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“Already?” Her voice snapped me back to reality where I’m holding a gun on an asshole in the alley. I wonder if she thinks I mean long term. I have left her in the past, but all this stuff coming to a head makes leaving her again next to impossible. Nothing, not even her uncle will keep me from her.
“Will you do something for me?” I asked her.
“Anything.” She sounded breathless over the phone and I wished for us to have another chance outside this insanity.
Halstad rolled his eyes making a face I didn’t like. I raised my gun and shot him in the leg. The silencer popping once. He deserved it. He shouted turning to his side, moaning a mess of limbs, but still intact.
“I’m a little busy, right now.” Kind of an understatement. “But I’ll be back soon.”
“I better let you go. My uncle is back to order lunch…and I need find something to match my naked outfit for later.” Her hushed snicker through the static makes me smile. I’m worried, but I’m smiling. None of it made sense.
“Lovely.” I drawled and I wondered if she was still smiling. “I should be back in about….” I tried to calculate what to do with Kenny boy here. “Uh, let me call you back later.” Holding the phone I look at Ken raising my gun to his bugging eyes. One bullet between the brows would be quick and efficient.
“I’ll be waiting for your call,” and with that–a strange normalcy restored our fucked up relationship and I hung up the phone staring down at my mark.
* * * * *
“Touching, but I’m bleeding out, asshole.” He spoke to me this way because he thought he didn’t have anything to lose. Wrong. You always have something to lose even when staring down the barrel of death.
I kneeled back down and got on eye level with him. “Give me a name.”
“Is it really worth killing for?”
Shrugging, I give a non-committal answer. “Is it worth dying for?” It doesn’t matter if I kill him or not, he’ll be a marked man after today. He touched my girl and that alone would end him eventually, but not until I got the final piece of the puzzle. “She’s worth it. Either way, I will find out the information I need.” It’s the last warning I’d give him.
“Mmm.” He looked pale and might actually be bleeding out, but I don’t have it in me to care.
“A name…please.” I smiled for effect and he must have finally sensed the gravity of the situation. Stupid man. He hesitated looking genuinely worried. He may not be able to give me what I need, but if there was a fourth or fifth player involved I needed to find them and I needed him alive for now.
“I don’t have one, nothing that would identify him, but it was someone my father knew intimately. I never met them all, but they brought the girls to the house first before shipping them off to the buyers.”
“Did you see one, dark in coloring, green eyes and a beauty mark high on her right cheek bone?” All these years of not knowing what happened to my sister killed a part of my soul. Younger half-brother or not I was her protector.
“She’s the reason why?” I nodded. He coughed wincing in pain. I shot him in places to make him suffer but not kill him outright. His hand bled leaving a pool of red in his lap and he whine, fucking pussy. I debated telling him more than I should.
“Lacy Duvall, my sister.”
“She was sold, but I don’t know by whom.” I pressed the gun into the wound in his leg smiling. “Ahhhh…An older man came to take her. Dark hair peppered with grey, dark eyes and he wore a suit. A three piece fucking suit in July. He looked like a professional, a lawyer or someone important, but I don’t know his name.”
“A name.” I pressed deeper knowing it would be too easy to end it and my gut twisted thinking I already knew who I was looking for.
“I don’t know what happened after that.”
“I could gut you right here, right now.”
“But you’d be late for your date.”
“I know. So that’s why I’m going to let you hobble your ass out of here. Once I get a name.”
“But, I don’t have one,” and the trouble was I believed him. Ken seemed to pause a bit and paled under the flood lights in the alley. “I could identify you.”
“You could–but a mute man can tell no tales, now can he?” I lifted a knife from my boot stalking him in the alley. He looked horrified and it would send an effective message. Sorenson would be disappointed I didn’t end this now, but I had a sinking suspicion I was going to need to look closer to home for this fourth player.
Looking down at my ruined suit, I lamented the mess knowing I needed another fucking shower.
Thirteen
JUDE
