19. Dax
19
DAX
I shake out my fist, the cold, metallic scent of blood heavy in the air as the would-be attacker lolls in the chair he’s tied to.
“You okay?” Callum asks me, his voice low. I nod quickly. Last thing I want is for him to go worrying about me. I’m fine. This part, the part where I beat the shit out of this guy, I can handle. It’s everything else that I have a hard time with.
“You ready to talk yet?” Chuck demands, grabbing the man by the back of the head, yanking him upright by his hair and forcing him to look into his eyes. The man’s gaze is distant, as though he’s somewhere else entirely—or at least, he wants to be.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” he spits back. “Where the fuck am I? Who are you?”
“You start talking to us, and we’ll start talking to you,” Chuck replies. “Who sent you up here? James?”
The man draws his gaze away from Chuck once more, but I can tell we’ve hit a sore spot. He might not want to admit it, but that fucker is the exact reason he’s up here in the mountains—locked up in our storage shed, with Charli at a safe distance in the cabin, getting the shit kicked out of him until he hands over the information we need.
“You don’t need to protect him,” Callum presses him. “We know what kind of guy he is. Tell us what you know, and we’ll let you go. No hard feelings.”
The man spits out a mouthful of blood and lets out a sharp, mirthless laugh.
“You really expect me to believe that?” he demands. I flex my hand again at the sound of his sharp words. I don’t appreciate his attitude, especially not knowing that he came here to find Charli.
“I expect you to figure out what’s good for you, and fast,” Chuck snarls back. “James isn’t here to protect you. And even if he was—you really think he would give a damn about what happened to one of his lackeys?”
He shoves the man’s head down again, and he rocks on the chair, unable to steady himself as his hands are bound behind his back. Callum is pacing back and forth next to the door, and Chuck runs a hand through his hair, clearly not sure how to handle this.
But I know. Out of the three of us, I’m the one who saw the most action. I know how to get this information out of him. They’ve been too kind to him so far, and that’s the last thing you want for a motherfucker like this. You need to break them.
Or at least show that you’re prepared to destroy them, if that’s what it takes.
I stride toward him and grab the knife at my side. It’s a hunting blade, one that I usually only make use of when I’m skinning animals for food, but right now I’m ready to tear the skin from his bones if I have to. I press the sharp edge into his cheek, and he lets out a groan of pain—so exhausted from all the hurt he can barely keep himself upright.
“I suggest you start talking soon,” I growl at him as I draw the blade slowly over his cheek. A smear of blood darkens the metal, his skin staining with the crimson red. He winces, and a drop falls down into his mouth. His eyes widen as he seems to realize what’s happening to him, but I don’t let up, not for a second. I keep the blade trailing down his face, reaching the corner of his lip, where I tuck the tip into the crease of his mouth.
“Because you can use this mouth for something useful,” I continue. “Or I can carve a new one for you. Your choice.”
The man stares up at me, his eyes painted with terror. Behind me, I can hear Callum and Chuck breathing hard. Though neither of them would say it, they hate seeing me like this, so lost to the darkest part of myself. But if this is what it takes, if this is what I have to do to keep her safe—then I don’t have to think twice. It’s what needs to be done.
I apply a little more pressure to the serrated edge of the knife, letting it snag on the inside of his lip. And finally, it seems to get through to him. He twists his head away from me, spitting out more blood.
“I’ll talk, I’ll fucking talk,” he snarls, sounding almost as angry at himself as he does at us. I shoot a look to Chuck and Callum. They both seem relieved, though I’m sure neither would admit that they were happy to see me like this.
“What the fuck did James send you here for?” I demand, my voice catching at the back of my throat as I wipe off the blood from the blade and stuff it back into the holster. I can still smell the blood in the air, the weight of it pulling me back to the night it happened. At the corners of my vision, I can almost see the dark shadows around me again, the bodies splayed everywhere I looked.
But I know it’s not real. It can’t be. The only thing that’s real is keeping Charli alive—and I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that.
“For the girl,” the man fires back. “He paid us a few thousand each to follow every track she might have taken after she ran from the wedding. I was the one who saw you guys moving the car, and we set up shop here after that.”
“Set up shop? What does that mean?” I press, my hand resting on the hilt of the knife again, making sure he knows damn well what I’m willing to do if he doesn’t give me what I want.
“He’s got a half dozen men stationed in the town over the hill, Killinsbury,” he replies, jerking his head outside. “He’s been paying them to go on recon up here every other day or so, and the surrounding areas. He’s got other guys stationed in other towns, ready to catch her if she tries to run for it, but his focus is up here.”
He looks between us. “And I guess he was right about that.”
None of us say a word. We’re not giving him anything to go on, not a chance in hell. As tempting as it might be to act like we have this in the bag now he’s talking, all it would take would be one well-timed attack from James’s men, and they’d have him right back where they wanted him, able to share any information he might have gleaned from us.
“You found the traps,” he continues. “And you must have got rid of them, because we found them dumped in the middle of the forest, miles away…”
I smirk. My idea. Something to waste their time and grow their frustration. I knew there was nothing more likely to get these guys looking for a way to finish this than if they felt like they were being sent on a wild goose chase, and at least some of them were, by the sounds of it.
“But he kept us out here. Paid off the local cops not to ask any questions about where we came from or what we were doing. None of them have given us any shit. I heard his father’s rich…”
He trails off, looking to us again. He really doesn’t know what the hell he’s gotten himself into. I would almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn’t working with that psycho James to pay his bills. For a moment, I find myself wondering if he was once like us—back from service, just struggling to get by. I know how hard that can be…
But even at my worst, I never would have agreed to work with someone like James. Not then, not now, not ever. Being out on the street is better than that. And this guy is about to learn that, once and for all.
“What does he want with her?” Chuck demands, striding forward to pick up on the line of questioning. “Why is he so intent on getting her back?”
“She left him at the altar,” he replies, his voice hollow. “That’s what he told me, anyway. Any man would want?—”
“Would want what?” Chuck presses, leaning forward, his eyes narrowing. The man pauses for a moment, and takes a breath before he replies.
“Would want revenge.”
A coldness rushes over me. Revenge? All this time, I guess I’ve just believed that this James dude wanted her back because he intended to force her to go through with the wedding, but no—it’s not that. It was never that. He’s got something else in mind entirely.
And if this is the extent he’s willing to go to in order to get revenge, I don’t even want to think what might be waiting for her on the other side of it.
“What kind of revenge does he want?” Callum asks, his voice low. He likely already knows the answer to this question, but he needs to hear it out loud. He needs to know that he’s not paranoid for his mind going where it’s gone. We all turn to the man, a heavy silence hanging in the air as we wait for him to respond.
He flicks his tongue over his lip, where the blood has reached his mouth. Despite the scar on his face and the bruising on his jaw, for a moment it looks as though he’s the one calling the shots here.
“He wants to kill her.”