Everyone Lies by A. Garrett D.

‘Kate.’
    Her hand hovered over the mouse button.
    Fennimore turned to Josh. ‘Go ahead.’
    He waited for the door to close behind the student then leaned in close to the table mic and lowered his voice. ‘My name stays out of this.’
    She frowned. ‘We already agreed that.’
    ‘We did. But that was you wanting to keep on the right side of Gifford. This is me, Kate. At some point, somebody will ask who’s been advising you. I don’t do well in the media spotlight.’ He heard a tremor in these last few words, and a shadow of pain and compassion passed fleetingly behind his friend’s eyes.
    He felt an unexpected flood of emotion, a tightening of the muscles around his heart. ‘I—’ His throat closed and he couldn’t say any more.
    ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you already screwed up my career once, Fennimore. Anyone asks who’s been advising me, I’d sooner say it was aliens sending messages through my iPod.’ She reached forward and her image vanished from the screen.
    Fennimore smiled. It was exactly the right thing to say, and said with exactly the right amount of conviction. That one brief glimpse of compassion in her eyes had almost finished him – he couldn’t have borne her sympathy.

8
    Dip is secured to a chair with duct tape. He is naked. Tufts of hair gather like plucked feathers at his feet – they have shaved his head. His hands are bound behind his back and tape has been wrapped around his upper torso; his legs are taped to the front legs of the chair, so he can’t close them. He knows this is a deliberate choice, and he has a good idea – no, not good, nothing about this could ever be good – but he does know what they are going to do to him, because laid out on a box two feet away are a soldering iron, a hammer, two sets of pliers and a Slendertone kit – the old kind, but with the electrodes stripped back and crocodile clips attached in place of the pads.
    The chair is placed dead centre of an empty retail unit in Salford. It’s already dark, and lighting is provided by the headlamps of his boss’s Merc. The temperature has dropped to two degrees above freezing, but he’s sweating.
    ‘Boss, whatever you think I did, I didn’t do it.’ He tries to sound calm, reasonable, but he’s speaking too fast and he can’t get any strength behind the words.
    His boss looks at the two men who brought Dip in. His face is a study in concentration. ‘Ready?’ he says.
    Dip knows Beefy, but the other one is new to him. Beefy is six four and weighs as much as a small horse. He moves behind Dip’s chair. The other one stands to the side, his hands crossed in front of him. He is short and lean, like he didn’t get fed right when he was a kid, and his skin has the grey smudged look of a night worker or a convict. His neck is tattooed from his collar to his jawline. His eyes are small and dark and he has sharp features, like a jackal.
    Behind him, the big man shifts his weight, his shoes whispering on the concrete floor. Dip cranes his neck, anxious to see what he’s doing.
    ‘I swear, Boss. I—’ Pain explodes in his nose. Jackal is fast as a whip – he didn’t even see it coming.
    ‘Hey! Wait till you’re told.’
    Jackal takes a step back, but looks pissed off about it.
    The boss leans closer. Dip’s eyes and nose are streaming and his heart feels like it’s trying to crawl out of his throat.
    ‘You’re all right,’ his boss says. ‘It’s not broken. Not even bleeding – but when I want you to speak, I’ll ask you a question. Are we clear?’
    Dip nods, and his boss’s eyebrows twitch. ‘Yes, Boss.’
    The boss straightens up, satisfied. His eyes flick to Beefy. Dip sees a flash of something then he’s suffocating. He opens his mouth, sucks hard, tastes plastic. He struggles, sees his boss watching him thoughtfully, as if he’s trying to understand what Dip wants. His mind is filled with Can’t breathe. He fights the bindings; they’re too strong. Beefy twists the bag