TWENTY-FIVE - Thorn

TWENTY-FIVE

Thorn

Awave of ire surges within me, staining my thoughts red. I return to the man I have strapped in a chair who's bleeding from a cut in his eyebrow from a simple backhand. The blood drips into his eye and he keeps blinking to clear it. I removed all of his clothing before I bound him, and he's shivering from the cold.

I crunch on another hot mint, not wanting to taste even a hint of his words.

He sees me approach and stiffens, fighting the restraints securing his wrists to the arms of the chair and his feet to the bolts in the ground.

We're alone in my boathouse, and the scent of the waves crashing below adds to the smell of salt and blood. I reach for a different knife from the one I used on Alana the night before—it's sacred to me now. "Where were we, Nelson?" I ask calmly.

He twists against the restraints, bleeding from several areas. Oh, I haven't sliced anything important yet. "I've told you everything I know."

Actually, he hasn't told me shit. "What are you? About forty?" I ask, spinning the weapon around in the air.

His gaze tracks the blade. "Forty-four."

"You know jack about women?" I look at his bare feet.

"Sure. I'm happy to help." He's getting a bit of his spirit back.

I drop the knife directly on his big toe.

He shouts, his face turning purple. "No—" he starts when I reach down, yank the knife free, and his toe rolls away. "God. Why are you doing this?"

"God has nothing to do with this," I say thoughtfully, anger churning in my gut. How dare Alana emote another video about me. Wasn't I clear? "Women don't make sense. What is it with her that she doesn't believe I'll keep my word?"

"Maybe she's testing you," he groans, scrunching his other four toes on the rocky floor.

I look at him. Maybe she wants me to punish her. To prove that I will and I mean what I say. The woman certainly needs boundaries. "That's a thought, Nelson." I wipe the blade on his bare thigh. "Why did you target little Julie McDonald? The girl who fell out of the van?"

He somehow shrinks into himself. "I saw her and had a buyer for her. Right age." He sniffs. "Didn't mean to drop her from the van."

My fury goes ice cold. "Was she targeted because of her family? Because they work for me?"

He shakes his head wildly. "No. Didn't know who she was or that her dad works for you. I swear, it was a coincidence. I'm so sorry."

Not yet, but he will be. So at least nobody is targeting the kids of my men. One bright spot in this shitty situation. "Where did you get the kids you gave to the losers on the street?"

He flinches. "I told you about your girl. Why do you even care about other kids?"

It's a fair question. "My brother and I were taken as kids and tortured. Our mom was killed. The experience haunts me." Honesty is a rule with me, and I employ it unless circumstances are dire. "This helps keep the ghosts at bay."

"Torturing people?" Snot bubbles at his nose.

"Yeah." I crouch to better see the wound close to his right armpit. "People who hurt kids and women . . ." I shrug. "I figure if I can keep others from being hurt, then maybe I'm making it up to them somehow."

He blinks more blood from his eye. "Your mom and brother?"

I nod.

"That's fucked, man."

Yes, it is. I slide the knife into him above his protruding right hipbone, and something eases inside me. A pain dissipates. It's temporary, but I'll take it.

He sucks in air and bites through his bottom lip as if determined not to scream this time.

I admire that. Not a lot. "The kids, Nelson."

"There's a whole pipeline, man. Don't you get it? It's so easy these days."

It's always been easy to take advantage of the young and weak. I pull out the knife but his flesh tries to keep it in. He isn't as strong this time and cries out.

"I like symmetry." I plunge the knife into his other hip. "Keep talking."

He coughs, tears filling his eyes. "About eighty thousand kids have gone missing from the southern border. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, man. The government has no clue and frankly doesn't care where they are."

"But you do. At least some of them." I reclaim my knife.

The blood flows from his hips to his groin, pooling obscenely. "At least I make sure they get fed."

I punch him in the mouth for that one.

His head snaps back and he spits out a tooth.

"Do you use little kids, Nelson?" I ask, eyeing his fingers.

"No," he says loudly. Too loudly. "Never."

I stare at him, knowing he sees death. "I told you when we began that I wouldn't lie to you and you wouldn't lie to me. Remember?"

He sniffs the bloody snot back up his nose and nods.

"Yet you just lied to me."

He whimpers. "No, I didn't."

I sigh and walk behind him silently, letting his imagination take over. He's bleeding more than I expected, and he hasn't put up much of a fight. Even so, he's hurt kids, and he needs to pay. I lean over slightly and drop the knife onto his index finger. It slices right through.

He shrieks this time.

I walk around to face him, my head canted. There exist those who can experience the agony of others. I'm not one of them. All I feel is a slight lessening of my own pain. I punch him in the rib cage, shattering several bones. "Give me the list of where you get the kids." Even though they're not connected to my case, I figure somebody should try to help them.

