A Reluctant Companion (30 page)

Susan smiled. “Speaking of Archers, did you know Joan delivered the commander?”

She eyed the other woman with interest. “It’s hard to picture his mother having a midwife. I’d see her as more of the hospital type, from what I know of her.”

Joan nodded. “I was a doctor then, my dear, working at the Archer hospital. It took me a few more years after the birth to become disillusioned with the type of medicine those doctors practice, reserved only for the privileged, and leave as Susan had already done. Once I did, I specialized in midwifery.”

Madison smiled. “I do appreciate you coming, Joan, and I’m pleased to benefit from your experience.”

“It’s my pleasure, dear. I’d love to see another Archer enter the world.” Her lined face wrinkled with a kindly smile. “I won’t come every trip, but I’ll be back to see you often enough that you’ll be tired of me before the little one arrives.”

Madison shook her head. “Any company is welcome.” After spending three weeks in virtual isolation, she was speaking from the heart. It had been a lonely, miserable time that she didn’t want to dwell on or relive. Other than Tiernan, she was happy to see anyone who wanted to visit her. She was still working on convincing herself she would be happy never to see his face again.

*****

Briggs looked worse for wear. He’d lost a few pounds, though the blackened eye had healed. Apparently, no one had laid a hand on him since that first night. Tiernan knew the tribunal had deemed interrogation unnecessary, based on the weight of the evidence, and had found him guilty within minutes.

Tiernan set down the case the interrogator had provided as he walked around Briggs, confined to the chair by his wrists and ankles. “You look okay for a dead man, Briggs.”

Briggs gave him a cocky grin. “I ain’t dead yet, Archer. A lot can happen in a week.”

Tiernan inclined his head. “A lot can happen in a few minutes, Briggs.” He turned back to open the metal case, wincing at some of the implements he found inside. “For example, you could spend the next few minutes in pleasant conversation, giving me a truthful account, or…” He held up a pair of snips stained with bits of blood. “We can do it the hard way.”

Briggs looked at the tool and sneered. “You don’t have the balls, Archer. Besides, what difference does it make now? I’ve been sentenced. Any confession you get would only be superfluous. It won’t change my punishment.” Cocking his head, he asked slyly, “Or will it?”

Tiernan took a couple of steps toward him, struggling to control his breathing and dampen any second thoughts about torturing Briggs, if necessary. “How do you mean?”

“Are you going to give me a lighter sentence if I sing like a canary?”

He shook his head. “I can’t go against the tribunal.”

Briggs lifted a shoulder. “Then what’s in it for me to have a heart-to-heart, Archer?”

He loomed over the other man, not missing the faint widening of his eyes or the way his nostrils flared. Despite Briggs’s bravado, he was clearly scared. So was Tiernan, but he wouldn’t let that show. “For one, you get to keep all your fingers.”

Briggs eyed the snips. “Uh huh.”

Tiernan twirled them. “You know, I can’t commute your sentence, or change it, but I can push out the execution date to the next punishment day.”

He rolled his eyes. “Like you’d be doing me a favor, keeping me alive in this hellhole for another month.”

Tiernan leaned closer, letting all his anger show in his eyes. “You misunderstand me, Briggs. I’m not offering you the privilege of living another month. I’m threatening you with it. I guarantee you, it will be a very long month.” He brought the snips against Briggs’s face, scoring a light mark on his cheek. “We’ll have plenty of time to chat.”

Briggs hesitated, but finally shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. I just don’t think you have it in you.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” asked Tiernan, as he brought the snips to Briggs’s thumb, clamping around the squirming digit. “Now, tell me what Madison was doing at your rebel camp.”

“Fucking me.” Briggs screamed as the snips cut through his flesh.

Tiernan lightened the pressure a bit, but kept the tool digging into his skin. “I think you’re lying.”

“Fine, I didn’t fuck her.” Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“How did she pass along all the information she was supposedly sharing?”

Briggs darted his eyes without speaking, but cried out again when Tiernan tightened the snips around his finger, surely scraping against the bone. “She met with a contact every week.”

“Where?”

Briggs gasped as the tool dug deeper.

“The truth. Now,” said Tiernan in a commanding tone.

“She wasn’t working with us. I was going to kill her to send you a message.” He gave a pitiful little mewl when Tiernan loosened the snips. “I just wanted you to suffer, Archer.”

Tiernan took a step back. “Why? I’ve tried my best to provide for everyone in the Federation.”

Briggs snorted. “Yeah, then why’s the rations lighter than ever?”

He frowned. “You’re the one stealing from them to feed your rebels.”

Briggs shook his head, but didn’t argue.

Another question occurred to Tiernan. “How long have you known Madison?”

Briggs frowned. “That day was the first time I met her.”

“Hmm.” He made a production of studying the fresh blood on the snips. “Then who was it she greeted so warmly? Who tricked her into going with you?”

Briggs clamped his mouth shut. “I ain’t betraying no one.”

“Really?” Moving quickly, he grabbed Briggs’s hand again, not allowing himself to have second thoughts. It took a lot of pressure, more than he would have expected, before the bone yielded to the snips with a sickening crunch that had Briggs screaming and Tiernan choking on acidic bile he hastily swallowed. The squelching sound of yielding flesh would haunt him forever, and the blood that had sprayed on his hand from Briggs seemed to be burning his skin, though that was strictly his imagination.

As the amputated digit dropped to the floor, he moved the snips to the next finger, silently praying he wouldn’t have to cut off another one. It was a gruesome task for which he had no affinity. “Do you want to reconsider that decision?”

