The Long Dark by Billy Farmer (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

“They’re the same, aren’t they, William?” Avery asked.

Before I could answer, the conference room door opened. Sam and Titouan dragged a man inside. He looked to be about as bloody and battered as I was. I remembered the bruising on Miley’s hands. I wondered what answers he got that he didn’t bother telling me. I would get my own answers. I hoped I wouldn’t have to resort to violence like Miley had.

I pulled a chair over to where the man was roughly made to sit. Like I had with Kelley, I gave him a healthy wrapping of duct tape. Enough to make him uncomfortable and hold him firmly in place. I spun him around in a direction where I could talk to both he and Kelley at the same time.

As the man became more in tune with his surroundings, he finally chanced a look over at Kelley, who had been sitting next to him the entire time. He seemed to have prepared himself for the worst. He was putting on his best nothing-gets-to-me attitude, but that carefully crafted persona fell apart, even if for just an instant, when his eyes locked on to Kelley’s. She croaked something that resembled his name, and then fell completely silent.

The whole exchange lasted only a few seconds, but it was just enough that I knew the two were more than just colleagues in some evil organization. They shared something much deeper than that. Even though that gave me an advantage in our negotiation or interrogation or whatever the hell it was, I soon found out neither of them were much for telling me the things I needed to know. Not without the proper motivation anyway.

“What’s your name?” I asked the man.

“Bob,” he said, surprisingly affable for someone who had been beaten to a pulp. From the bloody bandage on his thigh, it was pretty clear he had also been shot.

“Well, Bob, we need some answers, and you’re going to give them to us.”

“I don’t know anything, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did,” he said, smiling like he was posing for a picture.

"That could lead to some bad things for you and Kelley here, but I would prefer not to do that.”

“You’ll do what you need to do, of course,” he said, with a grimace, as he moved his injured leg.

Kelley seemed pleased by this. “We aren’t going to talk, you monster.”

Tish, by this point, was standing uncomfortably close to Kelley and Bob and pacing back and forth. Her face was painted in a scowl, and her hands shook as she walked. I looked at Sam. He just shook his head and gave a worried shrug.

“There’s a comfortable couch in Miley’s office if you need to rest,” I told her.

“I’m fine,” she replied. She wasn’t.

I turned most of my attention back to the interrogation. “So, Bob, what are you doing in Barrow?”

"I'm a cab driver. You wouldn't believe the money you can make up here. I've been sending money home to my folks back in Boston. In ten years, I’ll have made more than most people make in two times that,” he said. It was obvious to me he had practiced his spiel numerous times. I wasn’t buying it, at all. I’d seen Avery show more enthusiasm talking about electromagnetism.

“Boston, huh? You don’t have much of a Boston accent, “I said.

Bob cocked his head and grinned. “Been gone for a while.”

Titouan’s face was blood red. Sam didn’t seem overly enthused, and Tish was wearing a groove in the floor. I was losing control of the entire situation. I needed to get them to talk, or I was going to have a revolt.

“You know what, William, fuck him. How long are we going to sit here and wait for them to talk? They aren’t going to,” Titouan said, favoring his jaw.

“You’re playing exactly into how they expect you to react--”

Before I could stop him, Titouan flung a heavy stapler at Bob. It hit him on the left side of the face, causing a large laceration below the left cheekbone and extending to his earlobe. At least the fucker’s smile was gone. It was replaced with a loathing I’d never seen up until that point in my life. If he’d had the chance, he would’ve killed Titouan with his own bare hands.

“Dammit. We’re not doing that, Titouan,” I said. “Get your shit straight or you’re going to have to leave the room.”

I saw Sam shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. “Titouan’s right, son. Look at ‘at sonofabitch. He’d kill us in a second if he thanks he can. Ya know what? Fuck ‘em, William. ‘Ey want ta play like ‘is, we might hafta play ’at way, too.”

Never looking away from the phone, Avery asked, “Why do we need them to talk, at all?”

“What?” I asked.

“We have this.” Avery picked up Kelley’s phone and held it aloft for everyone to see.

Bob shot Kelley a wicked glare. Another tell.

“If I can crack this phone, I should be able to glean a considerable amount of information about who these people are and what they have done.  The hard part will be learning the necessary Korean, but with enough time, I believe it can be done,” Avery said.

“So North damn Korea, then?” Sam asked.

Avery thought for a moment before answering. “That is a decent supposition considering our shared history.”

Silence filled the room. I wanted what Avery said to percolate with Bob and Kelley a little while before continuing with the quasi-interrogation. While I was pretty sure Avery would be able to crack the phone, I couldn’t be certain of that. Bob and Kelley didn’t need to know that, though. I wanted to them to think it was a forgone conclusion that he could.

The dead air was too much for Bob. I could see he was close to breaking, so I kept waiting. After maybe five minutes of silence, his guard was lifted, if only briefly. Not