Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Leith
I need to work fast. The longer she’s gone, the less chance I have of finding her.
As I’m waiting with Declan and Draven in a second room in the cellar, Ewen and Hardie bring in a man, and when I glance up from my phone, my jaw drops.
The guy looks as if he could be Aaron’s brother.
Tall, well-built, and strong-nosed, he has brown eyes, black hair, and dark scruff.
He even dresses like Aaron with khaki cargo trousers, an off-grey henley, and black boots.
As they cuff him to the chair, I stare at him, trying to figure out how he can be Aaron’s doppelg?nger. So far as I know, Aaron didn’t have a brother.
“What’s your name?” I demand.
“Ron Pirie.” His voice, at least, is different from Aaron’s. It’s thicker and lower.
“Are you related to Aaron Frye?”
“Not that I know of.”
The resemblance is uncanny.
I take up a stance in front of him. “Did you serve as an anonymous source for Stennis Gilzean’s article in The Scottish Book Reviewer?”
He chuffs a scornful laugh. “Aye.”
“Why?”
He starts whistling You’ll Never Walk Alone out of tune.
I give the signal to Hardie, who grabs Pirie’s right hand and bends the middle finger back. A crack punctures the air, and Pirie howls.
“We have all the time in the world and all the tools we could wish for.” I gesture to Declan’s wall of implements—hammers, drills, pliers, and so forth. “So the sooner you tell us the truth, the less miserable you’ll be.”
“I-I fed him those stories so you’d be consumed with doubt about Iona and distracted from the Lowing case,” Pirie sputters.
“So the Syndicate would lose the case?”
“Aye.”
I pace around him, framing my next question carefully. “Whom is the COPFS protecting?”
Pirie’s eyes flare, but he shakes his head. “N-no one.”
I dart a glance at Ewen, who takes a pair of pliers and extracts Pirie’s pinky nail. Pirie’s scream echoes off the concrete walls.
Ewen holds the pliers over Pirie’s index finger, ready to tear that nail off too.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?” I look down at Aaron’s likeness. “Whom are they protecting?”
Pirie shakes his head. “I-I can’t say.”
I nod at Ewen, who rips off the index nail to the sound of Pirie’s shrieks.
I pivot temporarily, following a hunch. “Do you ken who Phyfe MacGilson is?”
His pupils dilate, and he pauses. “Nah.”
I shoot a look at Hardie, who swings a hammer and slams it down on Pirie’s kneecap. Pirie bursts into tears and wails, “Aye! Ah do. Ah do ken him.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “How do you ken him?”
“He—he hired me . . .” Pirie trails off, sobbing from the pain.
“To do what?” I think I know where this is going.
“To do an experiment,” Pirie gets out.
“What kind of experiment?”
Pirie shakes his head, sending tears flying in all directions. “I didn’t understand it. But it involved near-raping a woman until MacGilson called a stop to it.”
Grizel’s assailant. “Was there another couple involved?”
Pirie’s eyes widen, and he clams up. At my signal Hardie lifts the hammer again.
“Wait!” Pirie shouts. “I’ll tell you. MacGilson hired two of us. The other guy forced another burd. MacGilson put body cams and mics on us. He waited outside so he wouldn’t disturb the experiment. Then he came in at the last minute and told us to stop.”
Another burd is Iona.
Smoke blows through my nostrils. “Where is MacGilson now?”
Pirie warily eyes the drill in Ewen’s hands. “I can tell you the address. I drove him there myself.”
I nod to Draven, who takes down an address in Campbeltown.
“Who was the man assigned to assault the other lassie?” I demand.
Who attacked my wee Flame?
Who put the fear of men in my Scheherazade?
As with the question about whom he’s protecting, Pirie closes down. He tilts his chin up and closes his eyes, the way I imagine Iago doing in the final act of Othello.
Fuck that.
Too much rides on this, and I have to get Iona back. Pronto.
“Go ahead,” I invite Ewen, who powers on the drill.
Pirie’s eyes round in horror as Ewen brings the whirring drill close to his eyeball. I count five seconds, then give the go-ahead. Ewen drills Pirie’s right eye out. Blood splatters everywhere, and Pirie’s screams could bring the house down.
“I lied, Pirie.” I step behind him, leaning in to murmur in his ear. “We don’t actually have all day. You see, I’m hell-bent on finding the lassie your friend assaulted. Until you tell us whom you and the COPFS are protecting and who attacked Iona, you’re going to lose more body parts.”
Pirie attacked Grizel. Hence why Iona misidentified Aaron in the line-up.
