Page 67 of Heston
“Here,” Heston told him. “Thanks for meeting us.”
“It’s what I do.” Eric came swiftly to Heston’s side.
Eric was USMC down to his boots, but he should’ve been a practicing physician. That was his true talent.
Heston tipped his head inside the Porsche and told London, “Babe, Eric Reynolds is The TEAM medic. He’s going to take a quick look before we evac you to Georgetown. You can trust him. Are you okay with him checking you over?”
She swallowed hard and nodded, but didn’t say anything. Heston had a feeling something had changed since he’d sat with her under that bush. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her head was down. Was she embarrassed or hurting? He wasn’t sure. It was his turn to swallow hard. Was this the beginning of the end?
Chapter Thirty
Alex cocked his head at the sound of dead air in his earpiece. Zack wasn’t answering. Not unusual for a man when he went dark.
“That’s the problem with this younger generation,” Alex told the man straining against the expertly knotted red silk tie binding his too-soft-to-have-ever-worked-a-day-in-his-life hands, over the thick branch of this ancient oak. “They don’t think they need to keep in touch with their elders.”
Straining and kicking wouldn’t help Lancaster Wirth. He wasn’t going anywhere, not with his bare feet barely touching planet Earth and a gag in his mouth. Which was exactly how he’d treated London inside container three.
The best payback involved giving pricks like Lancaster a taste of what they’d brazenly dished out to others. He got off on beating, demeaning, and raping women? Now it was his turn in the barrel, so to speak. Alex had to admit, the idea had merit, stuffing this bloated ego into a steel drum, soldering the lid shut, leaving the screaming gunrunner, drug lord, murderer, and flesh peddler in the dark for the rest of time and eternity. But…
Alex shook off all the morbidly creative ways this day could end. He hadn’t brought a barrel with him, damn it. Maybe next time. Because there would always be a next time in this messed-up world.
At the moment, Tucker Chase had three agents from his psychic team combing through the forensic evidence in Keane’s containers. They’d collected plenty of DNA evidence. It was everywhere, more proof that those slick bastards thoroughly believed they were untouchable. But, since DNA took monthsto process, Tucker also sent his star investigator, Eden Stark Winchester, into container three to work her psychic magic.
All she’d had to do was simply touch the floor that London had bled on, that her poor toes had slipped and slid over while she’d been beaten. With her sensitive fingertips, Eden hadseenthe ghastly minute-by-minute replay of what London endured. Eden had already proven that Lancaster had restrained London in container three and how. She knew Obermeyer, Keane, and Lancaster were joint owners in their illicit business. But with her psychic skills, Eden hadseenLancaster deliberately hang an unconscious London by her wrists to those overhead pipes. She’dwatchedhim joke and chat with Obermeyer and Keane while he’d tied a thick, dense hood over London’s head. She’dwatchedhim turn on the hose that Keane had so obediently provided. Lancaster was the bastard who’d waterboarded London, and he’d damned near drowned her.
EdenheardObermeyer and Keane ask London multiple times where Alex was.
What Alex hadn’t known, until Tucker relayed Eden’s findings, was that, somehow, Lancaster, Obermeyer, and Keane had known Kelsey was no longer in Washington, that they couldn’t use her to get to him. Alex stiffened as he recalled how many times London had begged them to stop hurting her. How over and over, she’d told Lancaster, “I don’t know where h-h-he is.”
Which was true. But instead of inventing a plausible lie to forestall more pain, she’d simply taken the hits and endured to the end. Foolish? Yes, but also damned brave.
Cocking his neck, Alex lifted one shoulder to squelch the tension radiating up his neck. London, God bless her, shouldn’t have protected him, shouldn’t have bled a single drop of blood for him. She should’ve given him up. That would’ve been smart. But he had to respect a fellow warrior who’d given all, who’dstared into the face of Death and spat in its eye, if only to prove that she could. Which made her USMC material in his book.
All Wirth and Obermeyer’d had to do was ask. Alex would’ve told them precisely where to find him. Of course, he would’ve killed them when they’d arrived, that was a given. Overall, it would’ve saved everyone this troublesome day, and London wouldn’t be suffering like she was. But they hadn’t asked. Instead, they’d tortured the courageous young woman Alex owed his wife’s life to. Big fuckin’ mistake.
