Page 37 of Boneyard HEA

“Apologies, sirs, madam. She will be taken care of,” my burly guard says to them, somewhat patiently, considering. Then he pulls the door shut and turns to me.

“Sorry?” I madly flap my tied hands as I take a step back, as if I’m hoping I can banish him with some magic spell.

He places his large, meaty hand on my head. “Kneel.”

Getting down on my knees when I can’t use my arms to balance with is difficult, but I manage it. The tiles are hard on my knees. I try to look chastised and sorry. What is his name?

I whisper, “Sorry, Shawn.”

“You stay there, girl. I’m not in charge of what happens to you, but you stay right there. Move again, and I will tie you to that wall.” He points at the mural wall, where people are still bound and being whipped.

He turns side-on to me and starts talking into his wrist. Though his tone is even, I gain the impression from that one raised, thick eyebrow over the eye he keeps on me, that he is not happy.

If I were him, I guess I wouldn’t be either, but I’m not him, I’m me, and I’ve ruled out two of my suspects. I mean, logically one of them might have been there with Riley, might’ve been the man without the scar, but seeing their close relationship with each other, I doubt it.

The problem is, I still have hundreds more cocks to check, and now I’m wondering if Mr. Loxland will give me the other clues. Nathan’s already ruled out, and not just because his face and dick were visible at times in the video. I ruled him out because, before I buried him, I saw his dick when I cut it off with the shovel and stuffed it in his mouth.

I wasn’t looking for scars then, but I am sure it had none.

14

Aaron

Karsten Drummond’s room is outside the hall, and we followed his underling a short distance through a hallway in the resort to his door. The man knocks, opens it, announces us, then scurries away. I enter first, nod to the man where he sits behind a desk that looks like it escaped from a principal’s office. A nice, private-school principal’s desk, but still, I’d bet a million he doesn’t like it.

Karsten loves his ostentation and his money.

“Sit, gentlemen.”

“We’re gentlemen today?”

“You are for now.” He smiles and rocks back in his leather chair, props a foot on the desk. His shoe is probably worth a thousand AUD alone. He makes that much a second, on good days, on the futures market.

Wisely, Tomás is letting me do the talking. I’m a full member, while he is not. To Karsten, the local CNC Fraternity head, that gives me certain status and rights.

No one else is present and I pull over two plush blue chairs from near the wall, offer one to Tomás, and we both sit.

“So. What is the reason for this?”

“Your submissive, Juniper Skye, is or was a friend of Riley Freyers, the recently deceased woman who falsely accused Nathan De Brit of rape.”

“And?” I’m not taking the bait. My poker face is great, and Tomás could out stare a charging rhino.

“And Nathan is missing. The cops here have no ideas but think he went swimming. Problem is his car is also missing, and it is not the sort of car that just goes poof into thin air.”

“Let me connect the dots. You think Juniper might know where he is?”

“Do you have any knowledge I need to be informed about? Because”—he sits forward, lets his foot slide off the desk—“if I find out you did, and you do not inform me, there will be hellfire raining down on you.”

“A threat, Karsten? I’m not some small fry. A lot of the people out there in the hall use the syndicate. To be clear.” I rap the desk. “No, we don’t have any such facts to tell you. She’s a hot girl I used to know from my younger days, and I was pleased to discover she likes getting fucked over and fucked by two very sexy men.” I offer my fist to Tomás and we fist-bump. It’s a gesture guaranteed to piss off Karsten.

He grunts. “You overestimate your influence. You’re treading close to the edge here, Aaron.”

The edge of what? Why is he, and the CNC Fraternity presumably, so worried about a woman who is a nobody? Not many men would assume a female friend of a friend would go kill or kidnap Nathan. I cannot quite understand the undercurrent here.

For a full minute, Karsten stews, moody as fuck from the storm in his eyes. He can’t really know what Juniper did. I had an inkling her identity might ring a bell for the fraternity, but we have covered her tracks, and the cops are not interested in her. So, I wait him out. Finally, he sits forward.

“You can go, Aaron, Mr. Zambrano. If you learn anything, make sure you inform me.” A phone on the desk buzzes, and Karsten picks it up, turns away from us to answer it.