AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lance gave Jean-Charles his best crazy-eyed expression. Even I would be nervous around him if I didn’t know him better. Tony, his pet monkey, was perched on his shoulder, and he screeched at Jean-Charles, who looked as afraid of Tony as he was of me and Lance.
“You aren’t afraid of a little monkey, are you?” Lance asked.
“What the fuck is it doing in here?”
“Tony goes everywhere with me, and he always does my bidding.” Lance turned to me. “What do you think? Should we have Tony bite his fingers off or maybe rip out his tongue with his sharp little claws?”
Claws? Lance really was fucking crazy.
“Monkeys don’t have claws,” Jean-Charles said, but he didn’t sound very sure of himself.
Lance shrugged. “Maybe mine does. Maybe I modified him.”
Jean-Charles’s eyes grew huge, and he looked around as if there might be someone else there who could save him. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Lancelot Theriot, at your service.” He bowed, and Tony scrambled over to his other shoulder. Jean-Charles didn’t take his eyes off the monkey.
Jesus, Lance was having fun with this. Was that why he’d come? To lighten things up and keep me from falling too far into the darkness?
“So what’s it going to be?” I asked. “Are you going to answer our questions, or should I unleash the monkey on you?”
“If you let me go, I can make sure LePlatt stays out of your territory. I have a lot of connections. I swear.”
Even if he wasn’t lying, it wouldn’t matter. I would still kill him. I squatted in front of him and leaned right into his face. I knew in that moment I looked even crazier than Lance. “You came after my man. Nothing you say will change that. I’ve already thought up plenty more ways to make you sorry you ever interfered in Travis’s life. I can kill you and bring you back to life and kill you all over again. Make a fucking choice right now. More pain or the easy way out?”
His eyes grew huge. Lance lifted Tony and set him on the floor. Tony looked back at him, then he looked at Jean-Charles, expression full of mischief.
I pulled out a knife and pushed the tip of it into a cut I’d already made along Jean-Charles’s throat. He gasped and tried to get away, but I took hold of his hair, yanking his head back. He didn’t have any strength left to fight me.
“I’ll talk. Okay. I’ll talk. Just keep that knife and the fucking monkey away from me.”
“The monkey is staying,” Lance said. “He likes to watch Dax work.”
I bit back a laugh. Lance wasn’t making it easy to hold my menacing expression.
“Where do you hand off the product after it comes through New Orleans and heads north?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s out in the bayou somewhere.”
I tightened my hold and pressed the knife in again until blood trickled down his chest. “It doesn’t matter who you tell. You’re going to be dead. There’s nothing they can do to you.”
“My family—”
“You don’t have any family. We’ve already checked.” We had a policy of making sure any truly innocent wives or children didn’t get harmed by what we did. Our business was with the criminals, not the innocent.
“It’s near St. Claireville, but I don’t know exactly where. I don’t do deliveries, and no one gets all the information, only what they need to have.”
“You seem to have plenty of information you don’t need.”
“That’s cause I’m—”
“You were. You’re nothing now.” He whimpered, and asshole that I was, I relished it.
“Come on. I’ve got a lot to offer you.”
I wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed. His eyes widened as he struggled.
“Dax!”
Lance’s voice broke through the haze in my mind, and I let Jean-Charles go.
He gagged and coughed. “Please.”
“It will all be over if you answer my questions.”
“Or,” Lance said, “Tony could help you with your answers.” Lance reached up, and I knew he was tickling the little monkey. Tony let out a screech that made Jean-Charles jump.
“They’re thinking of moving the operation,” he said. “The sheriff out there—in Albertine parish—has been poking around too much. He’s new, and he’s not taking the bribes we’ve offered.”
“That’s very interesting. I wonder what the sheriff would have to say to the Theriot family.”
I grinned at Lance. “We might have to find out.” I focused back on Jean-Charles. “You have to know more than that. Where in the bayou is it?”
I signaled to Lance to put Tony down, and the little monkey raced over to me. I scooped him up. “He really does have a wicked bite. I could get him to take each finger off knuckle by knuckle.”
“I don’t know. There’s some shack or something. I really don’t know where it is.”
I believed him. I’d had enough experience with interrogation to be pretty damn good at telling when someone was lying versus telling the truth. I continued on with a few more questions like who else was involved, how much the police knew, when a shipment was expected, and finally where LePlatt was.
