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The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing down his throat.
“You’re Lonnie Whig. One of Franco Hopkins’s right-hand men. Unlike Franco, though, you’re a little easier to find because you’re a rapist who got sloppy.”
And a killer. Don’t forget the killer part.
He had the nerve to glare at me. That’s the thing about assholes—even when they’re completely screwed, they never turn off the A-hole switch. It’s like a mantra or something.
“See, the thing is, you counted on the women you raped and let live to be too scared to go to the police. Especially since you choose working girls as your victims. But the thing about working girls is that they always have each other’s backs, which means they warn each other about johns that get violent. So, while they might not have enough courage to go to the police, they know when one of their own was last seen with you before turning up, rotting in the dumpster a few hours later. Especially when it starts to become a pattern. And that, Lonnie, is when they’re willing to open up to me.”
“What the hell do you want?” he snarled, a feral glint in his eyes.
“You’re going to tell me everything that I want to know.” My voice was cold.
“Why would I do that?” His eyes cast around the space, looking at the weapons. “You’re just going to kill me, anyway.”
Maybe he was fishing. Looking for reassurance that his fate hadn’t already been sealed.
“This will be the last free choice you have on this earth,” I said. “Do you want to have a civil conversation and die a swift death? Or do you want to spend your last hours on earth getting slowly tortured?”
I gestured toward the wall behind him, filled with instruments of pain. Ice picks, saws, and screwdrivers all glistened under the light.
Torturing him would create a massive complication. The longer I stayed down here, the more likely someone would notice I was missing, risking exposure. I hoped he’d just tell me what I needed to know so I could get on with this.
He looked at the tools, appearing to calculate his next move, before he looked back at me with gritted teeth and asked, “What do you want to know?”
I smiled. This was going better than expected.
“Tell me where Franco Hopkins is.”
The exhale this guy released reeked of bacteria, like he collected it with the same enthusiasm as a baseball card collector. As if his victims hadn’t suffered enough, they’d had to endure his putrid breath.
“I don’t know where he’s at these days,” the guy said.
A surge of adrenaline coursed through my veins as I finally got a whiff this guy might talk. It pissed me off to no end, how infuriatingly difficult it was proving to be to find Franco Hopkins. I’d never hunted for someone who’d spent the last several years overseas, lacking people here who could help narrow his position.
“Don’t lie to me, Lonnie. Tell me where he is,” I ordered calmly.
The guy licked his teeth.
“You don’t have to worry about Franco torturing you,” I said. “I assure you your fate with me will be much worse if you do not cooperate.”
Lonnie’s lips thinned. “He moves to a new location every few days,” Lonnie said.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know where he is until he tells me. His location is on a need-to-know basis.”
“Where was his last location?”
He hesitated. “Club Eighty-One, but he’s long gone, man.”
“How often do you see him?”
“As often as he needs something from me. He calls me from a different burner each time.”
Shit.
“How often does he need something from you?”
