Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(58)

With my bound arms I could easily open the driver’s door. Closing it, however, was a different thing. And I was getting nauseous. Very, very nauseous from the blow on the head. Tormenta jogged up casually. He’d never been afraid I’d get away.

“Oh, Mi Dios,” he lamented, wrenching me by the shoulder. As he yanked me toward him, he also managed to grab a handful of boob, which he twisted nastily. “Oh, yeah. You’re the only one who’s gotten away from me. And I heard you’ve gotten up a big bounty for such a little guy as me. Who am I, puta? I’m nothing but a small-time businessman doing business with Leo Saxonberg. Why’d you girls want to waste fifty large on a tiny little baby gangster like me? Don’t you need your money for better things like abortions?”

I kneed him in the groin. I don’t know why I bothered. By now, my double vision and the feeling my head was encased in one big cotton ball told me that he’d given me a concussion. And yeah, sleep was starting to overcome me. My mother had never been able to beat me much because I was faster than her. It had been my sister who had given me a concussion. She’d borrowed my platform shoes without asking permission and we’d had a knockdown, drag ’em out fight in the hallway. She wound up kicking me repeatedly in the head with my own wooden shoes. Our careless mother put me to bed for a week. My head was like The Elephant Man’s.

That was how I knew concussions, and I knew I shouldn’t sleep. Suddenly I was passive as a lamb as Tormenta slammed me face-first into the hood of my car and worked on binding my ankles with a zip tie. I didn’t protest as he carried me up the steps to the back deck and into the sliding door which was wide the f*ck open. I didn’t see any way out of this, not with a sprained, bound arm and a cracked head already dripping blood in a trail across the kitchen floor.

There was a peninsula in Sax’s kitchen with a few barstools for casual dining. Tormenta flopped me on one where I swayed like a lily in the wind. Strange images were already drifting into my head. I didn’t feel like I was truly rooted in my body. My spirit kept attempting to soar up toward the ceiling, giving me an even more unbalanced, dizzy sensation. Tormenta had to lean me back against the granite peninsula to keep me from toppling over.

I was vaguely aware that he had a knife in his hands, his weapon of choice. It was a stiletto blade, the sort he’d cut Cassie with. The sort he’d killed Brenda with… Remembering Brenda’s death made me sit up straighter, my consciousness rooted in my body, at last. Groggily I saw Tormenta pacing, slapping the blade against his palm.

I can’t be sure of Tormenta’s exact words. I drifted in and out of awareness, the haze surrounding me threatening to overtake me completely. Was I sleeping, or drifting into unconsciousness, or were they one and the same thing? It seemed that Tormenta sneered stuff like, “You sluts think you’re all God’s gift to man. You’re the lowest of the f*cking low, the mud beneath my boots, the toe jam you scrape from between your toes when you haven’t showered for three weeks. You’re only good for cocksucking, and I can get a machine to do that, a f*cking blow-up doll. I’m going to tell Leo to get rid of all his disgusting sweetbutts so we can do business man to man. You’re only good for working in my nail salons, in my hair weaving places, doing eyebrow threading. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with you. Send you out to learn to thread eyebrows. That’s all you’re going to be good for when I’m done with you.”

Survival instinct must have kicked in, because when he slashed at my face with the blade, I jerked my torso to one side. The blade cut through my trapezius shoulder muscle, a strange, mushy sensation as though he’d sliced the very meat of me. When it hit a bone, I cringed. That was the worst, when the blade scraped bone and sort of echoed and twinged down my entire arm. The zip ties were much too tight and cut into my wrists and ankles, keeping me rooted in the present. Religious training would have me take it like a martyr, turn the other cheek. Motorcycle club training would have me fight back, kick ass. But my hands and feet were literally tied, and my head felt like a tumbleweed.

“Qué cabrón!” Tormenta swore and jerked the knife free of my flesh. Warm blood spilled down my torso, soaking my bra cup, inspiring Tormenta to swipe the blade through my bra strap, exposing a tiny breast. “Ah, a perfectly blank canvas for my work. You are a friend of those two women I slashed, yes? You saw the work of art I performed there. On the second lady, I performed some grillwork right here”—and he whipped the blade across my tit—“and here”—another hashtag mark in the opposite direction—“and here”—now vertical stripes.

I started sobbing. Being marked for martyrdom might’ve been all right for the nunnery. But after all we’d done to protect ourselves, seriously? This guy was going to get away with murdering or at least maiming a third one of us?

In the middle of Tormenta’s gleeful handiwork, something cute, fluffy, out of place suddenly appeared at my knee. It was a puffy white tail, a sort of husky dog. He had run in from the open slider. His tail brushing my bare thigh was the kiss of an angel. He barked at Tormenta, but it sounded like a happy bark. Like “let’s play!”

“Ah, perro!” Tormenta sounded glad to see the dog. At least it stopped him from slashing me. I didn’t have much meat on my breasts. Already I could see the one, in a detached and emotionless way, oozing like a gritty, horror tic-tac-toe. “What’s going on, perro? Is this your perro?”