Taken

John (Chapter 33)

I was handcuffed to a box spring. I was handcuffed to a box spring. A box spring.

That was my first realization when I came to. Of all the humiliating things a person could be tied up to, this was probably the worst. My second thought was that Chris must never know about this because he would never let me live it down. Then I began thinking; where was Chris? What had happened? The last thing I remembered was falling asleep; how did I end up here?

I looked around the dimly lighted room but didn't see any sign of Chris or my dad. Hopefully they were alright.

My mind kept going back to one thing though; who the hell would tie someone up like this? Like, seriously? This is not "Fifty Shades of Grey" people.

I was wondering if I had been kidnapped by prostitutes when a scary ass man and his thugs walked in.

Working for the C.I.A., I've seen over my fair share of scary things. Anything from a secret weapon that's the size of a modest home to men having their faces reconstructed to look like women so they could carry out a massacre in D.C. (to this day I don't know why that would have helped). I'd seen men with tattoos all over their face and a girl ho had had her tongue cut to look like a snake, but this guy...this guy took the cake.

He wore a suit. He was clean-shaven with a smile that had just a touch of insanity to it. Just the way he walked in I could tell he thought himself to be high and mighty, above everybody else. Of course, it wasn't hard to be above me since I was handcuffed to a bed, but that's beside the point. He was insane and probably powerful; I guess the two go hand in hand. But the most off setting thing about him was that I was sure I had seen him somewhere before.

"John, so good to see you're awake!" He knew my name, so I should know his. Where did I know him from? "I must apologize," he continued. "Tying you up like that was really the only way I trusted you given you passed with honors in every training class that you've taken with the agency." Damn right I did, and when I get out of this, I'm going to put what I learned so well to work on you, was my first thought.

"I have other matters to attend to, so let's not delay," he said as he walked a little closer to me. "We know you can tell us more than your brother can just by comparing your I.Q's," (I was starting to like this guy in a love-hate kind of way). "I've already tried getting through to your father, but even with everything I had I didn't get very far. So shall we begin?"

No, I wanted to say, but somehow I didn't think he would care.

"We'll start simple," he said pulling up a chair about ten feet away from me. The two other men who had come in with him stood about another ten feet behind him. I noticed for the first time that one of them was carrying a brief case. I wasn't sure if I wanted to know what was in that brief case.

"Tell me," the man continued, "do you know your father's password to the C.I.A. files?"

I didn't respond. I found it interesting though that their little spy in the C.I.A wasn't high enough to access the files. I assumed they were talking about the top secret ones, they files I had absolutely no access to. So even if I wanted to respond I couldn't.

"Come now, you don't want to be like that!" the man said after a brief pause. "I would like to keep this one clean." He paused as if he was letting me sink that sentence in. It did.

This one clean...and he said he already "talked" to Dad....

"What did you do to him?" I demanded angrily. I wanted to squeeze my hands around his throat and shake it out of him when he remained silent. The frustration must have shown in my face.

He smiled as if pleased to have gotten a reaction. "I'm going to do the same thing to you that I did to him if you don't start talking."

Yeah, like that "threat" was really going to get me talking.