nineteen-year-old sob for mercy, Jonathan felt sympathy for him. “Jimmy, I need you to listen to me,” Jonathan said softly. He made his voice sound gentle.

“Please don’t hit me again.”

“Don’t make me, and I won’t,” Jonathan said. “But you need to know that what you felt right then is only the opening act. We can keep that going all night long. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

Jimmy shook his head frantically. “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“I hope so,” Jonathan said. “But I’ll be honest with you. My friend hopes just the opposite. He would like nothing better than to beat you till you’d spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair.” It was a classic good-cop, bad-cop banter, but in this case, it was a statement of fact.

“I swear to God, I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“All right, then. Let’s start with last night. When I know everything that you know, I’ll be out of your life.”

“All I did was drive,” Jimmy whined. “I never went inside. I had nothing to do with the shooting. I swear to God.”

“But you knew you were there to kidnap children,” Jonathan said.

Jimmy said nothing.

Jonathan figured he was looking for the right answer. “Lying to me will be a mistake,” he said. “Do we need to hit you again?”

“Yes,” Jimmy said. “I mean no! You don’t have to hit me again. Yes, I knew that we were going to be snatching kids.”

“For what reason?”

“They never told me.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

Jimmy shook his head. “I didn’t want to know. I didn’t need to know.”

“You must have heard names,” Jonathan prompted. “You must have heard who they were coming to get.”

“I knew there’d be two,” Jimmy said. He spoke emphatically, clearly anxious to prove that he was being truthful. “But I only heard one name. It was Evan something. An Irish name.”

“Guinn,” Jonathan said.

“That’s it. But then they came out and I heard they’d shot somebody. I was like, what the fuck?”

“So Evan Guinn is the only name you heard,” Jonathan recapped.

“I swear to God.” Despite the slack in his leash, he stood on tiptoes and kept his jaw extended.

“Why him and not the other one?” Jonathan asked.