Thirteen
T hey brought her in, and took her to the basement, where we interrogate people. I didn’t have details, because apparently it was ‘none of my business’. They’d found and snatched my rapist, but apparently it wasn’t my fucking business.
“I get to talk to her,” I demanded, slamming Reacher’s office door open, and interrupting him in a meeting with Stitch and Ice. They all just stared at me for a moment.
“You will,” he said finally, turning back to them to carry on with his discussion. Enough of this shit. I’m going there right fucking now. I turned and strode from the room, itching to get my hands on the bitch, itching to punish her, to make her pay. To make her SUFFER.
As I reached the stairs to the basement, an iron grip caught my arm, hauling me back a few steps.
“You’ll keep quiet until I fucking give you the go ahead, you get me?” Reacher snarled, nodding at the others to drag me out of the way, letting him go first.
“Since you’re gonna push us to do this immediately, we’ll be going in half-cocked, but who cares, right?”
He shoved the door open when we reached the basement, and there she was. She was pretty, and I’d definitely have fucked her, if she’d only given me the choice.
She glanced from one of us to the other, straining at the ropes tying her to the chair in the middle of the room. Her eyes landed on me, and she gasped softly.
“ You, ” she whispered, pulling again at the ropes.
“You’ll keep your eyes only on me,” Reacher demanded, nodding at the others to back off. The door had closed, but in the room with me and her, and Reacher, were Stitch, Ice, and Torch. The fucking boy band back together again.
My fists were clenched so tight, my fingers were cramping up, but I couldn’t unfurl them.
“Ease up, brother,” I heard Torch whisper, as he grabbed my shoulder and dragged me away from Reacher. I leaned against the wall with him, but it took every ounce of my self-control to stay there.
She didn’t look afraid as such. Nervous, maybe. Worried. Not afraid, at least not yet, and she really should be. She’d fucked with a member of our club. She was in our torture room, with enough of us to tear her to pieces. People tended to leave this room no longer breathing, did she even realise that?
“I guess there’s no point in me demanding that you free me,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes on Reacher as he’d commanded.
He smirked. “You know why you’re here, of course.” He’d ignored her dumb question, because that’s exactly what it had been. Dumb .
“I just want to start off by saying that you have me all wrong,” she said, a small smile on her face.
Reacher leaned close, his hands covering her wrists as he towered over her.
“This will go easier for you, if you just stick to answering my fucking questions, and drop the wise-ass act.”
She swallowed hard, tilting her head to meet his eyes.
“You’re going to kill me either way. What’s the point in answering any questions?”
He smirked, one hand suddenly gripping her throat.
“We can use various methods of encouragement, if that’s what you want. See, we only have a couple of questions, but every time you don’t answer, we’re gonna have to do something about that.”
He nodded at Stitch, who slid a knife from his belt, and brushed his thumb over the blade casually.
Her eyes had followed the movement, just as they’d planned.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. Not really.”
She made a choking sound, as Reacher’s hand tightened on her throat.
“Question number fucking one,” he barked, making her wince, and choke again, as his hand clenched. She nodded rapidly. She was starting to look red in the face, the need to breathe having a rapid effect on her.
“Were you working alone?” He asked, and she blinked for a moment, clearing her throat, and coughing, when he released her and backed up.
“N… No… but you knew that already.” He folded his arms, and Stitch moved closer, that knife still visible in his hand.
“Why him?” He jerked his head in my direction, and she followed the movement, her eyes fixing on mine. I flinched, wondering why the hell I didn’t get any sense of familiarity from her. This woman had used me for hours, probably. Shouldn’t I recognise her in some way?
“He hit on me,” she said finally, and I frowned, because not remembering the whole night had me wondering if that were even true. I glanced at Torch, and he shrugged.
“You like MILFs,” he muttered, turning his eyes back to her.
“So because he hit on you in a bar, where you were dressed like you were looking to hook up, you figured you’d… uh…”
“That’s what’s typical of men like you,” she snarled suddenly. “I was dressed like I wanted to hook up? Yeah? So that means that any asshole can come at me, and come onto me, and I’m just supposed to bend over and spread my fucking legs?”
Reacher blinked, caught unawares by her outburst.
“I mean… the point I was making was that a guy hitting on you, and I know him, he wasn’t aggressive, was no reason to assault him.”
She glared right back at him.
