Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
I laughed at the sight on the other side of the archway.
Prior to my arrival, my brothers had prepped him by stripping the fucker down to just his boxers. They placed a gag in his mouth to prevent him from yelling for help. From the sight of scrapes and crusted blood on his extremities, he struggled during his capture or his subsequent disrobing.
They had completely covered the kitchen with clear plastic sheeting like the kind you would use if you planned to paint a room. Except we weren’t doing renovations. Everything from the ceiling to the floor was safe from whatever happened here tonight. He was in the middle of the kitchen, tied to a wooden chair with duct tape. The chair could and would be burned if we needed to once we were all done.
Our captive flinched as I checked beneath the medical tape to ensure the needle was still secure. Noting it was all good to go, I returned my attention back to him. Recently, because of our various arms deals, we found a connection that had black market access to sodium thiopental. Digging into the medical bag, I found the vial and inserted the needle into it and filled the barrel with clear liquid.
“Don’t worry, it’s not enough to kill you,” I told him, then added a warning. “But, if you fight me, I will.”
The truth of the matter was I had to kill him either way, but he didn’t need to know that.
Soon he was blubbering around the gag. The sad fuck was probably calling for his mommy to come save him. He paled as I flicked the needle in my hand, ensured there was no air and brought it towards the intravenous tube. The last thing I needed was for him to go into cardiac arrest prior to interrogation. Finally, this asshole knew I meant business. Normally I wouldn’t worry about leaving marks, but I hadn’t decided if he deserved to die yet, and I didn’t want to leave behind too much evidence.
Then I leaned against the counter and waited.
I needed to give the drug enough time to work, otherwise this would be pointless. I didn’t want to go straight for the torture unless I had to. Part of me wanted to because he was a sick fucker and had outgrown his usefulness. This was the first time I used the truth serum. All of the possibilities excited the demented part of me. Especially since this was a drug I had only heard about in the movies. Not all the guys could stomach the level of torture involved in questioning someone, so if this drug worked, it would give us an upper hand.
Spread out the work, so to speak.
That was if it actually worked.
Hunter was one such person who didn’t like using torture. He was effectively brutal when he did it, but the guilt of allowing himself to do something so wretched to another human being ate away at him. It stretched back to his home life, and how he didn’t have a great upbringing.
Someone killed his father when he was a baby, and his mother had a revolving door of boyfriends. He spent a lot of time at my brothers’ houses when he was growing up. The nights he wasn’t there were a risk. We never knew if the person his mother brought home would be nice to her son, or use him as a punching bag.
Since then, he has issues with some forms of physical violence, depending on the context. I had told him frequently he could pass off the job to someone else, but he refused. Just like tonight, he just soldiered on and gets the job done.
Looking back, I couldn’t even count on two hands the number of times he showed up at the clubhouse covered in bruises from head to toe. His mother always explained the violence away by making it sound like he mouthed off and deserved the discipline. They didn’t even spare her the fists, but even then, she blamed her only son.
That type of treatment left a mark on a person.
His mother died of a drug overdose when he was fifteen, so he moved in with my brothers permanently. It was one of the many reasons he was so close to Kujo. They had been through a lot together over the years.
I was a mere eleven years old when he entered my life on a more permanent basis. My life experiences ensured I knew enough about the goings on with boys and girls, but I didn’t understand it. It didn’t draw me to him because I wanted a boyfriend; it was because he wasn’t my brothers.
I shook my head at my distraction.
Back to the task at hand. Once I had his complete attention, I pressed the plunger slowly. We needed to administer the serum before extracting our intel. I watched in sick fascination as the black seal pushed the clear liquid through the barrel and down the line into his vein. With the intravenous tubing, there would be fewer marks if I needed to give him more drugs.
When he started squirming uncomfortably, I walked back over and flashed a light in his eyes.
Noting his pupils were fixed and dilated, I told him, “I’m gonna ask you a few questions to see if it’s actually working.”
“Whatever,” he responded.
“What are you doing back in town?”
“I can go wherever I want to,” he slurred.
“You aren’t the one in control here,” I told him. “The Reapers asked you nicely not to return, yet here you are.”
No response.
I tried a more direct question. “What do you know about the hit?” I asked.
“What hit?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I replied. “Your name was directly linked to the chatter.”
He sat up straight, as if he finally grew a second back bone.
“Look, bitch, I don’t know. You’ve got the wrong guy if you think I know anything.”
“God, I hate it when men call be a bitch for no reason.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out my trusty matriarch knife. I was still a little pissed about not getting my other one back from that cop. Channeling that anger, I held it to his face, just under his left eye socket. “Ever hear of death by a thousand cuts?” I asked him as I sliced across his cheekbone.
He squealed like a stuck pig.
The skin gaped and bled down the side of his face.
“Shut him up,” Kujo called from the hall. “Don’t want the neighbours to come running.”
I stuffed the gag back into his mouth. Then I sliced the other side of his face for good measure.
Didn’t want my work to be uneven.
Maybe I should have given him a huge smile like Joker?
“Are you ready to talk?” I asked.
When I finally pulled the gag back out of his mouth, he sang like a canary. I knew tons of details about the hit, except the name of the target and who put it out. I would have to do more digging to decipher those details. Thankfully, I had other informants to lean on for the information.
