"As far as I know. Either way, there's a generator."

"Sounds promising."

"Gabe, are you sure this is necessary?"

"Are you sure that it isn't?"

"Okay, okay. And try not to worry too much about Alison. I'm sure there's a simple, logical explanation why you haven't been able to connect."

CHAPTER 51

Hatred.

There were no windows in Alison's prison, only the unadorned concrete walls, the scattered pieces of junk, and the bare bulb hanging directly over her head, making it unpleasant to open her eyes. After four sessions of Griswold's droning interrogation, each followed by a dose of the unbearable, muscle-tearing intravenous drug, he had left and not returned. Alison had discerned from her own sense of time and some remark he had casually dropped as he was heading off that it was morning.

Now, she guessed, it was evening again. Thirty-six hours—maybe more. She remained strapped on her back, drifting in and out of wakefulness. Her wrists and ankles were expertly secured by rope to the metal frame of her cot. She was helpless and in throbbing pain throughout her body. With her arms stretched above her head and barely able to move, her shoulders were especially uncomfortable. When—if—she finally did get to lower her arms, she wondered if they might simply fall off.

At some point during the endless hours, or perhaps during the actual torture that had preceded them, she had wet herself. Griswold, if he was aware of that fact, had made no attempt before he left to change her or to help her change.

Beside her, two plastic intravenous bottles, hooked in parallel, drained saline into her arm, one crystal drop at a time. Why would Griswold ever want her to dehydrate to death and deprive him of his sport?

During the time she was conscious, Alison was consumed by a hatred for Treat Griswold more powerful than any other emotion she had ever known. Being a quarter black, she had encountered racism from time to time, but never had it taken the form of overt hatred. In Los Angeles, there was no question as she watched her friend Janie's life be decimated that Alison hated the arrogant, self-serving surgeons who were masterminding the onslaught.

But never enough to kill them.

This time, she wasn't at all sure.

The president's number-one protector was a master at torture—at breaking his subject down until every statement, every revelation, was certain to be the truth. Clearly, he did not yet feel he had reached that point with her. The doses were progressively larger and more excruciating. By the end of the all-night session, the muscles throughout her body were no longer able to relax fully between injections. The persistent spasms of her jaws threatened to pulverize her teeth, her scalp muscles to crush her skull.