Free Surrender to Temptation (Agent Lovers Series Book 1) by Harper Steen, Lesley Schuldt Page B

the room. They were panting from carrying the heavy tub. With each step they took, water sloshed over the rim and splattered on the concrete floor.
    Liz slowly came to consciousness and was immediately hoisted from the floor and dragged to the container. Someone pushed her head under the water. She floundered ineffectively, trying to break free. Eventually they pulled her up again. Liz snorted water from her nose and mouth.
    “Hey! Don’t you have any warm water here? That stuff’s freezing cold!” She shook like a wet dog. Again her head was plunged under the surface of the water and held there. Her captors repeated the process several times, but not a single word about her employer passed through her lips.
    When they realized that they wouldn’t learn anything from her, the men knocked Liz to the ground and turned to Jennifer, who was just now slowly coming around. But the man who appeared to be the leader held the others back with a hand movement.
    “If it didn’t work on that one, it won’t make the other one talk either.” He bent over the soaking wet Liz lying on the ground and grinned maliciously. “I have other ways of making you talk.” He grabbed her collar, pulled her up and flung her toward the chair she’d been seated on earlier. It was only with difficulty that Liz managed to keep her balance so that she and the chair didn’t fall over backward.
    Her tormenter pulled a knife out of his pocket, unfolded it leisurely and caressed the finely sharpened blade with one finger before he pressed the cold metal against her neck.
    “No one is so fearless that they will accept death. It’s time for you to tell what I want to know, you bitch!”
    “You’re really not going to like what I have to tell you,” Liz mumbled, feigning regret. Her slightly dazed glance betrayed the fact that she was in pain.
    “Out with it!”
    “In my pants pocket there’s a pack of
TicTac
s. Take one. Your breath stinks like you gargled with manure.”
    Furiously, he struck her in the face again. Then he pulled back her sleeve, raised the knife and sliced her upper arm with a ferocious movement.
    The breath hissed from Liz’s mouth. “Son of a bitch!” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Now I can’t wear short sleeves anymore.”
    Again he raised the knife menacingly in front of her face, the blade now smeared with her own blood. “Do you want me to let you slowly bleed to death?”
    “You do that and you won’t get what you want,” she said, unmoved.
    He turned around and kicked her savagely in the back and then left the room. A short time later, he came back holding a small package. As he stood in front of her, he let the white substance trickle into his open palm while he grinned maliciously. Then he bent over, pressed the salt into the cut and rubbed it in roughly. Liz winced and moaned, then closed her eyes and ground her teeth together so as not to cry out in pain.
    “What’s the matter? Is something bothering you?” He grabbed her hair, pulled her head backward and got so close to her face that she again had to draw in his foul breath. Not even the intense pain seemed to dull her sense of smell.
    “Yeah. The way you smell,” she whispered before losing consciousness. Apparently disappointed by his failure, the man let her go, causing her head to drop to her chest. He left the room again and came back with a small brown leather bag. He set it on the table and started pulling out the contents. “Wake her up!” he ordered the two men who were helping him. “And bandage her arm. I don’t want her to die just yet.”
    A bucket of water was thrown in Liz’s face. Coming back to consciousness, she shook her head and, dazed, watched as they put Jennifer in the second chair. Rough hands patched up her arm to stop the bleeding and her huge interrogator approached again holding a syringe filled with a pale white liquid.
    “This stuff works quickly. In a couple of minutes you’ll tell me everything,