Chapter 7 #2
Prepping the cargo. They were raping those women, brutalizing them, and they were just prepping the cargo for transport.
Sickness surged again. I kept my breathing even by sheer force. A hand settled against my lower back, the touch almost ghost light, yet the warmth of Bones’ contact seared me through my shirt.
“After that?” Voodoo asked.
Ignacio’s voice cracked. “I got paid. In cash. Always cash. Always on delivery. No delivery, no payment. No transfers. No names. Then I waited for the next order.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Ignacio whispered. “I didn’t have any control. None. You have to believe me.”
Silence rippled through the basement, tight and sharp.
Voodoo looked at him for a long moment, then angled his head slightly, eyes flicking to Sinclair’s unconscious body.
“All right,” Voodoo said, tone shifting—not more aggressive, but more precise. Surgical.
“One last question.”
Ignacio froze.
“What is the connection,” Voodoo asked, “between all of this… and Sinclair?”
Every cell in Ignacio’s body seemed to seize with terror.
And the look on his face told me he knew. He absolutely knew. Even if he didn’t want to say it.
Realization hit me with sickening clarity. “He was the middleman.”
All eyes snapped to me.
“It wasn’t the port manager who paid you the cash,” I clarified. “It was Sinclair—maybe not always him, but you knew him enough to know he was the one who paid you.”
Ignacio’s flinch was answer enough. He didn’t speak. Didn’t deny it. His breath hitched and his shoulders shook.
I took a step forward, then another. Voodoo and Legend both shifted, letting me narrow the gap without moving out from between me and the man shaking in the chair. Keeping my arms folded, I studied Ignacio.
“What happened when you lost your delivery?” Because they had, hadn’t they? When the warehouse we’d been in had been attacked? He’d run.
A shake of his head, a violent refusal, but Ignacio kept his lips pressed tight.
“You lost us,” I said, reminding him. “That day is sketchy, but you dragged me up from the foot of the bed, you had my chain.”
It was weird how those memory flashes cut in and out, so close I could feel the way his fingers had bitten into my skin and how clammy I’d been. Yet distant enough that it didn’t suffocate me.
“There was shouting and gunshots, you dragged me into the hall. We were going to run away—well you were—you wanted to escape, but I froze.” The fear had choked me then.
Freeze. Fight. Flight.
I’d frozen.
The gunshots had come closer. Then…
“You left me,” I said slowly. “To save your own ass, you just left me and the man who chased you knocked me into the wall.” Maybe. That part was very fuzzy. After, I’d woken in the truck far away from Ignacio, the warehouse, and the rest of the “cargo.”
Ignacio’s throat bobbed as if he fought to swallow.
“So what happened when you didn’t show up with your prepared cargo?” Just saying the cold, dehumanized words made bile rise in my throat.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Voodoo pressed the button and Ignacio shook so violently the chair went sideways and he slammed into the concrete floor. The stink of burning hair wreathed the whole damn room. Hair, sweat, and now urine. The man had pissed himself.
In some small way, that felt like a victory. He’d made me feel that way. Now he would understand how it felt.
Hollow victory or not, I’d take it.
“Answer her question,” Voodoo ordered, and the coldness in his tone turned the air frosty. “Now.”
Ignacio looked trapped, his chest rising and falling too fast.
Caught between the fear of lying and the terror of telling the truth. It took three more shocks and Ignacio actually sobbing before he said, “I didn’t go!”
“I ran,” he babbled. “They would have killed me. Cargo is valuable. They slaughtered most of my men. Killed them.” His tears weren’t faked nor were his wracking cries.
“I stayed away. The ones who came, they were competitors. They came for what was taken from them. There were others hunting for me—Europeans.”
That actually made him look mystified for a moment.
“They had questions, questions about you.” He looked up at me from where he lay on the floor, trembling. “I barely made it out alive. Then I came here.”
“Why here?” Legend asked and Ignacio jerked, as if he’d forgotten that he was here.
“Because Sinclair has money, has access, he is also in trouble. We could help each other.” Eyes closing, the man sucked in one ragged breath after another, as though he could barely stand to say the words. Or maybe the truth just hurt him.
Good.
“Did he?” I asked, not willing to wait for him to get a grip.
“Not yet,” Ignacio admitted, then he looked up at me with his bloodshot and defeated eyes. “Then I saw you in his office and thought he must have fixed it… You were here. You would be mine again.”
For the first time since I’d stepped into the basement, the nausea wasn’t from the smell or the memories or the pain in the air. It was from disgust.
“I was never yours,” I told him. “When this is done, I’m never going to think of you again. Just passing road kill on the highway of my life.”
The silence stretched and Voodoo glanced at me. Did I have any more questions?
“Only one,” I answered, then blew out a breath. “Were you the one who also took my sister?”
The utter blankness in Ignacio’s expression was the answer. He didn’t know about Amorette. She had been taken. Likely by people just like this son of a bitch. More cargo to be prepared. My stomach bottomed out and I barely kept the urge to vomit again in check.
Barely.
So, that just left us with Sinclair.
The guys asked him a few more questions, his answers didn’t change and he didn’t reveal anything new. The fact he didn’t even fight answering or try to evade gave his words an element of truth.
As if satisfied, Voodoo glanced at each of us in turn. One by one the guys shook their heads and when he checked with me, I shook mine too. I didn’t have any more questions.
“Do you want to do it?” Bones asked, his lips next to my ear in a dark and sensuous caress. He was putting Ignacio’s life in my hands, literally. The man was going to die, it didn’t really matter which one of us pulled the trigger. But they were giving it to me if I wanted it.
Did I?