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Unlike in that stretch of ten blocks between all those clubs, down by the bridge. Where he’d found the man he’d initially dealt with, before the woman had stepped in to do the negotiating.
Besides . . . if someone didn’t answer the phone when there were millions on the line?
He knew what had happened to her, even if he didn’t have the details.
On that note, he turned away from the stairs, and twisted his back to release some of the tension in his spasming abdominals—
What was that noise?
As he froze and held his breath, he listened. Out on the street, a car with loud music trolled by. Someone hollered at somebody else. In the distance, there were sirens—then again, when weren’t there sirens in downtown Caldwell.
Sniffing at the air, he just got more of the same. And the smell of his own blood.
Lots of the latter.
“This is bullshit,” he muttered as he went to the exit.
His eye on the prize needed to stay where it had been before that woman and he had crossed paths . . . and he’d ended up in a ditch.
Rio felt the switchblade’s tip move from between her breasts to down onto her abdomen. The point was doing a helluva job on both her fleece as well as the thin cotton t-shirt underneath, the layers giving way, her skin registering the contact with a shiver of warning. She didn’t know whether or not he was cutting her yet because she both was numb and hyperaware at the same time.
But whether it was happening now or not, things were going to head in that surgical direction. Fast.
“I really like to film these kinds of things,” the man said softly with his accent. “Mozart needs proof, but I like videos as well for my personal souvenir. Smile for the camera.”
The blade disappeared, and he gripped her chin and forced her face over to the tripod. As she breathed hard through her stuffy nose, the nostrils flaring and sucking in, flaring and sucking in, she felt the switchblade snake down to her breast, the tip making a circle around her nipple.
“You’re going to be so pretty when I’m done with you.” The tone was soothing, as someone might placate a patient who was about to get a medical procedure done. “And don’t worry, I’m going to make sure you feel everything I do to you. If we have to take breaks for you to catch your breath, we will. And when the end comes, and I enter you properly, you’re going straight to heaven.”
Rio squeezed her eyes shut and thrashed against the ropes, her body fighting for its freedom on its own, her brain taking a back seat to the high-octane fear coursing through her veins.
The man took a break from the teasing and sat on his heels, watching her as a child who had picked the wings off a fly might regard the insect’s futile suffering.
She ran out of energy pretty quickly, and then she was limp and sweating, in spite of the cold.
“So pretty,” he murmured as he tilted his head and then brushed her bangs back with the switchblade. “I wish I could take out the gag. I want to hear everything you have to say to me, and I want to kiss you—”
The door to the apartment blew off its hinges, not opening but falling in, the panel hitting the floor with a clap and a cloud of dust, its screws bouncing free as they ran off across the bare floorboards.
After that . . . Rio wasn’t sure what happened.
The man with the switchblade was attacked, but not by another person. It was an animal, a huge . . . dog? The massive gray-and-white canine bounded into the space and launched itself at Rio’s torturer, punching the guy on the back with its forepaws so that her attacker fell face forward—then latching on to the nape of the neck with tremendous fangs.
The man tried to fight back, the switchblade swiping in wide, useless circles as the animal managed to keep him pinned on his stomach by planting itself on his back. And then there was a banging, the man’s torso lifted and slammed down, lifted and slammed down, the dog heaving its great head up and down, the bludgeoning turning the pale features of its victim to a crimson red as the nose was broken.
When the man went loose-armed and utterly limp, the dog shifted its bite to an arm and rolled the deadweight over, like it was thinking this all through, as if there were a specific strategy to what was happening.
Then it cocked its head, as if confused.
The pause didn’t last, and things got even bloodier now. The beast tore the front of the throat open and then went to work . . . on the face.
