Fuck.
He walks up to me and without a word starts at my ankles and runs the wand up one leg and down the other. He moves to my neck, down my arms.
My abs contract when it glides down my chest to my crotch, then over my back and down to my beltline where it pings wildly.
The Russians exchange smug looks, and one of them says something in their native language. They pull up my shirt in the back, almost to my shoulders, before waving the wand around the waistband of my pants. It’s silent.
It moves upward to the bunched material of my shirt held in one of the men’s hands, and the wand pings again. Having now located the source on my clothing, I hear the snick of a knife opening behind me, and I brace.
It goes to my shirt, slicing cleanly up the back. Then to my shoulders where it cuts away at the arm holes. On my left side, the blade scores my skin, and I flinch. Warm blood trickles down my triceps.
The material is pulled away, and one of the men lays it on the pool table, bending over to study the hem. The others gather around him, and then they’re using the knife to slice at it some more.
Almost gleefully, one of the men turns to me, holding up the chip.
How long have I been here? It seems like a long time, but as I calculate them pulling me out of the car, walking me through the house, down the steps, then tying me to the chair… it can’t have been more than a few minutes.
Jameson followed me out of the hotel parking lot, I’m sure. But were they closer than three, four, five minutes?
The Russian walks over to me, sets the chip on my jean-clad thigh, and for a moment, I expect him to hammer a fist down to crush it. That actually might not work, and I tell myself not to flex my muscle to minimize a crushing impact.
Instead, he pulls a lighter out of his pocket, and with a gleam in his eye, flicks it to life. Bending at the waist, he extends his arm and brings the flame right to the chip sitting on my leg. I watch, helpless to stop it as he catches the chip on fire.
It doesn’t blaze hot as it’s smaller than a fingernail, but he holds the flame to it, long enough that it burns the chip and some of the denim, searing my skin. I grit my teeth through the pain and hiss a breath out. The material doesn’t catch fire, though, and the Russian brushes the blackened chip off my leg, now blistered and raw.
I expected torture and pain to get information, but that was just fun for them. No telling what else they might do.
The patio door opens behind me. I feel a warm breeze tickle over my exposed back that’s slicked with the sweat of fear, anger, and pain. I know it’s Borovsky even before he walks into my peripheral sight.
I twist my neck to look at him, meeting his eyes. He’s aged some in prison, hair streaked with gray, his face on the gaunt side.
He looks mean as hell, though… evil, actually. His expression is one of both hatred and glee that I’m tied to a chair before him.
One of the men says something to Borovsky in Russian, causing his gaze to fall to my burned leg and the crisped chip on the floor. His lips curl into a smile, and his gaze comes back to me.
I’ve met the man once before, only taking seconds to make a quick passing introduction. His English intonation was perfect, but now he speaks in the heavy accent of his mother tongue. “You didn’t think you could taunt me and not face consequences, did you?”
I was hoping I’d face exactly these consequences, you idiot douchebag.
“I certainly wasn’t looking to get kidnapped. I was hoping you’d make a stupid mistake and the police would catch you.”
Borovsky moves toward me, stands to my left, and shakes his head with a small smile. “You knew this would happen. Otherwise, your clothing wouldn’t have been bugged.”
Well, hot damn. They’re not as smart as I thought. They think the chip was a listening device and destroyed it before Borovsky could see it. Not that he’d know for sure it was a positioning device instead of audio, but I like that they think the worst I had planned for them was to bug our conversation.
But his next words take the wind right out of my sails. “No matter. We have an extremely capable jammer that would have blocked any signal from a sufficient distance. You’ll get nothing on us.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. If it was able to jam radio frequencies, my Jameson mates probably lost my signal long before we came to a stop.