Aaron and Pirie are near-identical. I have newfound respect for Iona’s powers of perception.
She picked the one man I could understand her mistaking for Pirie—my best friend.
And here I’ve been persecuting her for weeks, when she’s justifiably mistaken.
Draven, Declan, and I torture Pirie all evening into the night, but we get nothing more. As far as tight lips go, he could give Kim Philby a run for his money.
At 2 a.m. I leave Pirie in the cellar, short a few body parts, and tell Draven I’m driving to the address Pirie gave for MacGilson. This is a long shot. I have no clue if MacGilson can give me any information on Iona’s whereabouts. But it’s my only hope.
* * *
Iona
All evening I’ve been tied up, lying on my back on a cold floor in a house on the coast. I know it’s the coast because they laid me by a floor-to-ceiling window facing the sea and it’s deathly cold.
One of the three men who took me threw a ratty blanket over me, but it does little to warm me.
Watching the terns swoop for food has at least given me an inspiring picture of freedom.
And when dusk came, the men switched on a light in the other room, allowing me to see, in the reflection of the window, what the two men besides my attacker look like.
These two men have worn black ski masks whenever they interact with me, trying to protect their identity.
But I’ve heard my attacker refer to the short, blond, red-faced guy with the weathered skin as Dalziel.
And the lanky, black-haired man with a permanent frown on his face is Finn.
They aren’t aware that when I look away toward the sea I’m really studying their expressions.
Of the three men, my nameless attacker is the worst, and he’s their ringleader. I suspect if the other two men weren’t around, he would force me in a heartbeat. For this reason, I’m praying with all my might that Finn and Dalziel stay awake and nearby.
But apparently I’m finally out of luck. After Finn has checked to make sure my restraints are tight enough, he and Dalziel retire.
Now it’s just my assaulter and me, and I feel his oppressive presence in the next room like heavy fog.
He’s turned the light off, making it impossible for me to see what he’s doing.
But from the blue glow of his phone I know he’s awake and ready to strike.
A chair scrapes back, and boots thud across the floor. It’s so dark, I can only slightly make out his face and the movement of his darkly clad form approaching me.
I open my mouth to scream, but he’s too quick. He claps a hand over my mouth, then stuffs a sock in it and fastens a leather harness about my head.
Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
He’s going to rape me, and this time no one will call a stop to it.
From my head to my toes goes rigid, and my mouth feels stuffed with sandpaper.
I wriggle and writhe as much as possible in hopes of making sounds that’ll call attention to what he’s doing.
But while I can hear the blood roaring in my head, I doubt Finn or Dalziel can hear anything.
As he throws the blanket off me, I thrash about, screaming behind my gag. He crawls over me, and this close I can make out the malice in his wolfish expression. Rucking the skirt of my dress around my waist, he rips my panties off and tosses them aside.
A tear slides down my cheek as I turn to look out the window. At this point the best I can hope for is that it goes by fast. But as his fist connects with my face, pain explodes in my sinuses, and wetness trickles from my nose.
He leans over and hisses in my ear, “Watch me, slut.”
As he wrenches his trousers and boxer briefs down, it’s four years ago all over again.
He holds the tip of his knife to my chin while angling his tip at my entrance.
I blink away the tears, forcing myself not to dissociate as I did last time.
Nor will I have a flashback. I want to know everything he does to me so I can later fuel my lust for revenge.
An electronic tune goes off beside us, and he pauses, looking over at his lit-up phone. Cursing, he drops the knife on my chest, springs to his feet, and answers the call while hiking up his clothes. Then he strides into the adjacent room.
I let out a long breath through my nose, only now realizing I haven’t breathed since he started prowling toward me in the darkness.
The light goes on in the other room, making me dare to hope that could be it for now. His voice is too low for me to hear what he’s saying, but it sounds as if he’s being instructed to do something.
Please do anything but that, I silently wish.
My teeth chatter, and my body convulses from the cold, but I welcome these sensations that keep me awake and alert. Maybe if I’m watchful enough, he won’t strike again.
* * *
Leith
Starting out toward MacGilson’s location in Campbeltown, I call Diran.
He answers on the third ring, his voice barely giving away that he was asleep. “What’s gaun on?”
“Iona’s been kidnapped. They haven’t yet contacted us with demands, but I expect that to come any moment.” I head north toward Loch Lomond.
Diran doesn’t waste a moment blethering. “Who d’you need? You can have anyone.”
I list off three captains and six soldiers, mostly from Chance’s and Malcolm’s teams.
“Done,” Diran agrees. “What else can I do?”