The Unwilling(93)

A different scream, she could tell.

A different scream and a different soul.



* * *



For Reece, the first two were mostly mechanical. He took some time, but not as much as he normally might.

The first one, he skinned alive.

The second took four tourniquets and a bone saw.

“Can I assume you’ll answer my questions?”

Reece peered down at the last man living, naked as a newborn, and sheeting sweat as he bucked against the restraints, frantically trying to force words past the ball gag in his mouth.

“I beg your pardon.” Reece leaned close, amused.

But the clock really was ticking.

He removed the gag, and the words poured out. “Anything! I’ll tell you anything you want! But please, please don’t, not like them, dear God, Jesus Christ, not like them…”

Reece waited for the tears and silence. Both came quickly. “I have questions,” he said. “If you answer them for me, you won’t die like, you know…” Reece tipped his head at the dead men on the other tables.

“Anything! Please!”

But Reece shushed him like a child. He already knew the answers. This was more about confirmation. “You came here to kill me?” The man dipped his chin, still sobbing. “X hired you?” Another nod. “Any special instructions?”

“F-fifty thousand. Fifty extra if we … if we…”

“It’s okay,” Reece said. “I asked the question. There is no wrong answer.”

“Oh, Jesus…” Sweat sheeted the man’s face, dripped into his eyes. “Fifty thousand if we made you beg.”

“For my life?”

“For the pain to stop.”

“Ah. I see.” Reece pointed his chin at the dead men on the other tables. “Something like that?”

“He wanted it on film.”

“That explains this.” Reece picked up a video camera he’d found in one of the dead men’s satchels. “How much was the contract?”

“Half a million.”

“Plus the fifty?” Reece frowned deeply. It was insulting. Fiddling with the camera, he wedged it onto a shelf, making small adjustments.

From the table, the bound man said, “Nothing personal, right? You know X. You understand how he is. It’s just business.”

“I do know X, that’s true.” Reece spoke distractedly. Video cameras like this were new to the market. He had little experience with them.

“So we’re good, yeah? Just business.”

“Well, I don’t know that we’re good…” Still distracted. Reece checked the lighting, tweaked the angle of the camera. Satisfied, he rolled out a fresh tray of surgical gear.

“Whoa! Hey, man! Come on, now! We had a deal! You said you’d let me go!”

“Actually”—Reece pointed with a skin hook retractor—“I said I wouldn’t kill you like them.”





34


It took hours for Reece to dismember and bag the bodies, then bleach-clean the tables, floor, and instruments. It was grim work, but he needed that time to think about X. A voice inside argued that time alone would solve the problem, that X would, in fact, be executed very soon. As resolutions went, it was simplistic. X was the most vindictive man Reece had ever known, the proof of which now filled two chest freezers in the corner, each bit of body neatly bagged and taped and stacked. Of course, those three men were only the beginning. Reece had seven places he considered safe, and X could not have known he’d choose this one for the girl. He had to assume, then, that X had dispatched as many as seven teams. The specifics didn’t matter. The implications did. X wanted Reece found, tortured, and killed; and cost was not an issue. That risk wouldn’t simply disappear once X was executed. He had money, lawyers, access to dangerous men. He’d put a contract on Reece’s life just to make a point.

A laugh escaped Reece’s lips, but sounded more like a high-pitched, disbelieving titter. In X’s world, there were unspoken rules and unforgivable sins. Reece was a dead man walking, and starting to feel that way. How much money did X have? Hundreds of millions? A billion? No one could escape that kind of reach. He’d spend his life afraid and running.

Sweet Jesus, he thought. Is this how it feels?

He couldn’t simply run. X’s people would find him, no question. Besides, Reece had too much pride for that. Too much faintheartedness, too—that was becoming sadly evident: the liquid insides, a certain weakness in his limbs. He had to get ahead of this, of X. Reece tried to think it through.

Why did X want him dead?

Because he’d taken the girl after X gave specific orders not to do it.

Why did X care if Reece took the girl?

Because if Sara died, reasonable minds might doubt that Jason French had killed Tyra Norris. Cops might look elsewhere.

But why did that matter?

Because X wanted Jason at Lanesworth.

Why?

Unknown. Unknowable.

What made Jason so important to a man like X?

Good question.

Just how important was he?

That was the rubber on the road.

An hour later, Reece was behind the wheel of a jet-black BMW, peering through darkened grounds at the house where Gibson French lived with his parents. The structure was set back from the road, but undoubtedly had a high-end security system. Plus, the father was a cop, and Reece hated cops.