Chapter 33 #2
“I presume you wanted him as a guest of your hospitality?” Cashel asks with a smile. There is no doubt as to what he means by hospitality in this instance, and he would be correct. I’d wanted Drobny contained and questioned, and contained would have involved duct tape and an IV.
“At the time. My plans changed after I found his people following Isolde.”
“They were following her?” This seems to be news to him, which is interesting.
I flex my hands in the handcuffs, straining my fingers up, my forearm now so slick with blood that my fingertips slip right off my skin.
“He used our wedding planner and at least one of his men, although I think there were probably more, to keep tabs on her. My theory was that he wanted some leverage against you—first as a threat, to send you pictures and the like to prove that they were following her, and second as more than a threat if needed. Which means two things: one, that Drobny didn’t know you at all and didn’t know that you’d sacrifice Isolde in a heartbeat if it threatened you, and two, that there was trouble in Ys paradise.
And where there’s one unhappy arms dealer, there’s more, I’m sure. ”
Cashel crosses his legs, his red leather shoes stark against his white cassock. “That’s a keen insight, Mr. Trevena, thank you. Oh, hello,” he says to a tall man striding into my line of sight. He bends down to whisper in Cashel’s ear while Cashel idly presses his fingers to his jaw again.
I use the opportunity to duck my head, clamping down on a scream as agony rips up my arm, panting hard for several long moments until I can think again. Luckily, Cashel is still listening to whatever his guard is saying and seems sufficiently agitated by it not to notice anything else.
“My apologies,” he says tightly, inclining his head. “I’m afraid I need to discuss something of a sensitive nature.” He gets up from his stool and sweeps off into the shadows with his foot soldier.
It’s time to pray again, and pray I do.
Please let this fucking work.
I say it like a Hail Mary, like a liturgical recitation. I may be a sinner, but I think God would be interested in what I’ll burn on his altar if he helps me out.
When Cashel returns with his usual serene expression restored to his face, my breathing is even and regular, and I’m feeling a lot better about things.
“Apparently, my old friend Barbara has not been as faithful to me as I have been to her.” Cashel sounds genuinely saddened by this.
As if his saints didn’t shoot her in the head with no preamble or warning.
“She’s sent a packet of information to a reporter.
After the anonymous email that went out before the conclave, the reporter is obviously intrigued. ”
“That’s a shame.”
Cashel doesn’t sit this time, only regards me with a beatific expression of compassion and forgiveness.
“I know you sent that email, Mr. Trevena. I felt it was a rather feeble stab at things, but even feeble stabs have a compound effect given enough time. That said, I had expected better from the infamous Sea Hound. The legend is larger than the man, perhaps?”
I approximate a shrug as best I can with my hands pinioned behind me. “Perhaps.”
Cashel’s foot soldier comes back in at a jog, whispering in rapid-fire Italian to Cashel, and Cashel’s mask abruptly drops.
The gap-toothed smile, the twinkling eyes, all of it extinguished in an instant.
There is only a collection of features devoid of any humanity, bereft of all emotion, with empty, empty eyes.
Even I find it chilling, and I’m generally immune to such feelings.
Cashel slides those empty eyes to me. “Is this your big play then? Your ace in the hole? Freeing them now is pointless, and I need you to understand exactly how much, because you are still here , at my mercy, and I will find them again. And it will go worse for them because of what you have done. Make him suffer,” he says to his underling and then leaves in a flutter of tassels and a flash of red shoes.
A metal door slams from somewhere I can’t see while Cashel’s man approaches me. He looks neither excited nor dismayed to be tasked with torturing me—something that endears him to me a little, because I’ve been in that situation more times than would be considered civilized.
It’s too bad then that he has to witness my real ace in the hole.
“I could just break your nose and some fingers, and we could call it a night,” he offers. His voice is the voice of someone who’s hoping to clock out of work early.
“We could,” I say back cheerfully. “Or I could kill you instead.”
He laughs. I laugh. And then the handcuffs drop to the floor as I stand up.
His expression is almost worth the trauma and tribulation of working the pick out of my forearm, something that never seems to get easier anytime I do it.
But I’ve never regretted having the plastic tool embedded under my skin—surgical grade for strength, plastic so as not to make a fuss around any security machines reactive to metal—because it’s saved my life three times now, and I’m hoping to make it four.
I step toward him, nearly naked, sharp, bloody pick in hand.
“I’m ready to call it a night when you are,” I tell him.