Page 321 of Lodestar

“You probably don’t,” Troy confirmed. “Lots of ways to torture people without spilling a drop of blood. Star used to?—”

As if Star wanted to make it known that she agreed with her, Reinier screeched out his agony at whatever she was doing to him, stopping Troy from finishing her sentence.

For once, I wasn't altogether desperate for an answer.

“On the positive side,” D mused, “it’s shut these two fuckers' traps. Guess they know it’s best to stay off the radar before they’re dished up for the entrée and dessert.”

The body bagswerestill now. Smythe wasn’t even mumbling anymore. Not that staying small and quiet, no matter D’s spiel, would save them from their fates.

They’d signed and sealed that deal years ago—it was being delivered to them today.

Justice was mighty fucking sweet sometimes.

Their eternal resting places had been dug out after Star had locked herself in with Reinier.

We’d gotten confirmation that this place was a dead drop because Troy had uncovered a small lean-to that housed a mechanical digger.

That meant we’d been able to adjust our plans for maximum hurt.

And thank God for machines because the soil was still frozen and it’d have been a real bastard to dig as deep as we had otherwise.

“The beauty of being in the middle of nowhere,” Troy mused as Reinier started sobbing, the howling noises echoing around the clearing, “is that the only creatures who can hear you scream are mostly hibernating, and you wouldn’t want to disturb their sleep. We are the lesser of two evils.”

Both women started chuckling at that, and it triggered a discussion on whether bobcats would eat through the vinyl of the body bags or if they were too discerning about getting plastic stuck between their fangs.

Troy had been relatively quiet up to now, but I found her to be an odd mixture of D and Star. D’s sense of humor was undeniably dark, and the more you knew her, the more it came out to party. At first, she’d been stilted around me, but that had broken down quickly because of how glued Star and I were to each other.

The same went with Troy—there was a certain level of comfort there that made D relax and her whacko idea of what was funny or not surfaced.

As for Troy, she was more serious than Star but found humor in these situations too. I didn’t think Star did. Not particularly, at any rate. If she did, it was founded in satisfaction.

Depending on who you asked, though, I’d guess that made it worse. Star’s pleasure was sadistic but after what she’d endured, who the fuck could blame her?

Another hoarse scream from the shipping container had me glancing its way and prompted the women to bump fists.

When Reinier started entwining a shriek with a sob on an endless loop, the noise echoing around the clearing because of his intermittent cries, there came the sound of beeping.

A few moments later, Star slipped out of the container, her cell to her ear.

As the door creaked open, both Troy and D moved to stand guard as they’d done earlier where all four of us had tackled the CIA director who’d been fighting for his life. This time, he didn’t rush out, but his sobs were even louder than before.

“Who is it?” I mouthed as she strode over to me.

“Kuznetsov.”

Nodding, I turned back to the still body bags. Behind them, two open graves had been dug, and I watched as D and Troy shuffled over to Foundry after replacing the padlock on the shipping container door, proceeded to pick him up between them, and, despite his wriggles, pushed him into the thin pit.

With his arms and legs bound, he was stuck upright in the narrow aperture. I moved over to their side, picked up a shovel, and started helping to pack Foundry in place.

With three of us working, as well as Star when she was done ‘talking’ to Kuznetsov, it didn’t take much work to bury him alive.

Next came Smythe.

He struggled more as, I assumed, he’d figured out what our plans for him were. It was no use—he was restrained and contained and his only destination was the afterlife.

Once we’d buried him too, and when both men were packed in deep to their shoulders, Star squatted in front of Foundry and tugged on the zipper.

Exposing his face to the elements, his terrified eyes darted around the clearing as he took us all in.

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