Chapter Eighteen
SEBASTIAN
It’s three in the morning, the day Hecate is supposed to make landfall, when Lehman and I pull into the parking lot of an old warehouse on the east end of town.
“This place looks as if it needs to be torn down.”
“The team says it’s used for storage,” Lehman says. “And…other things.”
“I gather we’re here for the other things.” I study the dirty facade, the rusty roof, and the shattered windows. There’s not a single working light nearby, aside from my headlights. “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Around back.” Lehman points.
I lead the way using my phone as a flashlight. “Of all the sketchy places I’ve been…”
“You’ll understand when you see him.”
The search team we’ve been using to find our missing clients said they had found an asset for us to talk to. Other than this address, we weren’t given much to go on.
The back door is unlocked. It’s practically hanging off its hinges, and the scrape of metal when it opens could wake the dead. But when we walk inside, there are lights on, and a guard stands across from us at another door.
“Sebastian Pierce,” I tell him. He nods and pushes open the second door.
Which is when we hear the screaming.
The second room is interesting. Mostly dark, with a portable spotlight set up, shining down on a man who appears to be bound to a chair.
He’s got his hair hanging in his face, and blood running down his arms onto his clothes.
Another man is standing over him with what looks like a fillet knife.
I recognize the guy with the knife. He was there when we tried to ask Cam who had taken him.
“Bas, you remember Liam. Anything yet?”
The man with the knife shakes his head. He’s wearing what look like tactical pants and a black T-shirt with a gun strapped to his hip. He slides the knife onto a table and reaches over to shake my hand.
“Nice to see you again.”
“What’s going on exactly?” I gesture to the bloodied man, who has taken to babbling. Something like he’s said everything he knows, and we should let him go, which I suspect isn’t happening, given that he knows all our names and faces.
“Truthfully, I can’t take credit for all of this,” says Liam. “The little firecracker he tried to take out of the country did most of the work.”
I glance at Lehman.
“Lilliana Spring. She’s at the hospital but agreed to speak with us. She sobered up as they tried to get her onto a private plane, and she fought back. Liam here says they found her holding this guy’s gun on him. The other one was already dead.”
“She killed him?”
“Kicked him down the jet stairs. Broken neck.” Laim sounds almost reverent.
“How’s she handling it?”
“Remarkably well.”
“Hey, um, can I please get some water? Please? Anything?”
The man sounds pathetic. Frightened. A better person might give a damn, but I’ve never been a particularly good man, and I have zero tolerance for kidnappers.
“We got lucky with this one,” Liam says. “Our sources got word of a particular request, so we were able to get ahead of things before they took her out of the country.”
“Has he given you anything useful?” I ask, gesturing to the guy in the chair.
“He admits he took her from a party, claims he didn’t think she was that drunk, and he and his buddy were only looking to have a good time.”
“On a private plane?” I look the kidnapper up and down. Rips and stains on his jeans, sweat on his shirt, and a pair of standard-looking work boots. Don’t judge a book by its cover, but I’d bet money this guy’s lying. “How do you have a private plane?”
“It-it was a loaner from a friend. He didn’t know what we were planning to do.”
“Whose plane is it?” I ask Liam.
“Shell company in the Caymans with the adorable name of TMI. We have a hacker trying to trace ownership.”
I give a kick to the crying man’s leg. “So who’s this friend who loaned you the plane?”
“He works at the airport. Jim…Bo. Smith. Jimbo Smith. He said the plane never got used, and we could borrow it.”
“This guy’s the worst liar I’ve ever seen,” Lehman murmurs.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my brass knuckles. “I have a story for you,” I tell him.
“W-what?”
“See, I was the product of a threesome. Crazy, right? My parents were into sharing the love and all that good stuff. Except they met this man who looked and acted like Prince Charming—my mom’s words—on a trip to New Orleans, and they liked him so much the three of them spent the entire summer together. ”
Behind me, Lehman clears his throat. A subtle suggestion that I need to slow my roll. But I’ve started the song and dance, so I’m going to let it play out.
“Why is he telling me this?” The man looks left to right between all of us. “Why are you telling me this?”
“There was trouble in paradise, unfortunately,” I say as I slide the brass knuckles on.
“Turned out the guy was seriously unstable. Violently possessive. So my parents moved far away, to escape him. Which was fine until he found them years later, found out about me, and realized I looked exactly like him. Know what happened then?”
“I don’t know. How the fuck would I know?”
