Free Truth or Die by James Patterson, Howard Roughan Page B

staring at the opposite side of the booth and what was now just an empty white square being projected. It was all sinking in. Finally, I turned to Owen. “The syringe. Whatever was in it killed him, right?”
    “Technically, no,” he said.
    “Technically?”
    He folded his arms on the table. “What you just saw was actually a suicide.”

CHAPTER 29
    BEFORE I could ask what the hell that meant, Owen reached for his phone and began tapping the screen again. He was bringing up another video. It was a double feature.
    “If this is the same thing with a different prisoner, I don’t need to see it,” I said.
    “Just watch,” said Owen.
    He hit Play and positioned the phone again, the image beaming across the booth as it had before. Same room, same chair, different Middle Eastern man chained to it. His beard was slightly longer, and he didn’t wear glasses.
    The only other difference was that he filled out his jumpsuit more. He looked bloated, puffy where there might otherwise be edges.
    Maybe for that reason alone, his blank stare didn’t seem as determined.
    The same three men entered the frame, the one in the white smock administering the shot. As they retreated behind the camera, I was already bracing for what was to come.
    It came. The man was asked his name in English, followed by Arabic, and he refused to answer, once and then twice. As with al-Hazim, the “symptoms” started.
    “Are you a member of Al Qaeda?” came the next question, and again he refused to answer. But that was when things took a turn.
    As his heavy body shook and convulsed, the man’s face looked as if he were in a tug-of-war. He was trying to fight the pain, not give in to it, but as his teeth gnashed and the tendons in his neck stretched so tight I thought they would snap, he opened his mouth not to scream … but to talk.
    “Yes,” read the translation beneath him.
    The voice of the interrogator resumed. So calmly, so eerily. “So you admit that you are a member of Al Qaeda?”
    “Yes,” the man repeated.
    And no sooner had he done so than the shaking, the convulsing, the outright agony he was experiencing began to dissipate. Quickly, the interrogator followed up.
    “Are you aware of any plans by Al Qaeda to kill American citizens?”
    Seconds passed as the man remained silent—and motionless—in the chair. He was clearly deciding what to do, how to answer. His forehead was dripping sweat. He didn’t have much time, and he knew it.
    “No,” he answered. “I don’t know anything.”
    He tried to sell it, his eyes pleading desperately with everyone behind the camera to believe him. The room was silent for another few seconds … and then came the sound. The handcuffs, the ankle cuffs—they began to rattle against the chair. His faced seized up, his dark eyes practically popping out of his head. Everything was starting all over, only faster and more severe.
    “Yes!” he screamed. In English, no less. “
Yes! Yes!
I know of plans …”
    And for a second time, everything stopped. No more convulsing, no more pain. No more video, either. It ended abruptly.
    Owen turned to me. “Go figure, huh? Of all things, it’s the plans they didn’t want recorded.”
    “How the hell did you get these?” I asked.
    “It’s a long story.”
    “I’ve got nothing but time.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I used to think.”
    I got what he was saying. His life was never going to be the same. Maybe that was why he was eyeing my glass as I threw back the last of my whiskey.
    “You want one?” I asked.
    “No thanks,” he said.
    But it was the way he said it, like it wasn’t even a possibility. “How old are you, by the way?”
    “Nineteen.”
    “Are you in school?”
    “No,” he said. “I work.”
    “What do you do?”
    “I design artificial neurological implants.”
    I stared at him blankly.
    “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But Subway wasn’t hiring.”
    The kid definitely had a snarky streak. In a good way, though. Claire