Need You Now by James Grippando

her, and by seven A.M. she’d unwittingly led him all the way to her apartment in New Jersey. Officially, sunrise was just minutes away, but the overcast sky was black with a hint of purple. Rows of barren elms cast long shadows in the glow of burning streetlights. He had the advantage of darkness, but he needed to be careful as the neighborhood came to life with morning commuters. Pretending to wait at the bus stop across the street, he’d watched the lights inside her apartment switch on and off, a silent trail that broadcast her trip from the front door to the bathroom to the bedroom. He’d imagined her undressing—there was definitely one hot body beneath that unflattering uniform—but he shook off the distraction. That wasn’t what this was about. He’d allowed her forty minutes to fall asleep, then made his move. The window in the alley had been his point of entry.
    “What . . . do you want?” she asked in a voice that quaked.
    She was almost completely conscious now, revived if not refreshed, but at least coherent enough to ask a valid question. It amused him that she would even entertain the possibility of a response. He would ask the questions, and having taken her to the brink of death, he was assured of the truth.
    He buried his knee firmly into her kidney. She was flat on her stomach, facedown on the bathroom rug, hands cuffed behind her waist, unable to move beneath his two-hundred-plus pounds of sculpted muscle. A man of considerably less strength could have obtained the same results. Control was more about technique than brute force. The strangulation stick was a simple but lethal device, a two-foot loop of nylon rope attached at both ends to a ten-inch wooden handle. It allowed him to twist with one hand and choke his victim, leaving the other free to control her.
    Her legs twitched with each futile kick against the white tile floor. Some degree of fight remained inside her, but experience told him that he couldn’t take this one to the edge again and be certain of her return. Three such journeys seemed to be her limit. Each twist of the noose around her neck had made her groan and squirm up until the point of lost consciousness. At precisely the right moment he would release. The loop at the end of the stick would loosen. Her swanlike neck would lose the hourglass effect. Her breathing would resume. Blood would bring oxygen to her dying brain. The purple ring of bruises around her neck would swell, then throb. Slowly, her near-dead body would return to life. As an interrogation tactic, the garrote was riskier than waterboarding, but when done properly it was far more effective.
    Again he gave her a moment to catch her breath, then spoke in the stern voice that had elicited secrets from subjects much tougher than this one.
    “Tell me what he said to you!”
    “What who said?”
    “The man you helped in the park.”
    “He didn’t tell me anything.”
    “I saw you talking before he blacked out. What did he say?”
    “I—I don’t remember.”
    “Tell me!”
    “Honestly, I don’t re—”
    A twist of the stick tightened the rope. She gasped, and he released. He leaned closer, breathing his words into her ear. “Tell me what he said. Or you die right now.”
    Her body shook, but her feeble resistance concerned him. She should have been pleading for her life. He feared he was losing her. He grabbed her by the hair and raised her head off the floor. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Time was running out. He grabbed her by the shoulders and sat her up against the bathtub. The faucet was close enough for him to soak a bath towel, and he splashed her face. It was like trying to keep a druggie from slipping into a coma, but he was making some headway.
    “Tell me what he said. Right now .”
    “He, uh . . .”
    He splashed her again with cold water. “He what ?”
    “He made no sense,” she said.
    “Just tell me what he said, damn it!”
    She breathed in and out, but it was beyond a