Eventually, the coroner and the DNA would corroborate Eden’s intel. Too bad that wouldn’t happen fast enough to save Lancaster or his son, the infamous, chicken-shit that Alex had erroneously dubbed ‘the Irishman.’
Irish, nothing. The Wirths might’ve come from Irish stock, but they were lowlifes. Certainly nothing like Patrick Bradley Stewart, Alex’s paternal grandfather, a true Irishman who’d fought bravely at Iwo Jima in World War Two, who’d come home injured, then taken in Alex and his mom. That after Mel, Gramp’s son, also Alex’s deadbeat father, had deserted his wife and only child to run off and play bigshot with Pops Delaney, the kingpin of the Irish Mafia in Boston. Delaney, who Alex now knew had been his gawddamned uncle. The ungrateful son who’d changed his name from Stewart to Delaney. The child Gramps had never talked about, not even once.
Talk about a rude awakening, to find yourself in line to inherit a ‘family business’ you never knew existed. Which was why those thousands of dollars of alleged ‘insurance’ money from the Irish mob had rained down on Alex, since Jameson had righteously ended Delaney’s daughter in Boston. Lancaster must’ve been the one sending it. He’d honestly thought Alex could be bought?
Hell, no. That money was blood money and Alex made sure the local police charity received every last tainted penny. Alexdidn’t want it. Would’ve sent it back if he’d known Lancaster Wirth was behind it.
After container three, Eden investigated the other containers and revealed the names of the women and children Keane had kidnapped and kept in those containers until he could transport them overseas. Like cargo, the bastard. Like get-rich-easy merchandise. With Keane now on a slab at the county morgue, Alex would make damned sure London was the last woman Lancaster ever touched again. Alex couldn’t destroy every pedophile and flesh peddler in the world, but he could end this one. And he would.
Karma was a sneaky bitch. She’d provided the perfect branch of the perfect tree at the perfect height for this perfect meeting. Alex had used it before, that time to hang a six-point buck he’d shot during a long-ago deer season. Coincidentally, this branch was every bit as sturdy as those metal pipes in container three, the ones where Obermeyer, Keane, and Lancaster Wirth had hung London Wilde. Where they’d taken turns battering her. Asking her stupid questions.
All by itself, this branch was just a nice piece of oak. Fairly round. Bare of bark. Strong as steel. Hard. It hadn’t bowed when it accepted Lancaster’s full, dead weight. Well, not exactly, dead. Not then, and not yet. Alex had only knocked Lancaster out once he’d caught up with him in this dark, primeval, Virginia forest. But he was wide awake now.
The saliva in Alex’s mouth dried at the nightmare Heston’s poor woman had lived through. Especially now that, thanks to Mother, he knew everything there was to know about Obermeyer’s elite ‘hunting club’ for the rich and famous perverts he’d called friends. Alex knew about the missing women up and down the Eastern Seaboard who’d been kidnapped, hunted like wild animals, raped for sport, then murdered in these same woods. He knew about the families who would never find theclosure they needed to heal, who’d never know what happened here. Which made Obermeyer’s and his lackeys’ crimes all the more reprehensible. There’d be no funerals. No last rites. No comfort. Those poor families would live in hell wondering and worrying about what happened to their sisters, daughters, girlfriends—their wives—for the rest of their lives.
Alex had a list of other names to go along with the crimes against those murdered women now. Two US senators, one from New York, the other from California. Several successful tech giants, one in Texas, the other in California. A Canadian billionaire. A prime minister. Three princes, none of them from Europe and none in line for any throne. A son of a bitchin’ priest. A recently wedded movie star. Numerous others who wouldn’t live long enough to so much as wish they’d never partied with the powerful, generous Secretary of State Tristan Obermeyer.
Alex tipped his aching head damned near to his shoulder to control the grip of tension on those stubborn neck muscles. He used to enjoy hunting. Man against beast was an honorable contest, when the kill was necessary to live and high-powered scopes weren’t used. But today? He was nothing but a garbage man.
As silent as a wraith, Zack stepped out of the thickening gloom brought on by the early sunset in any forest. Shadows had grown longer and darker as the day drew to a close. Without a lick of regard to his unwilling passenger, Zack jerked the dangling body off his shoulder and tossed Lancaster’s son Miles to the ground at his father’s feet. “Found your fuckwit son.”
The senior Wirth thrashed, grunted, and whined, no doubt begging for his son’s life.
