Chapter 3

An infection sets in, or likely had already set in before he was found and taken to the hospital. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to do anything.

"Tim?"

It's Rachel. He opens his eyes when she says his name. His throat is too raw to answer her so he just nods or shakes his head, bare movement for either. He's hoping not to set off another explosion of coughing, pain like kicks to the ribs between the gulps of searing air that burn through his lungs and loosen the blood and mucus and then detonate more explosions. The air is let in with distrust, carefully, slowly; let out begrudgingly, knowing that it will disturb the leftovers from a good beating if it leaves too abruptly, or awaken the angry throat on the way.

But the tube is out and that's a small mercy. There's liquid allowed now. Tepid water – it tastes and feels better than any beer or bourbon he's ever tried under any circumstance. And that's saying something considering his work history.

Rachel has asked him a question, but he's not quite in the room with her, only a portion of him listening. What? She recognizes the expression, confusion, and repeats her question but with more detail.

"A woman came by asking about you, came by the office, about five-five, blonde. She said she was a friend? Tara?"

Tara? Who the fuck…? He must still be looking confused because Rachel starts again.

"A woman…a young woman came by the courthouse looking for you. She said she knew you and wanted to know where you were. Her name is Tara. Raylan talked to her and said she knew enough about you that she was likely legit, harmless anyway. He figured you were dating maybe?"

Tara. Right, Tara.

The thought of Tara makes him tired, more than he already is. He has no desire to see her again, none. Take away all the distractions and it's clear he has no feelings for her, and it's not a surprise either. Maybe he's discovered a way to cut to the chase, get through the dating bullshit and right to the part where you know it's not good. It's a bit extreme though, not for everyone, his method of testing a relationship, but here it is: get tortured, beaten and left to die, then see how you feel about the woman you've been screwing and whose company you've been pretending to enjoy, pretending even to yourself. Does he want to see Tara right now? Fuck. No. Anytime soon? No. Fuck.

"Is she your girlfriend?"

He nods without thinking, still amazed at the piercing truth of his disdain for the woman he has given his time and effort to the last couple of months.

"Do you want us to tell her where you are so she can visit?"

He shakes his head emphatically, no, too vigorously, and it rattles the fluids in his chest and he tries to hold it back but the cough comes out in a spasm, wracking, agony enough for an entire year and already his third time since they took the tube out and changed the meds that morning.

Rachel exudes sympathy, rubs her hand in a rhythm on his back as he rolls and curls, more to soothe herself because it's doing nothing for him.

"Okay," she says. "It's okay."

It's not fucking okay. It fucking sucks. But he hasn't got the energy to get angry about it, not after the coughing.

Duct tape really is a useful tool, he thinks, struggling against the roll of it that has him bound without feeling to the chair he's in. It's better than a zip tie. He's properly balled up, going nowhere for what must be two hours now. He has time to think while he tries to pick at the edges of the tape. He thinks about his situation.

Getting captured is high on his list of things that freak him out, and for good reason. Being a prisoner of war in a country like Afghanistan is a frightening prospect. Most of the Taliban probably have no idea where Geneva is, and certainly don't give a shit about any conventions of war even if they have been to Switzerland. And any coalition soldier who denies that it scares him shitless to consider that situation - prisoner of war – is either lying to himself or brain dead. It doesn't take much imagination to scare yourself stupid thinking about it, thinking about the what-ifs. In fact, you don't need any imagination. The stories told and retold, circulating through the base, they still haunt him – true or not true, exaggerated or downplayed, it doesn't matter.

All those thoughts, they ran circles in your head, even if you weren't aware of them, and consequently it was hard to settle down after a deployment, not to jump at every unexpected noise, not to be instantly and violently alert waking up. It was a good thing they kept you busy – block leave and then more training and then more training. Even now, four years later, off duty, he's still obsessively aware of his surroundings, the doors and windows, the recesses and the shadows, movement in the periphery. It would embarrass him because he'd think it must get boring for the people with him, but he promises himself as he works against the duct tape that he won't give a fuck what anyone thinks about it, not after this. That some assholes got the jump on him… He promises himself that he won't ever let it embarrass him again. This will only happen once. Shit, maybe this is his only time anyway. He decides not to think about that. It's not statistically likely they'll kill him, if there even is a statistic about kidnapped law enforcement personnel.

His right leg is going numb. The chair is hard.

He struggles again, uselessly and frustrated, and then goes still. Someone will find him soon. He tells himself this every quarter hour or so: someone will find him soon. There's a trail to follow, what he did today that got him taped in this chair, and he follows it back, trying to find the exact place where someone will likely pick it up, and how it will lead them here. Of course they have to know he's missing first, they have to be actually looking for him. When might they start wondering? Probably not until midday tomorrow unless he's really lucky and someone needs to get a hold of him early for something. Maybe Sandoval is trying to reach him. The thought almost makes him laugh. Not likely. So he has to wait another twenty-four hours. Then someone will come. He can do that. He can wait. He might have to piss in his pants though, if it takes that long.

