Chapter Eight
Liam
The East End warehouse my company owns looks like it’s past being condemned. From the road it’s all peeling paint and crumbling stone. A sign out front that’s no longer readable.
Around back? That’s where I string up the prisoners.
It’s about four in the morning when I drag myself from the car, not quite an hour after leaving Ravi to stew in his own stupidity for a while.
The entire drive over here, minus the few minutes it took to order and receive a large black coffee from an all-night drive-through, has been spent wondering how long I can realistically keep him there.
And what the fuck was I thinking, losing my shit and disciplining him like that? The noises he made when he came are still ringing in my ears. The whimpers. The moans. The goddamn screaming.
Fucked up of me? Sure. As much as I want to deny I lost control, I absolutely did.
This is entirely Ravi’s fault, though. I told him to stay away from Brennan, and I told him to stay away from escorting. He didn’t listen. Worse, he’s come up with a harebrained get-rich-quick scheme that could easily land him in the hospital again.
Or worse. Much worse.
Maybe I need to show him case files from back when my team was hired to retrieve a young man who’d run away from home.
He’d left to escape parents who were clearly a bit heavy-handed but landed himself in a worse world of hurt by hooking up with an abusive sugar daddy who got him addicted to drugs to keep him compliant.
Or Cam Blakely, one of the initial victims of the trafficking ring we’ve been dismantling, who hasn’t spoken a word since my team found him on an island off the coast of Brazil.
By the time we got them back home, all the therapy in the world wouldn’t put those kids together again.
Ravi doesn’t understand. There are far uglier things out there in the real world than being asked to follow a strict set of rules.
Kid doesn’t get it. I’m doing all of this for him.
I’m slugging coffee by the back door when a Porsche SUV pulls up. Out jumps a medium height, muscular blond, and Sebastian Pierce, a former client.
“Thanks for calling us,” Sebastian says. He holds out a hand to shake, which I do, even though I don’t like having to juggle my coffee.
After which, Sebastian looks to the guy he brought with him. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Definitely.” The blond nods his head. “I want to see that fucker suffer.”
Sebastian hired us to find out why people on his consulting company’s client list were going missing. We’ve completed our obligation to him, and any stragglers involved in the operation were picked off because abusive pieces of shit piss me off.
During our investigating, Pierce’s boyfriend was kidnapped by one Pastor Elijah. The pastor owned a farm nearby, in the rural unincorporated area between Belle Argo and Beacon Hill. Only a few miles down the road from my own home, in fact.
Turned out the good pastor had not only been using his private and well-protected religious commune to hide trafficking victims, but he’d been selling teen boys from some of the “less valuable” families in his commune to bring in extra cash. A real philanthropist, this one.
So when our team located Pastor Elijah, I reached out as a courtesy. Pierce struck me as the sort of man who would want to be personally involved in resolving things.
When we get inside, my tech guru is waiting. Bev might be brainy, but she can wrestle a man to the ground as easily as she can hack his email. Which is how Pastor Elijah ended up hanging from the warehouse ceiling with his head lolling sideways. He’s conscious, but he doesn’t look good.
“Nice to see you out in the field for a change,” I tell Bev. Then I nod to the hanging man. “You fucked him up pretty good.”
She tosses her thick chestnut braid over her shoulder, boots thudding on the floor as she approaches. “I like it better behind my computer. But—” She shrugs. “—nearly everyone else is out of the office right now. Besides, who doesn’t enjoy putting a man in his place once in a while?”
“I appreciate you going above and beyond. I’ll keep it in mind when I’m handing out end-of-year bonuses.”
She only rolls her eyes and shrugs again. Bev is someone I suspect does what we do for her own reasons other than the pay. Still, I try to take care of my employees.
Sebastian Pierce studies the slumped figure. “Where’d you find him?”
“A small camper not too far from the farm where he’d been running his commune.
It was rented in his name. We figure he parked it out in the woods at some point as a hideaway.
It sort of worked. The FBI didn’t find him when they searched the property, but when the land went up for sale this week, we went back for a final sweep.
He was living in a moldy, piss-smelling metal box and eating out of tin cans.
” I give his limp body a kick, enjoying his pained groan. “How the mighty have fallen.”
The blond one, Simon, perks up. “You said the property’s up for sale?” He pulls out his phone and starts typing.
“I think he knows someone who might be interested,” Sebastian explains.
Nodding, I pull out both my phone and Ravi’s, placing them next to each other on the metal table where I keep my interrogation tools.
If he does something clever, or if more messages come from Brennan, I want to know.
It’s a long shot, since Brennan already knows I’ve intercepted his texts.
So far, the only recent ones have been some group thread discussing brunch plans. Plans Ravi will not be there for.
“Elijah, I’m Liam. Nice to see you.” I’ve learned that sometimes politeness throws these guys off their game. They expect me to come out swinging, and then I introduce myself like a gentleman.
Then I start swinging.
After I land a punch to his gut, his eyes fly open. They’re piercing and blue, oddly cold. That old chestnut about eyes being a window to the soul? This guy hasn’t got one. Still, the retching and pained gasps are real.
“Okay, here’s how this goes. I’ll start with what I know, and you’re going to fill in any blanks,” I tell our prisoner.
“We know about a guy named Tony, whose bright idea it was to start trafficking well-off entrepreneurs and sometimes their family members. He’s dead now, in case you forgot.
We also took care of the bartender he’d been paying off at parties to drug certain attendees.
Also dead. Then, of course, there are the two guys who were hired to put select kidnapping victims on private planes and fly them to wherever they’d been purchased.
Those guys are also dead. Are you sensing the theme? ”
Pastor Elijah’s stare is sharp and hard. No begging or pleading. Nothing but a bit of labored breathing.
