Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)(29)

We can do a lot in four hours.

The cabin is empty except for us. Yan lured the hooker away this morning by pretending to be a high-paying client. Once he got her into a hotel room, he tied her up and left her there. If we have time, he’ll untie her later today; if not, housekeeping will find her tomorrow morning. Either way, the girl is not going to go to the cops, especially once she finds the payment on the nightstand.

Lyle Bolton is prompt, as usual, showing up at a quarter to ten. His truck rumbles into the graveled driveway, and I motion to the guys to get ready.

Nabbing our prey is child’s play. He has no idea what’s in store for him. The fucker walks in with a big, shit-eating grin on his chubby face, and Ilya steps out from behind the door and punches him in the stomach. He does it lightly—as lightly as someone that massive can—but Bolton still flops over on all fours, gasping and wheezing and trying to scramble away.

Yan kicks him in the ribs, and then I step in, pulling up the fucker by the back of his shirt as he starts to blubber and plead for mercy.

“Your cousin,” I say calmly, depositing him into a kitchen chair. “Where is he?”

He gapes at us, and I see a new kind of fear on his face. He realizes now this is not a mistake, that we’re not burglars who just happened to be here.

“I d-don’t know,” he stutters out, and I sigh before pulling out my gun.

“One more chance,” I say, putting the barrel to his forehead. “Where the fuck is Wally?”

He pisses himself. A dark stain spreads over the crotch of his corduroys, and I smell the acrid stench of urine. It annoys me nearly as much as the tears and snot running down his face.

“I swear to you, I don’t know!” he wails, and I lower the gun, squeezing the trigger twice in rapid succession.

His screams are deafening as he falls off the chair and rolls into a little ball on the floor. I just planted two bullets—one in each foot—and I wait a minute for the screams to die down before repeating, “Where is your fucking cousin?”

“I don’t know, don’t know, don’t know!” He’s hysterical now, holding his bleeding feet with both hands. “Please, I swear, I don’t know. He disappeared over two years ago, and I haven’t heard anything since.”

“Nothing? No calls, no emails, no letters?”

I already know the answer to that thanks to our hackers, so I’m not surprised when the blubbering idiot shakes his head like a wound-up toy. “No, no, I swear! Nothing! No one’s heard from him since he left.”

I turn to Yan. “What do you think?” I ask in Russian. “You believe this piece of shit?”

He studies him, then nods. “Yeah, I think so. Henderson’s too careful to reach out to this one.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Bending down, I take Bolton’s phone from his pocket and leave him to blubber and bleed on the floor as we walk out of the cabin. Before we leave, I disable his vehicle to make sure he can’t leave for a while.

We have five more assholes to interrogate before this one’s fate is discovered.





23





Peter



The next two people on our list pose about as much challenge as Bolton. The first, Ian Wyles, is a retired schoolteacher who’s Henderson’s uncle twice removed. The two of them used to exchange emails on a regular basis before Henderson’s disappearance, and it’s possible that Henderson might still keep in touch with him somehow.

However, the minute we nab the old man on his way home from the post office, it becomes obvious he doesn’t know anything. He’s so fucking clueless and stunned by our questions that we don’t even bother roughing him up. We just tie him up and leave him with his disabled vehicle in the woods, where he’ll be found in a few hours when his wife comes home and discovers him missing.

The second person, Jennifer Lows, is Henderson’s wife’s friend. A plump, middle-aged woman, she literally shits herself when we grab her outside her parents’ nursing home. Within the first minute of our interrogation, it becomes clear that she’s clueless as well, and we leave her tied behind a dumpster in an alley, gagged and terrified out of her wits but otherwise unharmed.

“Zero for three,” Anton remarks as we peel out of the alley, but I just shrug. This is not unexpected. If Henderson kept in touch with these people, we would’ve likely uncovered it by now. Also, the security around them would’ve been tighter. The fact that they were relatively easy to get to tells me they’re not in Henderson’s inner circle.

The people who matter to him—his wife and children—are as well hidden as any treasure.

In any case, getting information about Henderson’s whereabouts is not our primary goal. This is about sending a message, telling him that no one in his life—no matter how distant a connection—is safe.

We want to enrage and frighten him, because angry, scared men make mistakes.

The next person we go after is a local police officer who happens to be Henderson’s childhood friend. Jimmy Gander, age fifty-five, is one of the oldest cops on the force, and when we grab him outside his favorite bar, he manages to slug Anton in the face before we knock him out.

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Anton mutters as we pull into the woods where we intend to interrogate our captive. “Bastard’s going to get it.”