Chapter One
Liam
“Please. I swear. I don’t know anything else.” After hours of begging, the man’s voice is raw, cracked by desperation. Good.
Everyone in my line of work plays favorites with their tools. Some have pet names for their knives and guns. My favorite knife doesn’t have a name. Just a purpose.
“Reece. Give me the fillet.”
My employee hands over the blade.
The man tied to the stainless-steel chair starts thrashing. Water drips down his face with the steady, annoying cadence of a broken faucet.
Thunder claps outside the East End warehouse. Storm season in Belle Argo, Florida lives up to the name. Comes in handy. The drips from holes in the roof aggravate the interrogee. Thunder muffles their screams.
The former bartender we tracked down is good looking, pretty even, with his blue-gray eyes and artsy, new-school tattoos. Or he was before we got hold of him. Between my knife and my employee, Reece, who smashed the guy’s head into concrete when we picked him up, he’s not looking so pretty now.
“Okay, let’s go over this again.” I place the tip of my knife at his sternum and press in. Not a lot. Never go big when you can go small, I say. It’s enough to get this guy’s lower lip quivering.
“Several wealthy young men and women were taken from parties over the span of a few months’ time, and the interesting thing is you just so happened to bartend at almost all of them.
You’re telling me your interactions were only ever with the party promoter.
He’s the one who gave you the money and the drugs and told you who to slip them to. Nobody else?”
He bobs his head. “Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. This guy, Tony, he seemed to be at all the parties. Always used the catering company I worked for. He’d slip me a grand and a picture.
All I did was put the shit in their drink like he asked me to.
I don’t know who was paying him or who he was working with.
I sure as fuck wasn’t the one shipping them out of the country. I just needed the money, okay?”
My knife “slips” a little. The sound he makes is more of a whimper than a scream, but I enjoy the way the tendons stand out on his neck.
“What’d you need the money for?” We’re probably going to kill this man anyway. Even if he was desperate for the cash because his little sister needed a kidney transplant or something, he could’ve gotten the money some way that didn’t traumatize people and tear up families. Still, it’s worth asking.
“Man, I had gambling debts, okay? I moved here to try and lie low while I made some cash, but the dude I owed sent a guy, and I was running short on time.”
I glance at Reece. He raises an eyebrow, thinking the same thing I’m thinking. We’re definitely killing him now.
I crouch down so I can look into the eyes in his sagging head. “Here’s the trouble I have with all that, my friend. You knew they were drugging people. You probably knew exactly what they were going to do with them, and you still sold them out for a measly few thousand dollars.”
Over to the side there’s a stainless-steel table where I keep my tools and my phone. The device is on silent, but the screen has been lighting up with notifications.
Ravi has left home.
Where’s the little shit going when he doesn’t have class for hours? I’m going to need to have a talk with him. I take a breath and turn back to the man in the chair.
“I didn’t know,” he protests. “I didn’t know they wanted to, like, sell people or whatever. I thought it was a little harmless fun.”
This is where Reece comes in out of nowhere and slugs the guy in the side of the face. “A little harmless fun, you sick piece of shit? Drugging kids? You’re telling us you were all right with assault, but kidnapping is where you draw the line?”
I glare at Reece. He’s one of my newer guys, so we’re still working on communication. “Give me some warning next time, huh? You almost got the business end of my knife.”
“Sorry, boss.” His face flushes pink as he moves to stand against the nearest wall.
Fucking guy’s like a golden retriever with a penchant for murder. We’ll have to work on his self-control.
I return my knife to the bartender’s chest and continue drawing a line down the center of his sternum. He grits his teeth, trying not to scream. Gotta give him some points for that, at least. Most guys scream. Even the tough ones.
Especially the tough ones.
“Here’s the thing, Brad. Seems awfully convenient that you’ve only got one co-conspirator, given that trafficking operations tend to involve a lot of people.
Multiple people transported those kids who were drugged.
Put them in a van, drove them away, and put them on a plane or a boat.
Someone made sure you were assigned to work those parties.
Who was your boss? Your boss’s boss? Who handles scheduling for your employer? ”
“I don’t know. I don’t—”
I drag my knife farther down his chest. Right through a stupid-ass tattoo of a rooster on his chest. It’s well done for a barnyard animal. Detailed. That one probably cost some money.
“Okay. Okay. My boss is…” I glance over at Reece to make sure he’s getting the names this guy is rattling off.
“Make sure to look into those people,” I tell Reece when the bartender has run out of breath.
Not that I have high hopes. For all we know, the party planner simply requested Brad’s presence. Still, it doesn’t hurt to check. If we keep digging, eventually we’ll find someone who knew something. Persistence is key.
I pick up a tool that looks a bit like a gardening claw, but with razor-sharp ends. “Anything you’ve forgotten to tell us?”
“I don’t know anything else. I swear, I swear.”
The bartender is bleeding from cuts and scrapes all over his body. We’ve been working him over for a couple of hours, so it doesn’t surprise me when he mutters, “Man, I’m really dizzy.”
I sigh. “Was there anyone else at the parties other than this Tony person who seemed like they could’ve been involved? Anyone else he could have been working with?”
“It’s like I already told you. Dude was a social…
What do you call them? Butterfly. Social butterfly.
He talked to everybody. Liked to go around hugging and handshaking and snorting lines of coke off the coffee tables and whatever.
He seemed to know everyone, so how would I know who he was working with? ”
“There were a couple of vans we think he used to get people out of the parties. Did you ever see the vans? Ever help him load someone inside?”
“No. No. I never did…any of that. But I did see the van. It looked like one of our standard catering vans, except he usually parked it in front of the venue, which the staff weren’t allowed to do. After a while I figured out that was how you could tell.”
“Ever see the driver?”
“Fuck no. Tinted windows.”
