I could see through the living room into the eat-in kitchen. The back door was open to the sunlight. The door to the bathroom stood ajar and I crabbed sideways and wheeled around to cover the interior space. Toilet, sink, and tub. All bloody, all empty.

Every cabinet and storage trunk had been torn open. All of the weapons and equipment were gone. Even the trapdoor beside the fridge had been ripped from its hinges. The boxes of grenades, shape charges, detonators, and other explosives were gone.

At the back door I peered into the alley. There were two bloody footprints and then tire tracks in the dirt.

This was all past tense. I lowered my gun and pulled the door shut, engaged the locks and propped a chair under the handle. Then I grabbed a bunch of dish towels and raced back to the entrance foyer.

Cyrus was still alive, but only just. I gingerly peeled back the shreds of his clothes to see how bad he was hurt, and I was sorry I did it. Everything had been done to him. Cuts and punctures. The bruised and ravaged marks of tools, probably pliers. Big burned patches. Maybe a portable propane burner. That and more.

I was amazed he was still alive.

I sponged blood from his nose and mouth and rolled some of the towels to place under his head. God only knows how Cyrus had managed to stay on his feet long enough to answer the door. Hope, maybe? If so, it was one more crushing disappointment on the worst day of his life. Cyrus was shivering with shock. I rushed back to the living room for a throw rug and draped it over him. The rug was bloody, too, but that didn’t seem important.

“Hey, buddy,” I said gently. “Can you understand me?”

His mouth worked for a moment and he made only mewling sounds, but he nodded ever so slightly.

“Who did this to you?”

He shook his head.

“How many were there? How big a team?”

Cyrus managed to raise his hand a few inches. He held up a single finger.

“One?” I asked. “You’re saying that one man did this.”

He shook his head but held up the single finger again. I tried to get him to explain. It wasn’t one team, it seemed. It was one, but he objected to my choice of “man” or even “woman.”

Cyrus tried hard to speak, but each time it came out as a meaningless wet mumble. And then with crushing and horrible realization I understood why.

They had cut out his tongue.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried hard not to scream. Ghost whined from the living room doorway.

When I opened my eyes I saw Cyrus looking at me. He was slipping past the point where pain mattered to him, and he knew it. We both knew it.