Sobbing, he gives me five names. "That's all."

I slam my fist into the other side of his rib cage, about the same spot. "And a list of where you send them."

He's wheezing now, no doubt with a collapsed lung. Maybe two. Yet he gives me the names.

I look down at the blood covering my white shirt. He's a sprayer as well.

He gasps in a useless attempt to fill his lungs. "I've told you everything I know. Now you have to get me help."

"I will," I say, retrieving my knife.

He yells as his finger separates from his hand.

I do like a sharp knife.

"You'll let me go?" The hopeful light in his brown eyes is visible. Surely he knows better. Yet most individuals harbor optimism, no matter how bleak the situation.

I don't. Never have. Not until I first glimpsed Alana. When honey first kissed my taste buds. "No. You don't seem to understand. I have to show my men that they're protected. Or at least avenged."

Tears slide down his bloodied face. "Can't you just tell them?"

"No. I need to show them your head on a spike by my moat and then post it downtown in San Francisco as a warning." Kind of gross, but effective. I walk behind him, and in a whisper of sound, lean over and cut his throat.

Then he's forgotten.

I tear off the clothes I'm wearing and stuff them in a black plastic bag. Wet wipes work to rid me of the blood before I open a gray bag by the door and change into another black suit, making sure to slide my garnet signet ring on my finger. Then I walk outside, where two of my men are waiting for me. "Small pieces of his body, take the boat out, and dump him in the middle of the ocean. Mount his head on a spike. One day on my property, out of view from air transport, and then downtown in the city." I keep walking up the trail, taking my bag with me.

I trust my men, but being paranoid is a good thing. About halfway up I stop and shove the bag into an open fireplace in the rocks—massive and already roaring. A brown screen in front of it keeps any stray pieces from flying out. My men know to bleach the frame when the fire goes out. Once at the top of the cliff, I climb into my vehicle and sit inside the driver's seat for a moment.

Returning home without Alana there feels wrong. Since her light has graced the stone fortress, it's a dark void without her.

I'm dark enough as it is. So I text her and wait.

Nothing.

The anger that had ebbed begins to boil again. Ignoring me isn't wise. Starting the engine, I drive away from the ocean toward Silicon Valley, texting Justice on the way and giving him an update.

I appreciate that Alana and her friends have helped abused women in California. Not that I care about the women themselves, because honestly, I don't care about much. Alana and Justice are about the only people who matter to me. But the fact that Alana helps people because she wants to, or because it's the right thing to do, and not because she's banishing pain and ghosts, illuminates something inside me.

Sleep will elude me tonight as usual. Nelson broke too easily, so I call Justice.

"Hi. I have a line on the freezing curse that's killing you," he says without preamble. "I'm close. How much have you progressed?"

I pause to gauge the sensations in my body. "Fingers and toes are colder, as is the end of my nose. Curiously, it feels as if my kidneys are holding ice crystals as well." That would explain the dull throb in my lower back right now.

"What about emotions or thoughts?"

"Same as always." These feelings come from a cold place, so I doubt I'll ever experience a difference. Oddly enough, I'm utterly devoid of anxiety regarding my love for Alana. It's an inferno, scorching and indomitable, immune to any ailment. Of that, I am profoundly certain. "Give me a report on the teams covering Alana."

"It's a clusterfuck of multiple security teams, and I've ordered our men to stay under the radar. I do have two long-shooters with scopes on all four snipers, just in case you want to make a move."

I roll my neck until it pops. "Do you have a plan in place?"

"Not yet. Every scenario I run leaves us with multiple casualties, and not one strategy guarantees her safety, which I'm acutely aware is your primary concern."

Right now, she's very fortunate I can't get my hands on her. When I reflect on her audacity, my palms tingle. She's treading on thin ice, and retribution awaits her. Shortly. "Memorize their movements and send the pattern to me soon. If I can't get her out, I want in."

"I'm on it." With a slight rumble in his throat, Justice coughs. "Are you coming in to work the crystals? I could use some help." Like me, he doesn't sleep much.

"Yes, unless you've found anything interesting in town," I say, a rioting heat rolling through my chest. The beast inside me isn't appeased right now.

Quiet ticks across the line and then the sound of keystrokes. "I've got one," he says. "Thirty-year-old male named Mike Raptor. Beat the shit out of his pregnant young wife for the sixth time in San Francisco. Wife didn't press charges, and the DA didn't either. Wife will be in hospital for at least three months. She lost the baby, too."

The image of Charity's bruised and broken body flashes across my mind. They'd let us see her dead.

Justice still has nightmares, although he denies it. I let him get away with that lie because he needs it in order to survive.

I turn the vehicle toward San Francisco. "Give me his address."