Page 9 of Cruel Captor

“I need your help,” I say quickly, almost choking on the words.

He looks at me with shock. Yeah, he wasn’t expecting that.

The words leave a foul taste in my mouth. Rage prickles inside me. The primal beast demands satisfaction.He challenged me. Kill him, humiliate him…

No.

His gaze sweeps my office. The hand-carved mahogany desk, the built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes, the three framed Picasso sketches side by side, the red-and-black rug that cost more than his annual salary, the million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline.

His forehead wrinkles in disgust, and his dark brown eyes flare with anger. “Mister, all the fucking money in the world won’t buy—”

I hold up a box that was sitting on my desk.

“I don’t have time for this. If you want to hear what I have to say, put your cell phone in this box.”

He looks at me with contempt, but then obeys me with a suspicious look.

I shut and lock the box, which will block his phone from recording us, in case he’s done anything sneaky. My scanner already showed me he’s not wearing a wire. He sits down in a chair facing my desk, and I sit back down in my chair and make a steeple of my fingers, resting them on my desktop.

“Tamara Bennett was staying with me in Maine, and now she’s missing. My brother has her. And if you tell the police any of this, I’ll deny it under oath, and I’ll pass a polygraph test too. Again.”

His eyes fly wide open with shock. “You’re admitting that you had her?” he barks at me.

“I amtellingyou that she wasstayingwith me. If you find her, you can ask her anything you want.Whenyou find her.” I have to believe she’ll be found. Alive. “The thing is, we can’t tell the police. My brother has informed me that if I do, he will start cutting off body parts.”

His lips twist in a sneer. “You think I actually trust you, asshole?”

I struggled to tamp down my frantic impatience. I expected this, but every second spent explaining things to him is time he’s not looking for her.

“No, nor should you. But that’s not the point. You want her safe, and so do I. And I know you say you don’t want money, but that is also on the table. And anything else you could possibly want.”

He snorts. “What else do you think I would want from you? Hookers and blow?”

“Revenge.” I open a folder that is sitting on my desk and shove two pictures at him. He looks at them, and his olive skin flushes dark.

One of them is a picture of his wife’s former boss, Peter Brown, the one who had asbestos in the workplace where Carter’s wife was employed on the janitorial staff. Years of breathing in poison made her cells riot in revolt. Cancer rotted her lungs, and she wheezed to death on a hospital bed. Peter was slapped with a few fines. Peter’s on a yacht in the Bahamas.

One of them is a picture of Gideon Culpepper, the spoiled trust fund brat who introduced Carter’s daughter to heroin, with fatal results. He’s on the balcony of a hotel in Miami, getting a blow job from some little brunette. The smirk on his face alone is enough to make me want to set him on fire.

“I can make them suffer in ways you could never even dream of.”

An ugly expression contorts his face. “Oh, believe me, I can dream up plenty. And I’m not going to help a serial killer.”

“I am not running around killing women. I have never killed a woman.” That’s not a lie.

There’s challenge in his eyes as he pushes his jaw out stubbornly. “What about Heather Abelard. Tamara’s missing neighbor?”

“I have no idea what happened to her. There’s a good chance that my brother kidnapped her too, but I have nothing to do with it. So is it a yes?” I ask him.

“It’s a maybe.” He folds his arms across his chest. He’s as solid as iron. I wouldn’t have called him in otherwise. I can’t trust a man who doesn’t keep fit; it reeks of weakness. “And don’t get too comfortable with me, you fucking freak. You’re up to something shady. You said you don’t kill women, but you didn’t deny you’re a serial killer.” So he’s not as dumb as he looks. I was pretty sure he wasn’t, because I checked up on him, but it’s good to have it confirmed.

I look him in the eye. “The kind of men I just showed you pictures of…men who cause harm and misery to the innocent…sometimes they disappear. Perhaps I help make that happen.” Admittedly, I only kill those men for the thrill of the hunt. I don’t give a fuck that the men I kill are hurting innocent people, but Carter will.

“Men like Baxter Warburton?” he says skeptically. “I read the file on him. He was a saint.”

I snort in contempt. “Is there a patron saint for pedophiles? He liked to rape teenage boy prostitutes up the ass with giant dildos, then kill them.”

He makes a raspberry sound with his lips. “Noway.There’s never even been a hint of that.”

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