Page 73 of Haunted Nights & Savage Sins
“Ankles,” Maxim says, and he kneels to bind the man to the chair legs while I lock the chain across the chest and cinch it tight. Brenna keeps to my right shoulder, quiet as a shadow, eyes on the door and the windows both. Her hands do not shake. I love her for that.
The man starts to moan. Blood runs along his hairline and pools under his ear. He blinks, tries to look around, realizes he cannot move, tries to jerk and only makes the chair creak.
“Where am I,” he mutters.
“Nowhere you want to be,” I say.
He focuses on me and flinches. He knows my face. I see the recognition, then the calculation that always comes next with men like him. How much can he sell his life for. I squash the idea before it gets big.
“You came to kill me,” I say. “We can skip the part where you pretend you got lost.”
He licks his lips and tries a smile. “It’s not personal.”
Brenna’s voice is soft behind me. “You said that to yourself coming up the stairs too. To bad it doesn’t matter.”
He glances past me at her and tries to twist his neck for a better look. Maxim steps into his line of sight and the man goes still again. Good. Look at me.
“What is your name,” I ask.
He hesitates. I pick up the billy club again, then think better of it and set it down. Wood dulls too fast. I reach for the drawer inthe old desk and pull out a length of rubber tubing and a mallet. Maxim does not comment. He has seen me work before. Brenna does not look away.
“My name is Owen,” the man says quickly.
“Owen what.”
“Owen Price.”
“Who sent you, Owen Price.”
He presses his lips together like a child. I slam the mallet into his thigh. Rubber takes the sting from my hand and puts it in his muscle. He screams like I dislocated his soul. The chair jumps. The chain bites. The scream echoes down the burned hallway and sounds like history.
“Who sent you,” I ask again, calm as a priest.
He sucks air and sweats. “Got a number. No name.”
“Try again.”
Another strike, lower now, same leg, nerves waking up and shouting. His breath turns choppy. Blood beads where his teeth cut his lip.
“You will not make it to sunrise,” Brenna says, still soft, still terrible. “Tell him what he wants to know.”
“Doyle, O’Sullivan, I don’t fucking know” he blurts.
Maxim goes still. My jaw ticks.
“You have to know something. Who was going to pay you?” I ask.
“Niether of your old man’s. Someone under them. A cousin, an ally. I don’t know.”
I believe him. Errands like this rarely move on proper signatures.
“Who else knows you are here,” I ask.
“No one.”
I flick my eyes at Maxim. He shakes his head once toward the hall, meaning the exterior cameras are quiet, no motion beyond what we planned. Still, a job like this never rides with one horse. I nod and he moves to the door, posts himself in the jamb with his gun out and his head half turned. He can watch both the stair and my back from there.
I lean in until I can smell the copper on Owen’s breath. “You are going to give me more than just a number. Why now. Why tonight. Why this house and this bed.”