“See, the trouble with these operations is they’re like a hydra.
So many heads, and we’ll keep cutting off as many as we have to.
I will happily remove yours as well.” I lean in, close enough that he can hear my lowered voice, but not close enough that he could manage to headbutt me.
“We know you guys were working with at least one member of law enforcement. We know a shell company with the operating initials TMI was transporting these victims overseas. We know your farm was used to store and transport victims. Someone was bankrolling this whole fucking thing. Who was the money guy?”
“You’re going to kill me. It doesn’t serve me to tell you anything.”
“Good point, Pastor.” His observation pleases me so much I feel my cheeks spreading with an unnatural grin. “But the easier you make this on yourself, the easier I make it on you.”
“Hmm.” He sounds the opposite of impressed.
“I don’t think you should make it easy on him at all,” Simon says with his arms crossed over his chest.
Sebastian leans over to his boyfriend. “Baby, anything they get from Elijah could help them find the other people still involved. Which helps the chances of making sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen in Belle Argo anymore.”
Elijah, for his part, simply smiles and manages a sort of shrug, killing any notion that he’s anything more than inconvenienced by this entire situation.
I gesture to Sebastian and then at my tools. “You want to get started?”
He turns to his boyfriend. “What about you, baby? You want to be the one to hurt him?”
The blond wrinkles his nose. “I don’t want to even touch him. Will you do it for me, Sir?”
Sir.
An unexpected memory hits me like a brick to the face. You’re not my parent. But you could be my daddy if you wanted.
Of all the fucking times. I’m a breath away from shoving the table full of knives and implements sideways. If I get hard in the middle of an interrogation, I’ll hang my own self from the damn ceiling.
Sebastian smiles, pulling a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket, and gets to work.
Ignoring the steady thumps and groans of a man getting beaten, I pick up the two phones to check for notifications.
The tracker in his watch tells me Ravi’s staying put at home for a change, and there’s still nothing on his phone aside from brunch plans and dick jokes.
When I look up, I’m surprised to see Simon regarding me and not watching his boyfriend pummel the man who kidnapped him.
“Why do you have Ravi’s phone?”
“Whose?”
The blond crosses his arms over his chest. “I know it’s his.
What are the chances that anyone else in the world has a blue glitter phone case with the initials RN on the back in magic marker?
I tease him about his initials all the time.
I’m a nurse. You know, RN?” I don’t answer, but after a minute, he reaches a conclusion.
“You must be Liam. I remember now, seeing you at the hospital. And he’s talked about you. ”
My eyebrows jump into the air. “Has he?”
Probably nothing good.
Simon shrugs. “Some. Doesn’t sound like the two of you get along too well.”
That would be putting it mildly. “He’s a teenager with his head up his own ass,” I growl. “It’s not my job to be his friend. It’s my job to keep him out of his own way.”
Simon’s frown pulls me up short. Rein it in, Liam.
“Sometimes people butt heads,” I add, trying to smooth away his apparent suspicion with a softer tone.
The way Simon’s looking at me, he seems to have come to some sort of conclusion. There’s a knowing glint in his eye. I don’t know what it means, and I’m not sure I want to.
“Yeah, they fucking do,” he says after a while. As if that makes any sense.
A pained groan tells us Sebastian is still at work. From past experience, he tends to work in a pattern of hitting the guy a couple of times and then asking a question. The pastor, little that he’s willing to speak, seems to be giving the same information I got from the bartender.
I hesitate before saying, “All roads seem to lead to Tony.”
I study the man, waiting for his reaction. Tony was Sebastian’s husband, after all.
“Fuck.” Sebastian straightens up, cracking his back. “Now I kind of wish I hadn’t killed him.”
Jesus. Even I’m not that cold. Tony caused a fucking shipping freighter’s worth of trouble though, to be fair. Betrayal runs deep.
I think of the way Ravi looked at me right before I locked him in his room and try to rub the icy spot in my chest away. Betrayal.
“This is the third person who’s said their only interactions were with Tony,” I agree.
Some alert on Simon’s phone brings his head up. “Hey, Sebastian, we need to get going.”
Sebastian nods, wiping the blood from his brass knuckles and sliding them into his pocket. “Whatever you want, baby.”
Simon stomps up to the limp, barely alive body, stopping close enough to put his middle finger in the pastor’s face. “I hope you rot in hell,” he whispers before storming out.
Sebastian gestures to me. “You mind finishing him off?”
I glance at Ravi’s phone when it pings again. There’s a text from Brennan asking for two guys who are willing to do a “joint performance.”
I can guess what that means. Fucking piece of shit.
Fucking Brennan Doyle. Fucking Ravi.
Brennan’s smug face in my head makes my hands curl into fists.
I’ve seen what you do when your ‘poker buddies’ come over and you think I’m not here. I’ve never seen someone so unsteady and so cocky at the same time as the moment when Ravi called me out. Especially not post-orgasm. The thought makes my breath come faster.
I look to Sebastian and then back at the pastor, who’s hanging there like a bloody punching bag.
“Yeah, I can finish this up.”
My knuckles crack when I flex my fingers. It’s been a long fucking night. Ravi’s face flashes behind my eyes again. His tearstained face and puffy lips.
Before I know what I’m doing, my booted foot plants on the leg of the steel table, sending the whole thing to the floor. Bev’s eyes go wide. Even the pastor almost looks startled.
Fuck it. Sebastian Pierce had the right idea. I could use a punching bag right now.
Maybe if I hit this guy hard enough, I can get Ravi’s flushed face and dilated pupils out of my mind. The memory of him shuddering in my grasp when he came.
“Let’s fucking finish this,” I say as my fist sinks into the man’s stomach.