Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)(30)

“No killing unless necessary,” I remind him. “We’re just going to rough him up some if he doesn’t cooperate.”

Anton scowls. “Fuck that shit. I’m going to have a black eye.”

“Shouldn’t have let grandpa get the better of you,” Yan says, smirking. “Maybe we should have him take your place on the team. He certainly seems more skilled.”

“Shut it,” I tell the two of them as our SUV stops in a forest clearing. “You can slug it out later.”

We drag the cop out and wait until he comes to before starting to question him. Like the others, he seems genuinely bewildered by the situation. However, unlike our other targets today, he refuses to answer our questions at first. To Anton’s joy, we end up having to hit him a few times before we hear the usual “don’t know anything” and “haven’t heard from him.” Under other circumstances, I would admire Gander’s loyalty to his friend, but given that we have less than two hours left to question the two remaining people on our list, the delay merely frustrates me.

“Put a fucking bullet in him,” I tell Anton when the cop balks at telling us about the last time he saw Henderson, and Anton gladly obeys the order, shooting Gander in the right shoulder.

After that, there’s no more withholding of answers, just verbal vomit and pleas for a hospital.

“Let’s go,” I tell the guys when I’m confident we got everything we can out of the cop. “Tie him up and leave him here.”

As we drive away, I make a mental note to call 911 and tell them the man’s location when we’re safely in the air.

Henderson’s friend or not, there’s no reason for the cop to die.





We’re on a time crunch now, so we expedite the process by nabbing our last two targets and interrogating them together. We left them for last because they’re even more distant connections of Henderson, so if we hadn’t gotten to them for some reason, it wouldn’t have been a major loss.

The first guy is Henderson’s daughter’s ex-boyfriend, Bobby Carston. He’s twenty, some three years older than the daughter, and according to our files, they broke up when he slept with her best friend at their high school prom. I can’t abide cheaters, so we rough up the kid a little as we question him—a move that ensures our last captive, Henderson’s son’s favorite teacher, is cooperative from the start.

In fact, Sam Briars is so verbose in his answers about Jimmy Henderson that we get something we didn’t expect.

A possible lead.

“—and then they vacationed in Thailand five years ago and Jimmy was saying how much they loved the local culture and all the fruit and how they wanted to live there. There was a local family that they really bonded with in Phuket. Not in one of the touristy areas, mind you, but deeper inland, away from all the crowds. Jimmy was telling all his friends in class about it. And then there was Singapore, which Jimmy’s mother always loved because of how clean it is, and there’s Iceland where Jimmy’s parents were going to go for their anniversary, and there’s Maryland where Jimmy’s sister was going to go to school, and I can think of more if you just give me time…”

The teacher is speaking so fast he’s practically babbling, so we let him talk, jotting down notes on the places he mentions so we can check them out later. We’ve looked at most of these locations before, including Thailand, but the Hendersons have been moving around to avoid detection, and we didn’t know about that local family in Phuket.

It’s certainly a lead worth exploring.

Ten minutes pass, and the teacher shows no sign of running out of steam, his verbosity undoubtedly fueled by the wails of the bruised ex-boyfriend. At this point, he’s just repeating himself, going in circles with everything he knows about the Hendersons, so I nod to Ilya and he taps him lightly on the ribs.

“Enough,” I say when Briars starts screaming like that gentle tap broke his ribs. “Tie them up and leave them here. We have to go.”

As we drive to our plane, I watch for signs of pursuit, but we make it there without incident.

The operation is officially a success: we’ve sent Henderson a message and obtained a possible lead in the process.

I should feel good, but as the wheels of the plane lift off the ground, all I can think about is that I’m no closer to getting what I really want.

That I’m still months away from reclaiming Sara.





24





Sara



“He did what?” I stare at Ryson, my palms damp with sweat and my heart hammering. My first reaction—joy that Peter is alive and well—is being quickly replaced by a painful knot in my stomach.

“He assaulted six people in North Carolina,” the agent repeats. “Two are hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and the other four are bruised and traumatized by a violent interrogation. Innocent citizens, all. Anything you can tell us about the incident?”

“I… what?” I shake my head to clear it of the gruesome images. “Why would he do this?”

“According to the victims, he wanted to know the location of an acquaintance of theirs—one Walter Henderson III. He has the misfortune of being on the same list as your late husband.” Ryson crosses his beefy arms. “It seems that Sokolov is resorting to more extreme measures to get to this man. Anything you can tell us about that? About what he’s after?”