Chapter Twenty-Four Master At Work #3
We don’t talk again, just letting the noise of the safe twisting fill the void. Not until she finally puts in the right order of numbers, pulling the door open with a loud groan.
“Piece of cake.” She whispers, patting herself on the back. Which I’m glad she did because I wouldn’t be doing it for her.
I squat down, looking inside hoping something in here will give me the information I need. Will give us what we need.
Grabbing the phone and manila envelope out of the safe, walking it to his desk so I can lay them down. My first action is turning the phone on, waiting for the white apple to go away before a basic lock screen appears.
I’m not surprised to find there is a password protecting the information inside. I grind my teeth, “What was the combination to the safe?” I ask Briar.
“5749.”
Tapping the numbers out on the phone only to have it vibrate and tell me it’s the wrong one. Knowing I’m not going to get anything out of it but more frustration, I set it down opening the envelope instead.
Inside is a couple hundred dollars, along with a flash drive that seems promising. Carefully plunging it into the desktop computer, waiting for the file to pop up while Briar comes around to stand behind me, watching the screen over my shoulder.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” I turn my head to look back at her, eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m the one who got in the safe. I should be able to see what I helped steal.” Crossing her arms in front of her as if this power stance will intimidate me.
“Go watch the door.” I toss my head towards the entry. I didn’t need her seeing what was on this, even if it was nothing. If it happened to be something that gave away information about Rose and her death, Briar would be way more involved than she needed to be.
Bad luck threw her in my path the first time when she was at the mausoleum. The wrong lead kept her there, and her helping me into this safe was the last role she’d play in our journey of revenge.
I’d kept her on a string, a puppet I could play with from time to time, but she would have nothing to do with Rose and what we would be doing to the people who had a hand in her death.
“No.” She stands her ground, “Either you let me watch or I scream.”
“You willing to take the fall for this?” I quirk an eyebrow, knowing good and well we could throw her under the bus for what we were doing.
“If it means you don’t get the information on this flash drive than sure.”
I think she’s bluffing, the way her spine stiffens and she stares me dead in the eyes is convincing though. Weighing my options back and forth, knowing I don’t have the time for this.
“Fine, but whatever we find on this stays inside that thick skull of yours, got it?”
Nodding in agreement we both turn to face the computer again.
I can feel her breasts rub against my shoulder as she leans over me to see the screen, her smell so close to my nose that my cock can’t help but stiffen. I wonder if she’d stop me from tossing her on this desk and showing her how hard she could come when she was afraid of being caught.
How fast her heart would race as I watched adrenaline flow through her body.
Sinking my teeth into my bottom lip, like I would her skin, just to keep the images at bay.
When the file pops up with a ding, I double click pulling up a surveillance video. I’m not sure where it’s from, but it looks like a warehouse or construction sight. The concrete floors and tall ceilings leaving me nothing to go on.
There is a man tied to a chair in the center of the room while Greg West stands above him, walking in circles. I turn the volume up, hearing his voice filter through the speakers.
“I think we have been more than flexible with you. Now you owe us quite a lot of money.” He says, just before mystery man lifts his head and exposes his face to the camera.
Briar’s breath runs cold against my neck as she gasps, “Is that?”
I nod, biting the inside of my cheek, “Yeah it is.”
Together we watch Mayor Donahue struggle against the ropes that bind him, wiggling around as he speaks, “I just need a little more time, Greg! Just a little more time and I’ll have it all to you, in full.”
Acid burns the inside of my throat, my brain not being able to comprehend what my eyes are seeing. Because I know the man I watched sob over his daughter’s casket isn’t involved in her death. The man I took pity on. One I felt fucking sorry for.
My hand finds the edge of the desk, pressing my fingertips into it as I squeeze tightly to keep myself from throwing this computer at the wall.
“You said that six months ago. We have no more time to give you, Frank. The boss is tired of waiting. You either hand over the money now, you give us something else we could use, or,” Greg pauses, standing in front of the mayor shrugging, “Well, if it comes to that option, I’m not sure you’re gonna want to know what we will do to you. ”
Frank Donahue, a man who’d raised his daughters alone for as long as I can remember, one of the only people in this fucking town I respected, becomes everything I despise in less than twenty seconds.
“Fuck!” He groans, “What do you want? Just name it and it’s yours!”
My stomach boils, demons scratching the inside of my chest ready to rip me apart so they can get out.
“Well, you borrowed a lot of money from us for your last campaign, mayor.” Greg toys with him.
“I had to! I was going to go bankrupt if I didn’t.” He argues, his voice cracking a bit.
“Plenty of people go bankrupt, Frank, and they still don’t borrow money from people they don’t intend on giving back. Considering the money we lent you would have gone to buying another girl, we need product.”
I can feel as Briar’s hand rushes to cover her mouth, muffling the sound of a gasp as a revelation we both were not expecting comes out.
“That’s where Coraline went. She was taken.” She mumbles, fear shaking her voice, I can even hear the tears that are threatening to fall down her cheeks.
I’d only heard about Coraline Whittaker being missing in passing a few weeks ago. Thinking exactly what everyone else did, she hit the road and left this cursed town. I was going a million miles a minute, were there more missing girls?
“The boss doesn’t want to be too greedy, so he’s being nice here, Frank and is only requesting one of your daughters. You give one of them up and you can consider your debt paid.” Greg places his hands on the arms of the chair, leaning his face towards the mayor, “In full.”
The battle of Heaven and Hell attempts to tear my soul in half. A war I was never expecting to go on rages in my head.
I was going to crush Frank Donahue.
Every bone would be dust beneath my hands and when I was done making sure he’d never walk again, I’d let Thatcher slice him up real nice and serve him to this fucking town on a gold platter.
“You want one of my girls?” His voice shakes.
“Or the money. Your choice.”
“What will…will you kill her?”
I’m sick that he even needs to ask that question. I’m sick that he’s even debating it. I’m even more sick that I know what he’s going to do, because this answer leads directly to Rose’s death.
Sweet, innocent Rose who never deserved any of this shit. My friend, my best goddamn friend who stayed up at night worried something he did, someone he crossed was the reason his girl wound up dead.
“Don’t be naive, Frank. You’d be selling one of them to a sex operation. We sell and trade girls. What their owners do after we collect them, well, that’s out of our hands.”
“Oh my God.” Briar whimpers.
Greg pulls out a gun, holding it to Frank’s skull, making it clear he isn’t waiting for an answer.
“Wait, wa…wait! I need a second, just a second!”
“We’ve given you plenty of time. Your time is up.” I hear the tick of the gun being cocked back, the brief silence before Frank says the statement that changes the course of everyone’s life,
Forever.
“Rose. Take Rosemary.”