Seeds of Iniquity (In the Company of Killers, #4)(55)

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“I don’t think he’s going to be able to break her,” Victor says. “She’ll tell him some things, just to ease her pain, but she’s not going to tell him anything crucial to why she came here.”

“Maybe you’re wrong,” I say.

“I could very well be, Izabel,” he says, finally looking over at me. “I hope that I am.”

He looks back at the screen.

It takes me a second longer, but finally I do too.

“And why are you here?” Fredrik asks Nora.

She doesn’t answer and so he starts to cut, opening a fresh wound on her already disfigured back flesh.

My hands are trembling.

“How did you know about Izabel Seyfried?”

She cries out in pain, tears streaming from her eyes.

“I didn’t!” she says, shocking me into submission. “I knew some things about her. I knew enough! I found out what everyone else knows. About her being a sex slave in Mexico. About Javier. And I put a logical scenario together based on her circumstances. I didn’t know her secret. I didn’t know until she told me herself! Just like with Dorian Flynn!”

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. It takes me a long time to raise my focused gaze from the screen to look at Victor and Niklas.

“She didn’t know,” I say absently, more to myself than to them. “How…how did she—.”

“She really is good,” James says.

“And what of Niklas Fleischer?” Fredrik inquires, pressing the blade of his knife to her back but not cutting it. “How did you know about Niklas and Claire?”

“The same way I knew about Izabel and Dorian!” she shouts. “I did my research. I had six years to follow all of you. Six years to plot this very night!”

“Did you tell Fredrik these things?” I ask Victor. It dawns on me that for Fredrik to know about any of this, for him to be able to ask these specific questions, that he must’ve talked to one of us.

“Fredrik has been on his way here since yesterday,” Victor answers. “I didn’t know until tonight. He was in Sweden. When he arrived at the airport here, he called me and I filled him in.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you wanted to be left alone.”

“And because you couldn’t be found,” Niklas chimes in. “I tried calling you, until your phone vibrated on the table next to me.”

I look back at the screen.

“Why are you here, Nora Kessler?” Fredrik asks. “And where is the location of Dina Gregory and Tessa Flynn?”

She doesn’t answer.

He cuts her again, and although the act itself is enough to bring Nora to her knees, what strikes me the most is that she doesn’t move. Nora is unbound. Nothing is keeping her from fighting back, from rounding on Fredrik and taking that knife from him to protect herself. Yet, she does nothing. She willingly stands against that wall with her arms raised above her, and is letting Fredrik torture her. I know she can fight. She would very likely give Fredrik a tough time. She did all of us. She proved she has enough skill to fight back and keep Fredrik from hurting her. But she doesn’t move.

“She’s not going to break,” I say with realization, my gaze fixed on the screen. “Victor…she’s not going to tell him. She’s letting him do this to her…”

Fredrik’s going to kill her.

I burst out of the room, nearly tripping over that stupid rolling chair on my way out, and take off down the stairs.

“IZABEL!” I hear Niklas call out after me.

But I don’t stop. I keep on running until I make it to the third floor, and I run up to the door and punch in the code.

“Izabel! What the f*ck are you doing?” Niklas is coming up behind me. “STOP!” his voice booms through the hall.

I rush into the room.

“Fredrik, don’t you f*cking kill her!” I scream. “I can’t let Dina die! PLEASE!” Tears pour from my eyes.

He doesn’t even look at me.

Nora shrieks as he cuts her.

“CONFESS!” she cries out just as Niklas, Victor and James burst into the room behind me. “I say nothing until I get my confession!”

Fredrik cuts her again.

I look to and from Victor and Fredrik, my eyes filled with desperation and conflict.

Nora’s body begins to slide downward toward the floor, her bloody hands leaving smears against the brick.

Tears stream from my eyes. Dina…

I feel like I’m going to faint.

“Stop,” I hear Victor’s voice.

A sudden uncanny silence fills the room when Fredrik stops. I’m afraid to look up, afraid to see that Fredrik’s blade finally went across Nora’s throat.

But I look anyway.

And she’s alive.

Nora falls the rest of the way against the floor; her blood staining everything.

Fredrik steps aside and Victor moves closer.

“Confess you sonofabitch,” Nora says, looking right at Victor.

I look at him with confusion, but he looks at no one other than Nora.

“You know I’ll do it,” Nora says, gasping for air. “You know I’ll let them die.”