“He marched up to me, looked me up and down, and asked me if I wanted my pussy and ass fucked at the same time. That’s pretty aggressive .”
All eyes hit me for a moment, and I shrugged, feeling more than a little shame at hearing it out loud like that. It’s definitely the kind of thing I’d have said, because we often shared women.
“All she had to say was no.”
They knew I’d never push it, but it sounds like I was looking for someone for both of us, so I glanced at Torch, and he shrugged again. It wasn’t the first time we’d hit on a woman together, and it usually led to a really fucking hot night.
“All I did was buy him a drink,” she finally said, a stubborn note in her voice.
“You drugged him,” Reacher snarled, nodding at Stitch, who moved behind her. Honestly, the two of them were like a well-oiled machine. One talking, one taking action, like they’d practiced it many times, and I supposed, by now, they had, but still it was always seamless. Stitch grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair, and pulled her head back, the knife resting against her throat.
“See, I’m getting tired of this pissy bitch routine. I want to know why you did it, and why him. See, we have enemies, and I need to know if this was something you were paid to do to him.”
She cursed, swallowing carefully.
“Yes, I was paid, but not… it’s not what you think.”
Stitch moved, and she gasped, as the knife caught her skin, causing a slow trickle of blood. He knew exactly where to cut to safely scare her, without catching an artery. I mean, if he did that, we’d all get covered in blood, and that’d ruin our cuts.
“Who. Paid. You?” Reacher demanded, leaning over her again.
She trembled as her head tipped back closer to Stitch, and his grip tightened on her.
“She just wanted someone, but he picked me. He made the choice ,” she whispered, tears starting to trickle down her cheeks. I didn’t soften at her apparent fear, because she could so easily be playing us. Some women were good at turning on the tears, when they thought they needed a way out.
“She?” Reacher growled, leaning closer to her.
She trembled again. “Yes. She pays me to pick someone, drug him, and deliver him to her. That’s it. I swear.”
What? I pushed away from the wall, approaching them in their deadly holding pattern.
“She who? I want a fucking name!” I snapped, reaching out to grab her chin, dragging her face to mine, as Reacher moved back, and Stitch lowered the knife a touch.
“I… I don’t know her name. She pays me well enough that I don’t ask. I find her a man, and she disappears with him, and I never hear about him again.”
“You were in trouble before, but now there’s a dead guy, this is more serious than ever,” Reacher muttered, and her eyes shot to his, her chin jerking out of my grip.
“What? What dead guy? There’s no dead guy. She just has sex with them.”
I grabbed her chin again. “Calling it ‘sex’ suggests that he gets a fucking choice.”
She swallowed hard again, her eyes darting from mine to Reacher’s.
“I just bring her the ones who hit on me. She does the rest, I swear.”
Reacher looked behind me, and suddenly arms were dragging me away again, while he took back control of the situation.
He nodded at Stitch, who grabbed her by the hair once more, but the knife was held away from her for now.
“How do you make contact with her?” He asked her, leaning on her wrists again. She let out a shaky breath.
“She contacts me when…” She glanced my way. “When she’s ready for another.”
“How many fucking times has she done this?” I demanded, shrugging off Torch’s grip.
Reacher shot a glare in my direction.
“Quiet!” He looked at her again. “How? How does she contact you?”
She shuddered. “Text messages.”
Fuck. That gave us nothing. She’d been texting me too, and we couldn’t find her then. Dammit!
“This is useless! We already knew her fucking number!”
Torch dragged me back, and practically slammed me against the wall, his arm across my throat as he leaned close.
“Will you shut the fuck up!”
I shook myself free of him, watching the interrogation avidly. I thought we had found her, and found an end to this. This couldn’t all be for fucking nothing!
“I… she’s expecting one tonight ,” the woman finally whispered to him, and suddenly there was the lifeline we needed.
“Tell me everything,” Reacher demanded, and I sagged against that wall, as she explained their well-planned routine. Kidnap, rape, the whole nine yards.
Tonight. Tonight we’d find her.
B ut of course we didn’t, because we set a trap, but guess who never showed? The bitch. The bitch we’d laid in wait for.
“Maybe the dead guy fucked her up more than we thought.”
Then why would she make arrangements for a new victim? It didn’t make sense. We waited out of sight for another hour, and our unwilling accomplice even messaged her to say she was ready, asking where she was, but she just never replied.
We were back to square one.