I turned back in time to see Sander Bryan try to reach for his panic button again.
“Won’t do you any good,” I said. “It was disconnected from authorities the moment our computer guy hacked into your system. Now, you literally have a minute and thirty seconds to tell me everything, or I’ll make sure that you wish you had.”
The guy’s mouth went stubbornly closed.
I narrowed my eyes. “There are worse things than death.”
The governor’s eyes narrowed as he tried to call my bluff.
“Have you ever been to a prison, Governor?” I asked curiously.
The governor narrowed his eyes, refusing to answer.
“I’m going to assume not,” I said. “And, let’s just say, you get to federal prison—because that’s where you’ll end up. You are involved in human trafficking of minors. That’s a serious offense. You’ll get lifetime sentences. I’m talking, you’ll never see the other side of the prison yard fence again. You’ll be there until you die. Hopefully of old age after every inmate in there has his turn with you.”
The governor blinked at that.
“Prisoners don’t take kindly to people that hurt children,” Lynn mused quietly as he leaned back in his seat, his forty caliber Glock on his knee, his finger resting along the length of the barrel. “You’ll get in there, the inmates will find out what you did, and then you’ll never have a moment’s peace. You’ll live the rest of your life being tortured. If you’re lucky, during one of those torture sessions, you’ll die. Most likely, they’ll stop before you do because they don’t want you to die before they’ve had their chance to achieve justice for the children that you’ve hurt.”
“You don’t have anything. I was careful,” he snarled.
He was right, technically.
Without a blatant confession, and with what little evidence we had of his involvement, he likely would get out with a slap on the wrist thanks to his status in the government.
Which fuckin’ sucked because if anyone deserved to go to prison, it was this guy.
“Maybe. Maybe not. You willing to bet your ass on that?” I asked curiously.
The man narrowed his eyes, looking like he was murdering me in his head.
Something creaked behind me, and I stiffened, experienced a blacking-out sensation for a few seconds, just as Bryan’s eyes lit with hope.
“He shot my guards!” the governor cried out, his eyes aimed at something I couldn’t see.
I looked over at the cop that I knew wouldn’t be able to ignore this, then pulled the trigger just before I promptly passed the fuck out.
CHAPTER 24
I wish being a bitch paid the bills.
-Belle’s secret thoughts
BELLE
I knew the moment that the phone rang in my hand that something was wrong.
I didn’t have to hear the words out of my father’s mouth to confirm it.
I’d felt it for the last hour. Something that wasn’t quite ‘right.’
Like something big had happened, and I was sitting on my ass waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or for someone to call me and tell me that they’d wound up getting my man hurt. Or even worse, killed.
And now my father was calling to confirm it.
If it would’ve been okay, Bruno would be calling me right now.
Not my father.