Unfortunately for him, his intel wouldn’t save him from death. For the last cut I thrust my matriarch upwards into his left armpit with the edge of the blade, then yanked it out towards me, severing the Axillary artery. His death was quick, but messy.
“It’s done,” I called out to my brother.
He came around the corner and surveyed the damage. “I forgot how into your work you get,” Kujo commented as he looked at the mess of a man slumped over in the chair.
“He gave me everything I needed and more,” I told him as I sidestepped the comment.
I glanced down at my blood-soaked clothes. Maybe it was time to invest in work clothes. I could go for some scrubs or maybe a hazmat suit to cover me from head to toe .
I chuckled darkly at the last thought.
“What’s so funny?” Brandt asked as he entered the kitchen.
“Just wondering if I should ask the Prez for a clothing allowance. Do you think the club would spring for a couple of hazmat suits for me?”
Brandt barked out a laugh. “I doubt it, but I want to be there to see his face when you ask him for it.”
“We’ll wait for the cleaners and then we’ll both go back to the clubhouse and meet you there. I could use a drink to wind down after spending my night here listening to you work.”
“I’m heading over to Mabel’s first,” I told him as I hopped on my bike.
“Be safe,” he told me.
“Always,” I called out, then I waved goodbye.
Thank fuck it was dark out, because there was no explaining away the crimson stains on my clothing. All this shit needed to be burned now.
What did I do when I was covered completely in blood?
The Reapers had so many connections; I forgot exactly which ones we had. There was a chain of trucker stops attached to gas stations that were owned by a woman who we saved from being murdered by her husband. She gave us the access codes to the showers that were in the parking lot. That way, we didn’t have to go into the station and request the keys. We wouldn’t be caught covered in blood, and we could enter the access code from our cell phones and automatically turned off the cameras.
Why would we save her from being murdered?
Her scumbag of a husband had decided to eliminate her shortly after her father passed away. Apparently, her father had invested all of his money in gas stations, and Iris, being his only daughter, had inherited all of them. She was the perfect person to leave them to because she had worked there all her life, since she was old enough to run a till. Her husband, who had been cheating on her for the duration of their marriage with whores, and had snorted most of their savings through his nose and had gambled the rest away, put out a hit on her.
And like a complete moron, he believed our MC would be the best solution to his problem.
Too bad for him, we vetted all of our contracts. Liam took two seconds to find the reasons for his request. He wanted it to look like a robbery gone bad with a side of a brutal rape. Not only that, he wanted it recorded for prosperity. So, we followed all of his directions exactly, minus the rape. Instead, we sent the video of everything that we did to him to his wife, along with a jar that held her husband’s balls.
So as soon as I completed any job, I hopped on my bike and drove to the familiar truck stop on the east side of the highway.
As I walked toward the showers, I stayed to the side of where the front of the semi-trucks were pointed. The last thing I needed was to have my blood drenched body illuminated in the night. Every once in a while, lights flashed across the low lit parking lot. It didn’t seem to matter what day of the week it was. This was the usual once the sun went down.
Truckers were on the road at least three hundred days per year. Many of them got lonely enough they would pay for affection. All the semi drivers at the truck stop had to do was blink their lights to signal the prostitutes that they were ready for a good time. The practice didn’t bother me as long as the girls weren’t underage and hadn’t been pressured into the life. Often for the truckers, it was easier to pay for it than wasting time at the bar trying to entice a one-night-stand out of some chick looking for a forever man.
If I knew one thing for sure, Mabel didn’t allow anyone hooking on site who was being trafficked. Trafficking victims would be transferred within forty-eight hours if their captor got wind of police coming in to raid the facility. Knowing that, we were often called by owners when they suspected the sex workers were being mistreated, or had questionable reasons for being there working the lot. Sometimes we were even contacted by the truckers.
Once I was done, I put everything in a bag and took it with me.
Back at the clubhouse, everything was hopping.
“Hellcat, you’re here,” April greeted me.
“For a bit,” I told her.
“Have you seen Kujo?” she asked.
“He was with me earlier. He should be here soon,” I replied.
“Oh, okay. Thanks,” she responded, then without another word, April rejoined her group of friends near the bar.
Of all the women Kujo had messed around with, she was honestly one of the better ones. April knew not to ask any questions. I didn’t like to hurt women, but I would if they needed it. My proclivity for violence might be on the dark side, but that didn’t mean I was a crazy killer, serial or otherwise. I liked to think of myself as an avenging angel. All sweet and angelic, until someone pissed me the fuck off.
Then all hell broke loose.
I never killed anyone innocent. Not even the woman in the corner of the bar currently trying to unbuckle Hunter’s belt. If she knew him at all, she’d know he never got frisky in the bar. Not that he was the respectable sort. In the year I had lived at the clubhouse, his door opened and closed for so many women he should have had a turn style. Either that or he could have charged admission, kind of like the cover charge at a really cool nightclub.
Only at his nightclub, you would be riding the bull all night long.
Fuck.
Redirecting my line of vision, I shook my head to clear the thoughts, and started restocking the bar. I tried hard not to think about what his hands felt like on my hips the last time I was behind here.
Hunter was off-limits.
“Don’t mix business with pleasure,” was what my brother always told me. “It will bite you in the end.”