eleven
Her tears made the cut sting. Liz struggled to quell them, to stop her body from shaking, and ease the breathless, knotted feeling in her stomach. If she couldn't calm herself down, she couldn't think. Just the sight of him terrified her. She forced her gaze sideways, making herself focus on the bland wallpaper.
He said he wouldn't kill her but, of course, that was exactly what he would say. And perhaps he could find the bank and get the money but, if that were true, why was he bothering with her at all?
No. No. No.
Think.
He was getting paid for this; he was doing it for money. And right now she had lots - too much. Oh fuck, she wished she'd never set eyes on it, or on Jack. It hurt as she swallowed past his hand and her seized-up throat. Letting her eyes drift back to his, she considered for a moment.
"Jack. What is Harland Jeffries to you?" she croaked, trying to make herself heard above the howling wind outside the window.
He didn't answer. A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched a warning: the infinitesimally small sign of his appalling temper. But what did she have to lose? Her finger? Her hand? Her life?
Torture changes people, he had said. Liz had no idea how much pain she could take, but now that she'd taken some, she realized that she could probably take more than she thought - if it bought her a chance to survive. Torture also changed the torturer, and Liz was almost certain, without being able to explain why, that part of Jack didn't want to go down that path. He wasn't as detached as he wanted her to believe.
"I want to know. Don't I get to know, before you slit my throat?" she said in the rasping whisper his grip would allow. "How much... what is he paying you?"
"Don't." He spat the single word like a door slamming shut, and raised the knife tip back to the corner of her eye.
Liz felt it press in, not exactly where he'd cut her before, but close. The silver blade looked enormous in her vision. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe. You can take it, she told herself. You can. And you will.
A clap of thunder broke above them, shaking the entire building, it seemed. She flinched, and then screamed silently at herself. It would just be too fucking ironic to lose an eye to a storm. Say it, just say it, she coaxed herself.
"Why not? Is his money better than mine? Do you know what kind of a corrupt asshole you're working for? He makes me look like Snow White, Jack. See the markets crashing, Jack? Know what it is? You think..." The words tumbled out in a panicked rush. She stuttered, feeling the blade press in. Then she was shouting. "...He'll lose nothing! Nothing! He's one of the crooked bastards responsible for all of this. You... oh, you have no idea who hired you!"
The skin gave to the knife's keen edge. There was a quick, sharp pain and the odd chill of the metal. Perhaps he hadn't even meant to cut her, but she'd moved when she shouted.
"Shut up!" It was the first time he'd raised his voice in anger. "This is not what I want to hear, Elizabeth. You know what I want."
A second hot trickle of blood crept down the side of her cheek. Now the whole side of her face ached. It's only pain, she told herself. Only pain and, as he'd said, living was hard. She opened her eyes, raised a tentative, trembling hand, and laid it gently on his forearm, where she'd scratched him. The bloody welts stood out starkly as another flash of lighting suddenly brightened the room.
"Half." She breathed hard to push the fear back, trying to anticipate the thousand ways he might react. "I'll give you half. Hell, have it all! Just...just don't give it back to him."
It was impossible to read the expression on his face. The smile he showed her was weak and bitter, as if she had confirmed something in his mind. Then, with one swift motion, he thrust her back onto the bed so hard, if felt as if she'd hit a wall, pushing all the air from her lungs. Her neck snapped back painfully.
"What a disappointingly predictable little bitch you are," he said in a disgusted voice as the next rumble of thunder died. Walking away from the bed, she watched him carefully close his knife and pocket it. He didn't look at her as he shook his head slowly. "You're just like all the rest of them, Elizabeth. So fucking predictable."
She watched him, working to ease air back into her lungs, trying to read him, despite the words, from the set of his shoulders. He stood in front of the dresser again, but didn't bother to glance at her reflection in the mirror. Instead, he pulled out a drawer and rummaged for something. From where she lay, it wasn't possible to see what he retrieved - probably something to cut her fingers off with. In truth, she didn't want to know.
"Then I guess that makes two of us," she offered, unable to keep the quaver out of her voice. Her bright idea had turned to shit. He wasn't going to listen to a word she said. "So...so we're both kind of trapped, aren't we? I want to live and you want to keep on working for Harland."
Even above the howl of the storm, she heard something snick, something metallic. Nausea clutched at her gut, her hands balled into fists, and she started to hyperventilate. This is it, she told herself. Part of her wanted to look away, but part of her couldn't. As he turned, she made herself look down at the ugly, patterned bedspread, at the wet stain left by their body fluids. She suspected there'd be a much larger red stain on it soon.
"The difference between you and I, Elizabeth," he said with studied care. She heard his muffled footfall as he walked towards the bed, "is that I have the gun."
She had been prepared for a lot of pain, but not for this. He couldn't... the sound of the shot... but then another clap of thunder broke overhead, and she realized that he could. No one would hear anything but the storm.
Her brain stopped functioning. Liz scrambled to the head of the bed, curling into as small a target as she could, hiding her face against the headboard. And just like before, she felt him kneel on the bottom, grab her nearest ankle and tug her halfway across the bed. Closing her eyes, she covered her head with her arms.
"You can have it all," she sobbed, misery wrenching at the words. "You take it, Jack. Take it and keep it! It's all..."
It was a strange, stilling sensation: the cold blunt muzzle of the gun against the underside of her chin. This was it. This was how it was going to end. Something in the knowledge of that made her uncover her face. If he was going to blow her head off, she was going to make him look at her while he did it.
Trying to blink away the tears that were spilling in torrents, she fought to focus on his face.
"Where's the money?" he said in a dead voice.
She took a shuddering breath and shook her head, suddenly mute.
"I'm going to splatter your brains all over the room if you don't tell me now."
"I know," she whimpered, and then, with a small giggle of hysteria said, "I could have loved you, you know? If you had been the man I first met." Liz swallowed, feeling the metal bruising her flesh. "I'm...I'm sorry it didn't turn out that way."