Seeds of Iniquity (In the Company of Killers, #4)(9)

“So what’s the word?” I ask, growing more anxious by the second.

Victor shakes his head.

“She won’t start telling us anything until we’re all in the same room with her,” Victor begins. “And she wants a larger room, preferably something with a couch.”

“Picky little bitch, isn’t she?” Niklas chimes in.

“I told her she wasn’t getting another room.” Victor looks at each of us briefly. “We’re not going to give her everything she wants. It’s unacceptable. And it will also make her think that there are no boundaries, no limitations to what we’ll do. She may be the one with all the cards, but she’s also sitting in a room handcuffed to a chair—she’s not completely in control, and I won’t give that kind of control to her. No matter whose lives are on the line.”

I bite my lip and remain quiet.

Dorian grits his teeth harder.

Niklas licks the dryness from his lips and looks nonchalantly down the long hallway—the only part of any of this he cares about is what this woman might know about the organization.

James Woodard; short, stubby and balding in the back center of his head, comes walking briskly down the hall, his too-long khaki pants shifting underneath his loafers as he walks. He wears a blue and white plaid shirt, short-sleeved, and tucked sloppily behind a belt underneath his oversized belly. Sweat glistens in his hairline and in tiny beads under his nostrils.

“Is she here?” he asks, winded, “the woman who kidnapped my daughters?” He points to the steel door. “Is she in that room?”

“She is,” Victor says with a slight nod.

“So what are we waiting for then?” Woodard says, looking at each of us in turns.

He presses the tip of his index finger in the center of his glasses and moves them back on his face.

“Apparently, we’re waiting for Fredrik,” Dorian says with acid in his voice. “But we’re gonna be waiting a long damn time.” His bottom lip is swollen and a blue-yellow bruise runs along his jaw.

“No,” Victor says, clasping his strong hands in front of him, “that’s something else I refused to give her. She didn’t like it at first, but she agreed to start talking when Woodard arrived. But she won’t tell us everything until Fredrik is here, so we’ll need him eventually.”

“It shouldn’t be hard to find him at all,” Niklas cuts in with disapproval. “You’re his employer. And last I checked we didn’t have vacation schedules and 401k plans. If he doesn’t pick up the damn phone when you, of all people, call him, his ass should be dealt with.”

Victor looks to Niklas. “Fredrik will be here. Of that I have no doubt, Niklas. For now, let’s find out what this woman wants. And what she knows.”

Woodard’s pudgy hand comes up and wipes sweat from his bushy brows. Moisture is already seeping through the armpits of his plaid shirt.

“Woodard,” Victor says, “I’ll say the same thing I said to Izabel—no information on this organization will be given to this woman. Is that understood?”

A knot moves down the center of Woodard’s thick throat and he nods uneasily, wiping more sweat from his brows. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

That one will have to be watched, for sure. He seems unstable, afraid and desperate—three of about five ingredients needed for someone to cave and spill everything they know. But I understand his fear and I can’t help but feel sorry for him instead of worried what he might give away.

Victor punches in the code on the door and all five of us head inside the room.





4


Izabel





Nora’s dark red lips stretch into an enormous close-lipped smile when we enter the room with her. Her long, white-blonde hair is like a milky wave of silk down the sides of her face and over both shoulders, stark against the color of her lipstick. Her dark eyelashes and groomed brows seem set artistically above and around the light brown of her irises. High cheekbones give her creamy skin even more definition. And although, I admit, mesmerizing to look at, she’s not without flaw. A thin half-inch scar runs along the left side of her chin; another one, about two inches long, runs horizontally across the center of her throat. And, the most noticeable, she’s missing the tip of her left pinky finger.

She raises her arms as far as the chains will allow at about shoulder height, her palms up, and then tilts her head to one side.

“Glad you all could make it,” she says with a big, confident smile and then lowers her hands on the table, the cuffs rattling against the metal. “With one exception, of course.”

“Let’s skip the dramatic monologue,” I say icily, stepping up ahead of the others. “None of us care to hear how witty you can be, or what kinds of cheesy f*cking lines you can come up with while you dangle the meat in front of our faces. What the f*ck do you want?”

Nora sighs dramatically, pursing her red lips on one side, but never really loses that confident smile of hers that I want to slap right off her face.

Victor steps up next to me, but he doesn’t force me away, or tell me to be quiet. He won’t go that far in front of her unless he thinks I’m making a mistake, and I admit, sometimes it’s warranted because I have a hard time controlling my anger.