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He chuckles, catching it and throwing it into the money pot with a quippy, “I’ll raise you an ear,” before turning back to me. “Thanks, boss. Fuck, I love it when you play.”
“It’s like a scene out ofReservoir Dogs. Dance for us, Chief,” Liam taunts, pulling an appreciative grin from me with the reference.
The guy is still screaming when Axel catches my annoyed eye roll and commiserates. “Larry here is a bitch, Wells. Might as well pull up a chair.”
“Never gonna happen,” Gage informs. “Wells has little patience for this shit.”
With a clenched jaw, I grunt. “What Gage said is true, Larry. I’m impatient, so now that I have your attention, you need to give me answers.”
I rip off the tape and endure the sixty agonizing seconds of whining until he quiets to mere sputtering groans. “There we go. Now, Larry, let’s start with a simple one. You were interested inmybride. Why?”
“Look, man. I already fucking told them.” He spits blood and gathers his breath, one eye so bruised and swollen that it’s a mere slit, entreating me. “She didn’t look like a bride in that black-and-white gown. I thought she was hot. That’s it.”
“Fucking up that simple question takes a certain level of stupidity, Larry.” I stab my knife into his shoulder joint and twist while he wails. Removing it, I wipe the blade on my suit pants. They’re already soiled with the guy’s blood. “Now, shall we try that again?Whywere you interested in my bride?”
Larry coughs and cries. Jesus, I fucking hate sniveling sissies. They sign up to be part of the big leagues but can’t handle pain.
He composes himself—finally. “I saw something a week ago—no, closer to two, maybe—on the dark web. Only up for a minute. Some match to one of those ancestry tests. Said she was the daughter of Eleanor Healy and some guy named O’Reilly. I went to school with Eleanor, so when I saw your girl, I thought she might be her daughter. Looks a lot like her.”
I shoot a look at Liam, who jerks his chin and growls, “Thirty-seven seconds.” He’s confirming how long the results of the ancestry test were posted.
The O’Reilly bloodline was flagged in an effort to find my girl. While we took her results down immediately, we knew there was a good chance others had made the connection—that’s why we extracted her.
“I erased it,” Liam continues, “but that doesn’t account for every person who saw it.”
Thankfully, my Little Storm is smart and has been trained well. She never offers her personal information, so she used an alias and listed Celeste’s home address and an email that had zero connection to her. That was still enough to wreak havoc, but it bought us time to get her out in a way that was less alarming. Gage intercepted two men near Celeste’s, but in order to keep the family safe, he had to take them out before retrieving information.
I turn back to Larry. “So, you wanted to, what, say hello to your high school chum’s daughter?”
He swallows. “Yeah.”
Circling him, I pace myself. While I don’t enjoy torture like Gage does because I have better ways of spending my time, I do find the art of being a step ahead invigorating. “You been in touch with Eleanor lately, Larry?”
“I asked around—Facebook and old friends.” His breathing evens out, confidence returning. “No one’s heard from her in over twenty years.”
Stopping in front of him, I smile. “Exactly. Which is precisely why Eleanor wasn’t mentioned on that ancestry test. There’s no DNA on her. Half-truths piss me the fuck off, Larry.” Strolling over to the supply cabinet, I pocket a couple of zip ties, return to the liar, and tighten one above the elbow Ididn’tbreak upstairs. Equal opportunity torture for the win.
He stammers, drool dripping down his chin, “What … what the fuck are you doing?”
“Don’t want you bleeding out …yet,” I tell him as I step back to the cabinet to retrieve the cordless reciprocating saw.
He yowls as I turn it on, but the roaring whir of the Sawzall dampens it, so I don’t bother replacing his gag. Lowering it to his left wrist, which is bound to the arm of the chair, I chop it clean off like a tree branch. Blood spouts and sloshes, dousing my shirt and pants and spilling to the floor. Chunks of his flesh and muscle are stuck in the blade. That’ll be a bitch to clean.
The shrieking is nearly more than I can tolerate, so once I’m finished, Liam hands me a scotch while Ryker chuckles beside him.
“It’s a nice change of pace to be the spectator,” he says, obviously enjoying the show. None of that ease trickles over to me. We may be getting somewhere, but I need more.
When the bawling lessens, I set down my scotch and join Larry, who is now covered in his own piss and vomit. “So, now that we’ve established you didn’t roofie my girl because she resembled your long-lost high school friend, who you’d happened to read about on the dark web, who do you work for?”
“Myself. I work alone, man.”
Douchebag.
“Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to kill you, Larry. You touched what’s mine, so the sentence for that is death. Plain and simple. But Icanbe persuaded to make it less painful if you cooperate. Or I can gouge out your eyes, slice off your dick, and force you to choke on them. The choice is yours.”
Realization hits him. He chose the wrong path in life, and itends here. That flicker of understanding generally leads to cooperation. Larry spits more blood and takes a breath. Sweat drips down his chalky face, and his body convulses, but he’s still with me.
To be sure, I reinforce his need to be forthright. “Whoever you are protecting, I can assure you, will not mourn your death, so it isn’t worth your loyalty. Let’s make this quick and therefore less torturous, Larry. Who do you work for?”
