“Let her go. You’ve got me and she has nothing to do with this.”
“I don’t know about that Margot. She’s your sister. Do you know how many otherwise innocent people I’ve killed to send their brother or even their cousin a message?”
“No, I don’t really want to know either. Just let her go. You wanted me, and I’m here.”
“Do you think that’s my end goal out of this? Just to get you here?”
“I have no idea what your goals are. The fact is, this was over a while ago. Did someone forget to tell you?”
“Who said it was over? Not the man paying me. I’m an independent contractor, Margot.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with it. The people that hired me to not just kill Dean Stone, Mal, and yourself, but to make all you miserable while I did it, don’t get to cancel the contract just because they lost their status in the cartel. If you hire me to do a job, I’m going to do the job.”
“How are they going to pay you in federal lock up?”
“That is their problem, Margot. Trust me, they’ll find a way. I can be very persuasive. Now, enough about me, let’s talk about you.”
“What’s there to talk about? You were hired to kill me.”
“Yeah, but I was hired to make you suffer too. In fact, whether I need to kill you all or just kill most of you was unclear. My interpretation of the contract was I had some discretion on who suffered and who got killed, as long as all three of you got a good taste of at least one of those two options.”
“Is that why you made a deal with Mal? He was just going to get to suffer?”
“Precisely.”
“Bullshit, you were going to kill him anyway.”
“You doubt my word? I said your sister would be unharmed if you arrived on time and she is unharmed. I will give you my word that, if you don’t do what I want, I will harm her, harm her a lot. Do you doubt my word on that?”
“No, I believe you. What do you want? Do you want me to kill Stone now?”
“Yes. I think it would be easy for you. He trusts you.”
“And then my sister and I are free to go?”
“You’ll have murdered a federal witness, so ‘free’ might be too strong of a word, but no.”
“No?”
“Mal let me down in a big way. I need you to kill him too.”
“I’d have to find him first and that won’t be easy.”
“No, it will be really easy. Shall we go to the next bedroom?”
“Why?”
“It’s a surprise. Don’t worry, my man will watch your sister while you're gone.”
“What man?”
“He’d rather you don’t see him since, for this to work, I have to let you leave here alive. This way.”
Margot walked across the hall to a smaller bedroom. Duct taped to a folding chair on the far side of the room was Mal. Like Melanie, his mouth was taped shut.
“See, he wasn’t so hard to find after all. Once the Racers gave him up, I knew he’d come to visit Manny and his boys for an explanation. Especially after they tipped off Brantley and he shot up his brother. He should have known we’d be waiting for him.”