The bartender’s head lolls to one side.
“We’ve probably gotten about all we’re going to get, boss,” Reece puts in.
I pause in my carving. “You’re probably right.”
The guy’s head shoots up. Probably calculating for the first time that if he isn’t useful, he’s dead. “Wait. Wait. There was, uh, another guy. I think he was a cop. I could swear I saw a badge once.”
“Did you get this cop’s name? Can you give me a description?”
“Kind of tall. Dark hair. White. Uh…” The bartender squeezes his eyes shut tight. “That’s all I can remember. But, hey, I could go back. Like, if you let me go, I could go work more parties. Keep an eye out for him. For anyone who’s suspicious. I could report back to you.”
“That’s a real nice offer, Brad…” I put my knife down on the table and pick up my phone, which is flashing again.
Ravi has entered the parking lot of Belle Argo University, Lot C.
Ravi is at Campus Coffee.
Ravi is at the BAU Campus Gym.
“Problem, boss?” Reese asks.
I shake my head. “Just my fucking ward being a fucking idiot.”
“So…” Brad trembles in the chair, trying to hold his head up. “So, you’ll let me go, then? You’ll let me go, and I’ll inform for you, like…like you’re the cops?”
“You know we’re not actually the cops.”
“No, yeah, I got that. Cops don’t interrogate you with knives in a warehouse. I don’t care who you are. Just… Do we have a deal?”
“I’m afraid that won’t work, Brad. That Tony fellow you mentioned is dead, and with him that part of the operation has dried up. It wouldn’t get us anything.”
He rattles the cuffs that hold his wrists behind the chair.
“Something else, then. Come on, motherfucker. There’s got to be something, right?
You can’t fucking keep me here. You’re talking about a bunch of pampered rich assholes.
You know how they treat people like me? You don’t get to kill me over them.
” The last part comes out in a yell. The big-eyed innocent act seems to have fallen away.
I hold up a finger and then return to my phone, shooting off a text.
Liam: You should not be at the gym so soon after a near-fatal drug overdose.
Placing the phone back on the table, I see movement from the corner of my eye. Bartender Brad is twisting in his chair, trying to work his wrists loose. He’s straining forward, eyes on the table, almost like he’s interested in what’s happening with my phone.
Growling, I grab my pistol from the table and fire off two shots. The bartender, who drugged several twenty-something partygoers and sent them off to be trafficked, is still looking startled when he slumps over.
Then I send a follow-up text: Ravi. You’re smarter than this.
A quick check of the bartender’s pulse tells me he’s definitely gone. Good.
I see the moment Ravi reads the message, but there’s no reply. Not even the three dots to tell me there’s one in progress. Ungrateful kid.
“Okay,” I say to Reece. “Not that we got much, but at least it’s one less piece of shit running around. Let’s get this all cleaned up.”
My employee’s eyebrows dip. “You didn’t think it was worth trying to get him to give us information?”
“It’s like I already said: Tony, the guy who paid him, is dead.
There have been no more missing people from that side of town.
More than likely they’ve shut it all down for now.
The cop he mentioned isn’t enough to go on.
I’ve got a whole list of potentially corrupt guys in the Belle Argo precinct, and probably eighty percent of them match that extremely vague description. It’s a dead end.”
Still no response from my text to Ravi, so I send another.
Liam: I want you home when you’re done with classes today.
“Everything okay?” Reece asks again.
“Fine. This kid’s been a pain in my ass since day one, that’s all. An even bigger one lately.”
“The guys mentioned you had an adopted kid or something.”
“Not adopted.” Thank fuck. The last thing I need is to be someone’s actual parent. “An old friend and his wife got killed about four years ago. We’d lost touch, but his will was old. No local family, so the kid ended up with me.”
“Shit, that’s got to be tough.”
Reece starts rolling up our body in plastic. I get started hosing down the floor and dousing it all in bleach.
Ordinarily, talking to my employees about my personal life isn’t something I would do. Lately Ravi’s got my frustration leaking out all over the place. Sort of like the blood on this floor.
“He’s stubborn like you wouldn’t believe. I tried to go easy at first because his parents had been murdered, but I feel like that backfired. Almost got himself killed a couple of weeks ago, and he’s still not listening to shit.”
My phone lights up, finally, with a reply from Ravi. Not one I was hoping to see.
Ravi: My research indicates that light exercise is fine if I’m feeling up to it, and I am, thx!
With an IQ of one hundred fifty-four, you’d think he could at least spell properly.
“Kid doesn’t listen to a damn thing I say,” I mutter.
“Teenager?” Reece asks as he tapes up the body.
“Nineteen. Twenty in a few months.”
Reece chuckles. “Yeah, they’re all assholes at that age. I was. Weren’t you?”
“Still am. Hey. How’s your grandmother?”
Reece grins. “In remission. Thank fuck. Apparently she’s made lots of friends in treatment, too, so her social life is more interesting than mine.” He hoists the body over his shoulder. “I’ll get this out to the truck. What project am I billing this to?”
“2740.”
“That’s, like, the internal code we use when we don’t have anything else to bill to, right?”
“Exactly. We had a client a few months back who had tasked us with tracking down suspected trafficking victims. The names of the abductees were being pulled from their client list. We tracked down all the victims we could, so technically the project is over. This is us cleaning up loose ends.”
This is me needing to cut the head off the monster. I’ve learned too much to think the world can truly be rid of evil, but I’m sure as fuck going to take as much of it with me as I can before I go.
Even though sometimes I’m one of the monsters.
“Got it.” Reece gives me a halfhearted salute and lugs his bloody package out to the loading bay. Meanwhile, I tap out one more text, because I’m tired as hell and I never can leave well enough alone.
Liam: If you don’t come the hell home after class, I will hunt you down.