Adrenaline Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t!”
    “Where is your wife? Start with any of those questions and we don’t have to dance this dance.”
    “I don’t know. Please.” I hated myself for that
please
.
    “Why was the Holborn office a threat to your employers?”
    “I have no employers! Jesus, please believe me. Please!”
    My voice told him he was so close to breaking me. So close.
    He draped the cloth over my face. “You’re not going to make it out of here to see your kid, Capra.”
    “No!” I yelled. “No!”
    He gushed the water over my face. I felt the water closing in on my lungs. I writhed against the straps, trying to move away from the awful, steady flow. The gush surged into what felt like a river.
    I was drowning.
    I started to babble. Nonsense. Random words. Lucy. The Bundle. God, no. The scarred man. Innocent. Innocent. I knocked myself nearly unconscious, slamming my head against the waterboard. He hadn’t secured me correctly. He slowly dragged the wet fabric off my face. I begged for air. Then he put the soaked shroud back over my nose and mouth.
    And then he started again. I resumed screaming and babbling.
    I was glad, when they kicked me to the cold embrace of the cell floor, that I could not hear or remember what I said. Some things are best lost to memory.

7

    D ECEMBER CAME . One of the guards mentioned to me that it was Christmas Day. He did not use the word
merry
. Then January marched by me. The baby’s due date, January 10, came and passed. Maybe my son was born now, drawing his sharp breaths, needing me. And I was stuck in a rocky hellhole.
    That day, Howell came into my cell. “Your child was due today.”
    I looked up from the black bread and the potato soup I was having for lunch.
    “Cooperate and maybe we can find her. We have every hospital in Europe on alert for her. You could see your son, Sam. Don’t you want to see your boy?”
    My face set into steel, no matter how torn my heart felt. “Yes. But I’ve told you everything. Let me go, Howell. Let me go. Let me help you find her.”
    “What would you have named him?”
    I didn’t want to talk to Howell about my lost son. I didn’t want to talk to Howell period. “Screw you,” I said. “What the hell would you care what we wanted to name our kid?”
    “You’re really angry today, Sam.”
    “I’m sick of you. Of all of you. Of your utter stupidity.”
    Howell studied me, and then he stood. “Here’s the thing. I’ve fought for you. I believed you when you said you knew nothing. I think you are an innocent man. For what that’s worth.” He dropped a piece of paper on the stone floor. A photo of one of the ultrasounds, The Bundle in all his glory. Howell walked out.
    I studied the picture. My child.
    Am I a father? Has he been born? I have to get out of here. My kid needs me
.
    But I stayed sitting on the cold stone floor, thinking.

8

    A WINTER SPENT WITH CHEEK against stone. I kept insisting on my innocence into February. Every day, every aspect of my life was questioned, dissected, dissolved. Every day, I was doubted.
    Do you know what that is like? To not be believed? To not be believed by the people who are your peers, your friends, your sole support, when your family has gone missing? To have your colleagues sure that you are capable of treason and murder?
    You cannot build a crueler jail.
    March came. Howell was gone; there was no more waterboarding. Four different interrogators asked the same questions and listened to my litany of innocence. One morning two thick-necked ex-Marines came in and held me down and slid a needle into my skin and part of me hoped: this is it, the forever dark, the end. Now they’re done with me.
    I woke up back in America.
    The television mounted in the corner played Comedy Central. I jerked around to look at the walls. No window. Just white walls, the hospital bed, a chair, the television with a standup comic roaming the stage, screaming intoa microphone, making fun of newlywed guys for being lame and