Page 2 of The Madman's Nightmare
Ipressed the hot barrel of my gun to the forehead of the man in front of me, ready to drop his ass like I did his pathetic little brother if he didn’t tell me what I needed to know. James stood beside me, ready to do what was necessary, but the look he gave me when I asked him to help with this situation said everything he didn’t.
This was my fault, and having to do this again after so many years of keeping our noses clean wasn’t going to end well. He was right, even if he never said the words. I should have gotten in front of this years ago, before parts of my past put a bullseye on my family.
“Tell me where they are and I’ll let you go,” I said to the trembling man in front of me, but he shook his head as snot and tears rolled down his face.
“I told you they didn’t know anything,” James muttered as he pushed off the wall beside me and walked to my side. He whispered, “You know you can’t let him go, right?”
The man in front of me started crying harder as I cut my eyes to James. He rolled his eyes at me and shook his head as he walked to the door of the bunker we were using for this interrogation. Without looking back, he opened the door and pulled it closed behind him, leaving me and the man alone in the concrete room underground.
His brother was dead behind him, and when the man raised his eyes to me, I tried to offer him one last chance. “Tell me and I swear I won’t kill you.”
“I. . . I don’t know,” he said through stuttered crying. “They disappeared years ago.” Quickly, he tacked on, “I. . .I swear.”
“When?” I questioned.
Any kind of information gives me a place to start looking. I knew who was trying to threaten me, but I was clueless to their whereabouts, associations, or anything else.
“I think ten. . . maybe eleven years,” he answered. “They just vanished overnight.”
“And no one has seen them? No one from the old crew?” I asked and he rapidly shook his head.
“Not that I’ve heard.” He added, “But I can ask around.”
I turned away from him and kept my grip on the gun in my hand as I ran through the years before I finally claimed Elise, trying to pinpoint the last time I had contact with the siblings. I kept drawing a blank. Even picturing their faces was getting harder, and for weeks, I ran everything I could through Callahan’s system, trying to find any proof they were still alive.
Bradon and Kendra Mills.
Former street kids that became closer than family to James and me when I killed Marco. The people who helped us in the early days after I took over the territory in the Flats of Portstill. Witnesses to the madness I was trapped in and confidants to me when the blood stained my hands.
Two people I never thought would be a threat.
We had drifted apart when James and I made the decision to clean up our act and start Callahan Cyber Security. I needed to put my past to rest and remake myself into an honorable and trustworthy businessman, or I would never have left the Flats. I would have never reconciled with my blood siblings, and I would have never been with my Lamb. She was the most importantperson in my life, excluding our sons, and I couldn’t even think of her not sleeping beside me every night.
The siblings, as James and I used to call them, even though I was pretty sure, like James and I, they weren’t blood siblings. I wasn’t sure, and as hard as I’d looked, I couldn’t even find a mention of them in any state files.
No foster records, no state checks issued for their care. Hell, I couldn’t even find a birth certificate for either of them. It was like they appeared out of thin air, and they seemed to have disappeared the same way.
I had received word from an old informant of mine last month, through long closed back channels, that Bradon and Kendra were hell-bent on revenge, and I started to become paranoid. I doubled security in and around my building, as well as Elise’s parents’ house, since they babysat DJ and Connor a few afternoons a week.
There were dozens of new cameras installed in the building, as well as mounted everywhere I could think of for at least three blocks around our building. And still, none of it did anything to quell the paranoia and worry.
Turning back to the man on his knees in front of me, he turned his head and used his sleeve to wipe the snot from his nose. Looking back up at me, I saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes. It was quickly gone as I raised the gun back to his forehead.
“No,” he begged, “Please.”
He never finished the sentence as I pulled the trigger, killing him and causing his body to crumble onto the concrete floor. The vacant expression in his eyes as the last few beats of his heart pumped blood from his forehead onto the ground around him did little to stop the rage inside of me.
That asshole was the last person who may have any kind of a lead on the siblings, and now, I was back to square one.
“Fuck,” I yelled into the metal room before I stomped over to the door, turned the lever, and opened it.
James was standing a few stairs up, looking bored with his arms crossed over his chest. I didn’t close the door behind me because the clean-up crew would be coming through to deal with the two bodies inside.
“Don’t fucking start with me,” I demanded as I pushed my gun back into the holster under my arm and climbed the stairs.
I knew he was behind me as we got closer to the surface and as I pushed the door at the top open, I turned and glanced at him. His cold eyes gave away nothing as we popped out of the ground and into the chilly night air. Looking around, I didn’t see anyone, and I knew I had lookouts positioned around so no one discovered what had just happened, but that didn’t make the feeling someone was watching any less.
Wordlessly, James and I walked across the field, and he got behind the wheel of the vehicle as I climbed into the passenger’s seat. He cranked the SUV and flashed the lights one time as we sat and observed. A concrete truck pulled through the field and for the next thirty minutes, we watched as the entire truck’s contents were dumped down the stairs and into the underground bunker.
