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It takes a moment or two for him to pull himself together enough to answer me. I wait silently, content to witness his misery. “Please, I want to go home.” He lowers his head, and a clump of greasy dark hair falls over his forehead. His shoulders shake and begin to heave in silent sobs. “I just want to go home.” Pathetic. But the sight and sound of it makes my blood sing. This is what happens to men who terrorize young women while trying to get to me. He thought it would be so easy, I bet. As if I’ve gotten this far by being careless.
“I’ll let you go home, David.” My training comes back to me in an instant, the memories flooding my brain before I’ve bothered trying to reach for them. My voice is soft and gentle. Almost tender. Like we’re in this together, and all I want to do is help. “That’s all anybody wants. For you to go home.”
“Then let me go!” he bawls, covering his face with shaking hands.
“First, you’re going to tell me what I need to know.”
“I don’t know nothing!”
I bet. “Fair enough. You have everything you need here—food, shelter, somewhere to deposit your waste. Clearly, you are comfortable enough that you aren’t in any hurry to leave. I’ll be on my way now.”
I’ve barely taken a quarter turn away from him when he fills the room with an ear-splitting howl that could come from the depths of hell. “No! No, don’t leave, please, don’t leave me here again!”
It’s too easy. “Fine, then. You’re in a sharing mood. That’s a good thing.” I face him again, hands clasped behind my back. The picture of a man without a care in the world and nowhere else to be.
“What do you want to know?” He lowers his hands, sniffling, but manages to lift his chin and look me in the eye. He’s still trembling, but he’s trying to pull it together.
“I want to know who sent you to me. I want to know their name and where I can find them.” Heat flares to life in my chest and sets my teeth on edge, meaning I have to grit out the rest. “I want to know how the girl fits into everything. And what you were planning on doing with her.”
His tongue darts over his lips while hope lights up his eyes. “We sent her in to plant a bug in your clothes. That’s all she was supposed to do.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. I was only following orders, you know? That’s it. It wasn’t anything personal.”
Right. And I’m sure he has a bridge for sale if I’m interested. I have to tamp down the bitterness his empty words stir to life. Nothing personal. It’s my goddamn life, but that’s the sort of thing men like him have to tell themselves if they expect to get the job done and still be able to look at themselves in the mirror the next morning. Though if I looked anything like this piece of shit, I would break every mirror in the house to keep from having to look at myself. His pockmarked face and yellow teeth don’t exactly tell the story of a healthy lifestyle.
I shift my weight from the balls of my feet to my heels, parting my lips to release a sigh that hints at my boredom. “You’re going to have to give me more than that.”
“What else do you want to know? I’m telling you, they don’t tell guys like me all the details. The boss gave me a job, and I did what he told me.”
“What’s your boss’s name?”
“I don’t know.” At his response, I roll my eyes with another sigh. “I swear to God! I don’t know his name. I’ve never even met him. Me and Karl, we only ever heard his voice on the phone. We call him Boss. He never told us his name. I figured he wanted to keep it a secret, you know?”
I do know, and while it irritates me, I believe him. Frustration translates to the rapid beating of my heart, to the way it thuds against my rib cage. Anybody. This asshole could be anybody I’ve ever crossed. I wouldn’t know where to begin putting a list of names together after all this time.
“Can you tell me anything else about him? Does he have an office somewhere? Have you ever been there?”
“No way. We only ever talk on the phone.”
And I’m sure this guy, whoever he is, uses a burner. Something untraceable.
“Why were you in such a hurry when you were pulled over? If I were doing a job like this and had a girl in the back seat who just finished planting a bug on an unsuspecting target, I would go out of my way to drive like I was going through the road test for my license.”
