“I’m not one of your soldiers, Victor. One of your informants, or contacts, or liaisons. Yes, I want you to teach me things. I want to do whatever it takes to stay with you and be a part of your life. But you can’t change who I am. And you can’t treat me like you would one of your men.” She tilts her head to the other side. “I mean sure you can, if you want, but I’m not going to change. Do you understand that?”
What in the hell is wrong with me? Instead of turning me off and dropping her from my lap, her defiance only makes me want her more.
I sigh.
“I don’t want you to change who you are, but you’re going to have to learn to listen to me in these types of situations.”
“It was just one guy,” she argues. “You know as well as I do that I could take him down. I did take him down. He barely weighs more than me.”
I shake my head. “No, Sarai, you don’t get it. You wouldn’t believe how many people, mainly tourists, women, teenagers, that Andre Costa has had a hand in abducting in South America.”
“But we’re not in South America,” she says.
“You don’t have to be. People are abducted every single day in the United States and transported overseas, made as slaves, murdered. The list is endless. You of all people should know how easy it is to be forced into a life of slavery and how difficult it is to be set free from it. Most never are.”
“But I knew you could hear me on the mic,” she says and I sense that she’s beginning to lose her confidence in herself. “I was smart enough to tell you every street that I was on.”
“I know,” I say softly, rubbing my palm across her thigh. “But what if I didn’t hear the hints you were dropping? What if Costa had led you to a car or a building—much like this one—and the men who were with him in the bar were there waiting to restrain you?”
“We can’t live by the what if’s, Victor.”
“We absolutely live by the what if’s,” I come back. “We don’t live a life in fear of them, but yes, we must always take them into account.”
Her chin drops and her eyes stray from mine.
“You wanted me to help you, to train you,” I say, raising her chin again with the edge of my finger. “You said you’d do anything. I’m asking you to trust my lifelong experience and do not defy me anymore.”
She nods. “OK, but I don’t want you to get pissed at me if I fall off the wagon.”
A smile warms my eyes.
I know that I’ll never be able to change her, but that’s what I like about her. I don’t want her to change. I just want her to realize that I’m the one that knows what I’m doing. I won’t say it to her, but I would never send her on any kind of mission that I knew she couldn’t handle. Luring Costa to the car was a simple task. I knew she could pull it off. I knew she could handle Costa if they were alone, or else I never would’ve sent her there in the first place. Allowing her to do this wasn’t my way of seeing if she could pull it off, or letting her ‘practice on the easy people’, it was my way of seeing how well she could follow orders.
But Sarai has a mind of her own. And as much as it infuriates me that she doesn’t listen as much as I’d like her to, at the same time it makes me mad for her.
I feel her lips touch mine. The smell of her skin sends me into a brief high. I suck a breath deep into my lungs and reach up, cupping her face firmly in my hands as she turns around on my lap, straddling me. “You’re going to be the death of me,” I whisper onto her lips before slipping my tongue into her mouth.
Costa’s blood-curdling scream echoes through the warehouse.
Sarai pulls her lips from mine and her body shoots upright on my lap.
“What the hell is he doing to him?”
I fit my hands on the sides of her waist. “You don’t want to know.”
She nods steadily and climbs off my lap. “Yeah, actually I do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sarai
“Motherfucker! I don’t know anything! AHHH!”
Andre’s screams fill the space around me when I open the office door. His hands are clenched into fists, restrained against the arms of the chair by two leather straps pulled so tight against his skin that they’re turning colors as he struggles against them. Dark blood glistens on his lips, pouring down over his chin and down his throat.
Fredrik holds a pair of bloody pliers in his hand which is covered by a white latex glove.
“You f**king whore,” Andre growls at me as I step into the dull gray light. His enraged eyes dart back and forth between the three of us. Victor stands behind me now. “My brother will find you before you leave this city. And he’ll f**king kill you!”
Fredrik drops something from the end of the pliers into a silver tray on top of the table next to him. It clinks into the bottom. He is so calm, so refined, and I find it eerie as he stands over a bleeding man who is precisely the opposite, how their stark differences can exist in the same room without one canceling the other out.
“Who is your brother?” Fredrik asks in a relaxed manner.
“Go f**k yourself!” Andre spits out the words and a spray of blood spatters from his lips.
Fredrik very calmly grabs a hold of Andre from underneath his chin, his fingers fitted firmly against his cheeks, the white latex quickly becoming red. Andre struggles in his grasp, trying to thrash from side to side but can barely move his head two inches with the leather strap bound tightly around his forehead.
“I won’t tell you shit!” Andre screams and gurgles as the blood drains into the back of his throat. “Go ahead! Pull them all out! Nothing an implant can’t fix!” he taunts Fredrik, but his struggling body and the way his fingers dig aggressively into his palms tells a much different story.