Briggs twisted in the chair, clearly in agony, but he shook his head. “Fuck you, Archer. I ain’t got nothing left to lose.”

“Wrong.” With dogged determination, fueled by necessity rather than desire, Tiernan cut off his index finger. He knew what to expect this time, how the flesh would initially yield like butter, before hitting stubborn bone that required a greater degree of exertion. Even with a bit of experience now, he still found it just as disgusting as the first time when he cut off the finger. “You have eight more to lose. Shall I keep going?” He kept his expression mildly curious, though he wasn’t sure about his own ability to continue if Briggs held out. Could he really do that again? Summoning a mental image of Madison renewed his resolve. Yes, he could do it for her.

Briggs was shaking, but still defiant. “I wo...won’t need them in a few days.” He even managed a wobbly laugh.

Stepping back, he nodded. “That’s true, which leaves me no choice. We both know I can’t kill you, or it would usurp the authority of the tribunal my mother worked so hard to establish. You obviously see yourself as some kind of hero for enduring the torture, so it appears we’re at an impasse.”

With a nod, Briggs flexed his remaining fingers on the injured hand. “There’s nothing you could do to me that’ll get me talking.”

Tiernan nodded. “For the first time, I think you’re telling me the truth. So, what do I do? Something distasteful that you wouldn't hesitate to carry out if our situations were reversed.” He hesitated for a second, allowing the other man to sweat as he considered what Tiernan had planned. “How’s your mother, Briggs?”

Briggs swore and strained against his restraints. “You bastard.”

“Did anyone tell you her fate? The tribunal determined she was guilty of assisting with the rebel cause, but had a little mercy on her. They do hate to order the execution of a woman in her sixties.”

“If you touch her—”

“You’ll do what?” He forced himself to sound bored. “Right now, your mother is simply being incarcerated at a rehabilitation facility in Redwood-Saporo. That’s temporary, and she’ll either be shunted off to a labor camp or exiled in the near future.” With disdain, he kicked one of Briggs’s fingers out of his way. “How do you think she’ll manage at her age doing hard labor, especially with some missing fingers?”

Hatred shone in the other man’s expression, and it bordered on madness. “I wish I’d gutted your bitch the moment Cam took her, instead of letting her idiot brother think we were trying to convince her to join us. If I could get my hands on her, I’d flay her alive, peeling the skin off in quarter-inch sections with a dull knife—”

Tiernan couldn’t stop his fist from connecting with the other man’s face, even as his mind reeled at Cam’s name. He didn’t really try that hard to control the impulse though, as he was too busy fitting the pieces together and understanding why she hadn’t tried to explain or defend herself properly. “Enough. Every threat you make against my companion can be delivered as a promise seven-fold to your mother. Is that what you want?”

With a sullen glower, Briggs shook his head.

“So, you have a choice, Briggs. Start talking, or when your mother gets here—and she’s
en route
—I’ll start lopping off her fingers. If you aren’t talking by then, and she doesn’t know anything, I think I’ll borrow a page from your playbook and skin her alive.”

“You’re a sadistic bastard, Archer.”

“So are you, Briggs. Now tell me what I want to know.”

After a brief hesitation, everything he knew about the rebellion spilled from his shaking lips, while also confirming Cam was the man Madison had foolishly protected at the expense of her own freedom. Tiernan listened in angry silence as Briggs shared his plans, including his decision to kill Madison and leave her body somewhere easily found. It took everything he had not to turn the snips into a makeshift knife and stab it through Briggs’s jugular.

When he was convinced Briggs had told him everything, he walked away, dropping the tool in the case and packing up.

“Wait,” said Briggs.

“What?”

“My mother…what’ll you do to her now?”

He looked up from the toolbox. “Oh, she’s still in Redwood-Saporo, where she’ll stay until the center decides if she can be rehabilitated. Since she’s your mother, I doubt that. It’s unlikely they’ll send her to a labor camp at her age, so she’ll probably be banished from the Federation and dropped in California Prime or California Minor.”

Briggs paled. “Those places are lawless. How could she survive there?”

Tiernan had a twinge of conscience, but pushed it aside. “That’s not my problem, Briggs. You brought her into this mess. You’re lucky she won’t be executed along with the rest of your sorry bunch of cohorts.”

“How can you be so cold? She’s an old woman.”

His mouth turned down, and Tiernan had to hold himself in-check. “How could you be so cruel as to kidnap a pregnant woman and plan to kill her? You started this, Briggs.”

Briggs spat on the floor. “You’re the big man finishing it, aren’t you, Archer?”

He cocked a brow. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my family, Briggs.” With a glance at the two fingers on the floor, he said again, “Nothing.”

After leaving the room, Tiernan sent in a doctor to bandage the prisoner. The irony of patching up the man before his execution wasn’t lost on him, but it was protocol. After returning the case to the interrogator, he went into the nearest bathroom and threw up repeatedly. Adrenaline had faded, and he crouched on the floor as he waited for the bile to settle again. He couldn’t take back what he’d done, and he wouldn’t, because it had led to important information and clearing Madison of all charges. Still, he hoped never to be in such a position again and could embody Catherine’s ideals in future, instead of resorting to Joseph’s methods.

Chapter Nineteen

Madison was unsurprised to see Tiernan at dinnertime, though she’d half-hoped he would stay away. What little appetite she had seemed to disappear when he sat down beside her. Blood on the cuff of his white shirt caught her attention, and she almost reached out to touch him as she asked, “Are you hurt?” Only knowing how ruthlessly he would rebuff her held the impulse in check.