Well, I suppose he wouldn’t, but my dark side is coming out and I’m enjoying his fear.
“I’ll tell you. They disappeared again. He followed, paranoid my parents had ‘turned me against him.’ I didn’t even know who the hell he was.
Managed to grab me at my bus stop when I was fifteen.
Convinced me he was a friend of my mom’s. ”
I curl my fingers around the brass knuckles.
“He gave me these. Belated birthday gift, he said. Back then I was a skinny kid, and he said I should always have a way to defend myself because people are always out to betray you. Then he used me to get my mother into the car and tried to take us both away. So he was right; people betray you. He betrayed me, and my mom, and then on our way out of town, he was driving so erratically that he flipped the car. My mother was killed right away. I got away with this.” I gesture to the scar on my cheek.
“You want to know how it ends?”
The guy’s sweating. Rivers of it flow from his temples down his face. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“Oh, come on. It’s pretty good. See, I managed to crawl out of the car. I got my mom out too, but she was already gone. My sperm donor, however, was stuck. He begged me to help him out, which I did. Then I did this.”
That’s when I take a swing, landing a punch to the right of his chin.
“Fuck!” The guy jerks in the chair, but his hands are cuffed behind him. “I think…you broke my jaw.”
Given how he’s mumbling, and his face is already starting to swell, I’d say he’s right.
My phone pings, a message from the emergency vet letting me know that the dog I brought in is finally ready for surgery, and the night vet on duty is going in to set his broken leg.
I excuse myself briefly to reply, and when I return, the man in the chair has stopped screaming, though he seems to be crying quietly.
His head hangs low, and his body is at an odd angle.
“Did you dislocate his shoulder?”
Liam shrugs slightly. “You did authorize me to get the information in any way necessary.”
I did. “Has he said anything else?”
“He’s sticking to his story that he acted alone, and he and his other friend just wanted to have fun with a pretty girl.
The van they had parked near the airstrip was registered to the same company as the plane, so someone else held the purse strings, and that someone else was either in charge of the operation or higher up on the food chain. ”
I approach the man, curling my fingers around the knuckles again.
I’m pent-up after having to walk away from Simon. Pissed off that Tony’s still refusing to sign the paperwork. After two weeks, the PI I hired to follow Tony around hasn’t gotten anything worth using. Whatever Tony’s been up to lately, it hasn’t been fucking whores.
This man in the chair, all bruised and bloody, he’s drawn the short straw of being the place I let out my anger. And I like it. I like letting it all flow out through my hands. The blood and bruising doesn’t light me up the way it does when I hurt Simon, but it’s satisfying.
Perhaps I’m more like my sperm donor than I’ve wanted to admit. Would Simon be horrified to see me like this? Or would it be, as he put it, disturbingly hot?
Perhaps I’m a monster after all, and Simon was right to send me away.
“Who’s paying you?” When the guy says nothing, I drive my fist into his stomach.
When he still doesn’t answer, I hit him in the face again.
“Where did you get Lilliana’s information?
Where were you taking her? Where was the party you took her to?
How did you get her? Was there going to be a ransom? ”
I get into a rhythm of question, pause, hit, but with each one our captive refuses to answer, my frustration grows. With each round, my fist sinks deeper into his flesh. By the end, the man is half out of it and doubled over, or at least as doubled as he can get the way he’s restrained.
Lehman stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think you’re going to get much more out of him. He can’t answer questions if he can’t talk.”
The look in his eyes tells me he’s worried I’m losing it. I shake my head and step away, answering his silent question.
Then he glances at Liam. “Sorry. You can see why kidnappings are a sore subject with him.”
“A sore subject with us all,” Liam agrees. “Especially taking advantage of a young woman like that. She walloped him good, though. I think I might be a little bit in love.”
Lehman holds up his phone. “Lilliana is ready to speak with us. She’s being admitted to the hospital for observation. We’ve got a guy who can get us access to her room.”
I nod and roll my neck and shoulders, satisfied by a series of cracks and pops. Every muscle in my body is strung tight, but there’s not much to be done about it now. For only a second I let myself think of Simon, and what good medicine his body would be right now.
I point to the man in the chair, who looks at best half-alive. “Let us know if you get anything else. Especially anything about who’s paying him, where he got her name.”
“Will do.”
Liam drags a metal stool over and sits in front of the guy as we leave. Something causes our kidnapper to release a pained moan. I don’t turn to see why. When you hire people, you trust them to handle things.
And we’ve got another witness to talk to, one who will likely be more cooperative.