Fredrik brings the pliers into view and clamps them around one of Andre’s front teeth. Andre gurgles and spits some more, which I realize is him trying to speak, but actual words are indecipherable now. He screams through moans and grunts, his eyes open and shut from pain and mental exhaustion.
“Where is Edgar Velazco?” Fredrik asks, holding the pliers still around Andre’s tooth.
Andre gurgles something inaudible, but what sounds very much like, “Fuck you!” and the bones in Fredrik’s hand harden as he begins to pull. Andre cries out in pain, his fists shaking against his restraints, his whole body stiffening and jerking against the chair. The tooth comes out after a few stomach-turning shifts of the pliers back and forth, the grinding of the bone makes me want to cover my ears until it’s over.
I’m disgusted by the act, but indifferent to its purpose.
A second later I hear another clink as the second tooth is dropped into the bottom of the tray.
Andre still manages to say, “Fuck you,” over and over, but it comes out through tears of anger and undertones of revenge.
“His brother’s name is David,” I announce, stepping up farther into view. “And I know what he looks like.”
Fredrik looks across at me, the bloody pliers still clamped in his hand.
“How do you know this?” Victor says from beside me.
Andre has fallen silent, an unintended testament to the truth of my words. It was just a hunch, after seeing the way David looked at Andre when Andre called his father an a**hole back at the bar. I wasn’t so sure of myself until now.
“He was with Andre at the bar,” I say.
Victor walks past me and moves across the room toward the car. The sound of the car door shutting echoes throughout the space and then he comes back with his briefcase clutched in his hand.
Fredrik lowers the pliers at his side while Andre finally tries to lead us away from the truth, though he knows it’s too late for that.
“My brother isn’t even in New Orleans!” he shouts, now speaking with less control over the formation of his words. It sounds as though he’s having a time trying to keep his tongue from slipping through the empty space where his two front teeth once were. “He’s not even in this country!” He attempts to laugh, but more blood drains into the back of his throat, causing him to choke instead.
“Oh, but you just said, moments ago,” Fredrik begins, “that your brother will find and kill us before we leave this city. How would that be possible if he wasn’t here?” I hear the devilish grin in Fredrik’s voice, but he does well to keep it hidden from his face.
Andre’s bloody lips snap shut.
Victor opens his briefcase on a nearby crate and pulls out a series of photographs. I join him and he hands them to me.
Already knowing what he wants me to do, I begin sifting through them, while he moves over to stand on the opposite of Andre from Fredrik.
He clasps his hands together behind his back and peers down into Andre’s tormented face.
“Your brother, David, will be next,” Victor says as calmly as Fredrik might. “And everything that happens to you here tonight will also happen to him. Now tell us, where is Edgar Velazco?”
Andre adverts his eyes and glares up at the tall metal ceiling. He refuses to speak.
Victor takes a subtle step back so as to prevent being sprayed by Andre’s blood just as Fredrik places the pliers into Andre’s mouth again. Andre screams in agony, his voice booming through the wide space.
Clink.
“This is him.” I point into a photograph and then hold it up to show them. “He was there. Same tattoo around the wrist. This is definitely him.”
A pathetic sob rolls through Andre’s body, but I get the feeling it has nothing to do with his brother suffering the same fate. He’s clearly in tremendous pain. I also get the feeling that Fredrik is just getting started, that removing every one of Andre’s teeth is just the beginning of a very long night of torture.
~~~
Sixteen minutes have passed. I’ve subconsciously kept track of time, letting the glowing green numbers from the battery-powered clock Fredrik set on the table keep my attention. It has been better than watching Fredrik remove Andre’s teeth. But Andre still hasn’t broken. Tears and sweat stream down his face, mixing with the blood. His body appears limp restrained in the chair, only able to tense up when Fredrik is inflicting more pain, but the second Fredrik stops, Andre’s body just gives up and melts into the leather. His head falls exhaustively to one side, his clenched fists loosen, allowing his fingers to fall away from the palms of his hands.
“W-What is that?” Andre says fearfully through his tattered gums.
Fredrik pulls out a small round plastic case and twists it with his thumb and index finger. A shiny silver needle pops out of one end and he takes it carefully into his fingers, setting the plastic case down on the table.
“Where is Edgar Velazco?” Fredrik asks again, still with no emotion in his voice.
He takes a hold of Andre’s left hand, uncurling his fingers forcibly and flattening his hand against the chair arm. Andre’s eyes grow wider. He tries desperately to pull his hand away, to curl his fingers back toward his palms, but with the restraints and the weight Fredrik is putting on the tops of his knuckles, his efforts are wasted.