Chapter 20
Chapter 20
I tapped the screen a second time and waited.
He chose his words carefully. “It’s obvious you’ve done this before. And it should be obvious to you that I’ve done this before. Can we skip to the end?”
“Love to.”
“I have a team. Six members.” He nodded to the video. “We’re expensive. We work word-of-mouth only. I never know my employer.” This much was probably true. He continued, “We got a phone call some thirty-six hours ago.”
“How’d they find you?”
“Initially?”
I nodded.
“Word-of-mouth, which led them to an address.”
“Where?”
“Black web.”
“What’s the address?”
He answered out loud, which gave Eddie a chance to run it from his desk in Colorado.
“Why initially?”
“Last night was not our first job for them.”
“How many?”
He calculated. “Two dozen. ”
“How do they pay?”
“Transfer. Same as everyone else.”
“Did you know who you took last night?”
“Intel provided the details, yes.”
“How’d you get behind their walls? How’d you know their routes?”
“The voice in my ear provided all that. We were simply meat and labor. Breach. Eliminate. Extract. Video. Wash our hands.”
“Where are they now?”
“Team or girls?”
“Either, but I’d prefer the girls.”
While I’d been speaking, Camp had taken a close-up pic of his face and identifying tattoos, scanned his fingerprints, and sent all of that to Eddie, Jess, and BP, who I imagined were rapidly running all that information through secret government databases. Mr. Mai Tai shook his head. “Can’t tell you. And before you start ripping out fingernails, cutting off parts of me that I’d rather keep, and pouring water up my nose, I’ve done all that too. Chances are good I’ll last a while. Time you can’t afford.” I tended to believe him. He eyed the syringe. “And time I don’t have.”
“Your employer?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Don’t want to. Occupational hazard. I know they’re serious when they wire the retainer. Then we go to work.”
“What’s your retainer?”
“Hundred grand.”
“These folks pay it?”
“Times five.” He nodded. “Then again when completed. Which explains why I’m on vacation in Maui...” He looked toward the bed. “With her.”
If this guy wasn’t such an evil turd, I might have liked him.
“Girls.” I inched closer, my breath washing his face. “Location.”
“Delivered to a runway. Extract was handled by a team I didn’t know. Didn’t know the pilots or the teams. They separate cells on purpose. We only know so much. Can’t trace it back to them.”
“What can you tell me?”
Camp flashed his phone in front of me, showing brief details about Steve Plexis. Former special operator, three tours, decorated, served with distinction, did not reassimilate well after leaving the military. Got sideways with the VA hospital over surgery and meds. Later, spent time in three federal prisons on drug and laundering charges. Camp adjusted the screen to show me a picture of two girls. One little. One trying not to be. The first was eight. Pigtails and a dress. Laughter. Innocence. Too young to know any better. The second maybe eighteen. Purple hair. Not happy. Beauty behind her eyes but definitely some daddy issues.
I turned my attention back to him. “What do you care about?”
About now, I had a feeling he was telling the truth. His eyes shot to my phone, to the empty syringe, then back to me. “Iris and Rose.”
Flower names. Interesting. “And they are?”
“My daughters.”
This struck me. “And yet you took three of someone else’s, stripped them, gagged them, bound them, photographed them, and delivered them to the highest bidder.”
He nodded, studying us. As I was formulating the next question, a flash occurred in front of my eyes, followed by a nasty, bone-cracking sound and a scream. Steve’s forearm had been snapped in two by Clay’s cane, and one end of the bone now protruded through the skin. Steve’s eyes rolled back and forth in his head as he fought to shed the pain. He tried to gather the words. Finally, he spoke. “I do see the hypocrisy.”
I held up the picture. “Which one’s Iris?”
He began sweating profusely and I began to smell urine. “Younger.”
I sat back and turned the Narcan inhaler in my hands. “Steve... help me help you.”