But the only people who come through the door into the room while he's waiting for the twenty-four hours to pass, and then beyond that, are people that he doesn't want to see. They're not familiar; they're not very nice. They have a question, just one: Where is he? And Tim remains stubbornly silent. Must be pride, he thinks, as the first consequence of his silence slams hard into the side of his head. He can't imagine why else he would take a hit to keep these assholes from finding that other asshole. They should all be together anyway, all the assholes, some kind of segregation, an apartheid based solely on shitty attitude. Race, creed, skin color, sex, sexual orientation, none of that would matter one bit. You'd either be an asshole or not, and if you were, you'd have to go with the other assholes. He wonders if anyone would protest that kind of profiling and discrimination. He takes the thought further while his vision clears. There would have to be lines drawn, definitions. What's an asshole? The idea loses merit when he realizes that he would likely be lumped in with the assholes by some sub-clause of the legal ruling on assholes. After all, he's been called an asshole often enough.

"Look, don't be an asshole. Just fucking tell us – where is he?"

There you go.

They pinch his nose and cover his mouth until his lungs develop vocal cords and scream in protest, but only in his head and only for his ears, and he almost blacks out. He can't bring himself to lick the hand that's blocking the air, but the thought crosses his mind.

The second time he blacks out.

"Did you have to laugh in her face?" says Tara, spite and spit flying. "Why are you being such an asshole about this?"

"An asshole? It's fucking grass. Get her a bag of grass seed. This is Kentucky. It'll grow back."

He can't understand what the drama is all about. Some asshole missed the stop sign and drove up on her sister's lawn in the middle of the night. The guy was drunk. He had his license suspended. He's facing charges. The scene's a comedy, not a tragedy. And they want him to intervene, see the arresting officer? No way.

"She's proud of that lawn. She puts a lot of work into it."

"I think she's made that point well and fucking truly. You'd think he'd run over one of her kids." He thinks maybe she should work harder at disciplining her kids, refrains from saying it. He's in enough shit with Tara.

"Christ, you're such an asshole."

"And I think you've made that point well and fucking truly. Can we change the subject now? I'm not getting involved. It's stupid."

Tara calls him an asshole again and storms out, screaming on the way. "You don't get to decide what's important to someone else. What the fuck do you know anyway? You've got nothing but work and your stupid guns."

I know what's important, he thinks, and a fucking perfect lawn to impress the neighbors is not. But try telling her sister that. This is the woman who is married to the man who hoses his driveway down every weekend. Every Saturday morning he's out on his long driveway with the hose and the spray nozzle and he wets down the entire thing, top to bottom. Water is not a renewable resource, he thinks. Water is precious in most places in the world. Water is important.

And now he's thirsty, thinking about Tara's sister's husband spraying fresh potable water down the driveway into the sewer system. His throat hurts and he's well beyond thirsty and into the dangerously dehydrated zone and it makes him angry thinking about that perfect lawn.

Angry, under the circumstances, is good – it keeps him focused. And bad – it makes him stupidly stubborn.

"Where is he?"

"Fuck you."

They break his finger, move on to the next.

"Where is he?"

SERE school isn't mandatory in the Rangers. With all the training he had to do that was mandatory – regimental, battalion, platoon, squad, and special weapons training – and then regular combat rotations, he never had the opportunity. He wonders now if he regrets not finding the time. Maybe it would've helped him prepare for this. He doubts it. What could they have taught him about escaping duct tape? What can anyone teach you about dealing with pain? What could they have said about the code of conduct for a US Marshal when protecting a witness who is as much a scumbag as the scumbags who want to find him and kill him? Guaranteed they don't teach that in SERE school. At least in the army you'd be motivated to keep your mouth shut under torture just to try to protect your buddies. That was everything. Everything. But protect Sandoval? That fucking grates. It's hard enough dealing with the pain without having to work to convince yourself to hold out. Fucking Sandoval. Fucking piece of shit.

He thinks that the only important thing is being able to live with yourself, being able to face yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and be okay with whatever action you decide to take, or not take. What else matters? But he's tired, and his ribs and hands are taking turns thrashing at his sanity and he starts to doubt himself. Is it worth your life to hold onto pride and save the scumbag? What good is all that moral superiority if you're not around long enough to enjoy it? On the other hand, if you give up the scumbag, get yourself the fuck out of this situation, and even if you're okay with it, what happens if the rest of the world isn't? Can you live like that, knowing that everyone around you thinks you're a coward? Is it bravery if that's your only motivation, avoiding looking like a pussy? And is there a difference? It's complicated. He had plenty of time to experience it and observe it in the Rangers. You got through whatever you had to get through because you weren't going to be the guy who pussied out. He doesn't think the motivation matters so much as the end result.

"Where is he?"

He was going to answer this time, just to stop it all, but he gets carried away with his mirage of reasoning and forgets to. He's thinking. He's thinking hard, and the metal pipe comes hard before he can remember that he's decided to call it quits. Something gives, whether bone or pride or reason, he's not sure. Something breaks, and everything collapses.

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