Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Camille Stone sat boundto a wooden chair. Both hands were wrapped to keep her from spelling with them, her feet similarly restrained.

A ball gag filled her mouth, except when Mathis or Ta-Lynn, the witch he was paired with, expected Camille to answer a question.

Camille maintained her silence throughout.

She remained rigidly upright, her icy blue gaze alight with contempt for the interrogation team. For more than six hours, she had ignored all questions, no matter how civilly or brutally put.

The brutality did not come in the form of punches or kicks from the shifter, but from magic. For a few seconds at a time, Ta-Lynn would inflict an excruciating pain on Camille. The older witch's body seized, her veins and eyes bulged. Blood seeped from her pores.

Short breaks were taken to hose her off, and then another witch would appear to heal the damage inflicted. With the interrogation team back in the room and Camille's clothes still wet, Ta-Lynn would run electricity or ice through the material.

Burning, squeezing, freezing—the torture lasted for the span of a few heartbeats. Then came the questions, followed by silence, followed by more torture.

Iris watched the attempts on a live video feed, her back as stiff and straight as Camille's, her head occasionally moving side to side to express her disapproval of the methods used. It wasn't the violence that was getting to her, but the knowledge that the approach was pointless.

Torture didn't work against criminals, especially hardened ones like Camille, a woman who had invested everything in her relationship with another suspect.

Even when the prisoner broke—and everyone eventually broke—the information was most often unreliable. Any and all manners of lies were fabricated to stop the torture for even a few minutes.

The methodology also extracted a toll on the interrogators. Iris had intercepted Ta-Lynn in the restroom, the young witch throwing up in the toilet then standing in front of the mirror and spelling her face to remove the evidence of her tears and revulsion.

As a fresh round of abuse began, Cade sat next to Iris, her irritation ballooning and his wolf trying to persuade her against storming into the interrogation room.

"We don't know how powerful she is," Cade warned. "Every failed spell to help the wolves was likely a charade. And it's no coincidence that my father had the help of Hunters disguised as wolves within a few weeks of her visiting you about the…well, the shifting issue. Her entire life with the clan has been a lie."

Iris's gaze flicked in his direction then back to the screen.

"The truth can't be tortured out of her," she said. "Camille won't crack that way. It's all about her ego and her relationship with Quentin. He was going to take her life and she still won't give him up. It's a combination of cultish behavior and what is likely decades of domestic abuse. She will forfeit her life, her daughter's life, whatever that psycho demands."

On screen, Mathis threw up his hands, looked at the camera, and shook his head.

"Can I go in now?" Iris asked.

Cade's head danced around, his firm lips shaping and discarding replies.

The choice was his. Denver, realizing he could not be objective, had made that clear. He had also banned his sweet, weeping wife from the holding area.

Rechecking the load on his 9mm pistol, Cade gave a curt nod and stood.

"Two things," Iris warned. "First, don't show surprise at anything said in there. Second, you're not going to threaten her with that."

"Baby," he said, pulling the door to the observation room shut once Iris was in the hall. "When I pull a gun, it's a promise to put a bullet in someone's head if they make a wrong move. It's never a threat."

She offered a soft growl of reprimand, her wolf pushing at him with the message that she was in charge of the interrogation.

Grinning, he handed her two small pieces of foam. Staring at them, she frowned then put a piece in each ear. His smile unflagging, Cade mirrored the process with another two ear plugs, and then he opened the door to the interrogation room.

"Take a break."

Mathis and Ta-Lynn filed out, Mathis casting one last menacing glare at Camille while Ta-Lynn's gentle brown gaze implored the older witch to finally relent.

"Now," Cade said, shutting the door once it was just him, Iris, and the prisoner in the room. "It's time to go over some new ground rules before Miss North talks to you."

"Rule number one…"

Grabbing the back of the wooden chair Camille was tied to, he jerked then dragged it until it was about one inch short of touching the room's stone wall. Taking aim with his pistol, he pulled the trigger and took out half of the right back leg.

He caught and balanced the chair, his unforgiving gaze on Camille's face. Fear and loathing narrowed her gaze and her thinned lips, which was more often than not fixed in a sharp, thin slash of contempt.

Moving around to the other side of the chair, he fired again, then balanced Camille against the stone wall. The position forced her to bend her neck if she wanted to look at him or Iris.

"That was rule number two, in case you're keeping count, witch."

The entire time, Iris displayed no reaction to what Cade did. With his show of dominance over, she moved between Cade and the woman.

First, she checked Camille's ears. Seeing blood seeping from one, she healed it with a few words and carefully directed witch light.

Before moving away, she pulled the gag from Camille's mouth.

Cade's instant response was to place the tip of the 9mm against the witch's head and keep it there.

"You don't want to find out about rule number three," he growled.

"Do you remember me?" Iris asked Camille after his words stopped echoing in the room.

"Cade's bitch," she mumbled, then sneered, her lips twisting in a jagged line. "Andra's precious brat. Utterly worthless to everyone else."

"Well, I've managed to pick up a few skills since then," Iris said before lapsing into silence for a few minutes. "Anything you want me to tell your daughter?"

"I'll wait to tell her myself."

Iris dismissed the possibility with a twitch of her hand. "You think Esme's mate is letting her anywhere near you while she's carrying his cub?"

"Lying bitch," Camille snapped.

"I'm lying?" Iris laughed.

Camille's nose bobbed upward as she rolled her eyes.

Iris returned to stand in front of Camille.

Bending down, she pressed her forehead to the witch's and whispered. "It was too soon to smell it during the retrieval mission, but I thought you’d be interested to know that your daughter is pregnant with Denver's child."