“What information have you passed to the Chinese?”
“None. None at all.”
One time, after the questions were done, Secret Agent Man said, “I’ve seen Caroline.”
He pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket and showed her a photo of her daughter coming out of her middle school building. He said, “She has a bruise on her left arm. See there. I think she may be getting into fights. Or maybe Khalid did this to her.”
Then he’d asked her another of the everyday questions. “Who is your contact in China? Who were you going to meet when you got there?”
“I didn’t have a contact. I was going to be met at the airport. That’s the truth. That’s the truth. It all happened very fast. Remember, please. I am still CIA. I was only going to work over there for us. Molinari knows this. Please. I’ve told you everything. What do I have to do to get out of here?”
Today, after the usual bull, Secret Agent Man had said, “Your meal is a cheese and mushroom frittata. I had one. It’s very good. Bon appétit. I’ll see you soon, Ms. Muller.”
And then he’d left.
Alison had thought of killing herself. She had run headfirst at the wall, but she really couldn’t get any momentum going and had only given herself a headache. A hidden camera watched her. The one time she’d tried to hang herself on the bars, Sam had appeared and said, “No, Ms. Muller. Don’t do that unless you’d like us to take away your clothes. Keep you here in the nude.”
She wasn’t yet desperate enough to drown herself in the toilet. But she was close.
She was going to be here for life.
She was going to die in this underground stone box.
The sooner the better. There was no way out and nothing left to live for. She couldn’t even fantasize anymore. She just couldn’t fool herself into believing in happiness.
She went to the cot, which was chained to the wall, and lay down. She pulled out strands of hair, one at a time, and she started the countdown to the one thing she had to look forward to.
The next meeting with Sam.
He was all she had.
CHAPTER 101
ALISON THOUGHT SHE’D finally gone insane.
She heard men’s voices out of sight in the corridor beyond her cell. She knew both voices. One was Sam, her tormentor. She knew for sure she was crazy, because the other man—was Joe.
First the muffled voices, then the shadows falling across the stone floor. And then they were both at the bars.
Secret Agent Man said, “You have a visitor, Ms. Muller.”
He put the box with her dinner and her one-piece outfit under the chair and then said to Joe, “Take your time. When you’re ready, you know where to find me.”
Alison rushed to the bars and grabbed them.
“Joseph. Have you come to get me out?”
“I could only arrange a visit,” he said.
He brushed her hand with his, then sat in the chair outside the cell. She sat on the floor right against the bars so that she could be close to him.
“Why are you here, then?”
“I wanted to see if you had charmed management into giving you silk sheets and an ocean view.”
“Oh, yes, it’s just like the Ritz. And no one even asked me to put out.”
She grinned but couldn’t hold the pose. Her smile crumpled. She put her hands into her ragged hair and pulled it away from her eyes. She looked up at Joe. His expression was cool. But still, she could read that he felt sorry for her. That he still cared.