He splutters, sweat beading on his upper lip. “Jesus, fuck, I don’t know anything! I swear I don’t know anything about…anything!”
“And I wish I didn’t find that so easy to believe.” I hold in a sigh.
I also wish I was enjoying this more as I bend over and drill my gaze down into his eyes.
Any other day, I would’ve taken delight in making this man slobber and whimper at my feet, but some things are more important than a finely honed taste for sadism.
“Tell me, what do you think I’m here for?” I ask, very clearly and very precisely.
Because something grating pricks at my intuition.
Sometimes it’s better not to do the heavy lifting.
Sometimes you just need to give people enough rope to hang themselves.
Or ask just the right questions to let them talk themselves into a hole and give away far more than they ever intended.
“D-Durham!” he spits out instantly as my shift in weight puts that scary spike just a little deeper into soft, tender flesh. “You want to know where Durham is! I mean…don’t you?”
His voice goes small. I let one eyebrow go up.
On the long list of boring, desperate, pleading nonsense I expected, this is more interesting.
My lips thin. I look at him for several long seconds while he goes pale, eyes darting wildly side to side as he realizes something fun.
He just fucked up.
Hardcore.
“Hmmm. Curious choice of words. Last I checked, Leland Durham was locked up for life in a Supermax prison. Booked on so many charges he won’t wriggle out of them before the next millennium ends,” I say slowly.
That’s what I last saw on the news. You’d have to be living in a cave the last few months to miss Galentron’s dirty laundry hitting you in the face constantly. Every grown-up news rag and Sunday TV interview has barely touched anything else for months.
The evidence unleashed by the Bell sisters with Leo’s big, scarred helping hand, plus a little magic from yours truly, opened up a real can of worms, as the kids like to say.
The icing on the scandal cake was the grand CEO of Galentron himself going down on conspiracy and terrorism charges. Justice finally served for once in this fucked up system we live in.
Or so I thought.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being wrong.
And Rook’s eyeballs can’t bulge enough as he watches my calm, hell-frozen-over stare become hotter-than-hell’s-furnace psycho bitch mad.
“I…” His voice is just a murmur I don’t even have to silence.
“No. I am very, very interested in what you mean by where he is.”
Rook swallows. With the way I have his chin trapped, it moves like a wattle. “I, uh…I don’t…I didn’t realize he’d been sentenced. That’s all. I didn’t know he was already in jai—URP!”
Imbecile.
This time, I make sure it hurts.
I stomp down just hard enough to make him gag. If I’m not careful, I’ll render him unable to talk with an impromptu field tracheotomy, but I jab that stiletto in just enough for a nice bruise and a groaning heave of his chest.
I need to calm the hell down.
Fortunately, I keep something special around for these tricky cases. My little talisman that always keeps me focused. I reach into my pocket and feel the familiar crinkle of a thin wrapper.
“Like I said,” I purr, silky-sweet, pulling out a smile just for him and showing every last one of my teeth, then pinching the ball of sweet pink candy between my teeth. “You know who I am. And you know what I can do to you. That also means you know I hate liars.”
Except myself, of course. There’s an important distinction.
I know how to lie my little heart out with charm.
Plus, I always have a good reason.
Any good femme fatale does, especially when she’s trapped behind enemy lines with a slob who just said too much.
Then again, I think Rook might just be more afraid of Durham than he is of me. The poor boy actually stays silent save for his snuffling, whining breaths. His eyes snap around the room, looking for a miracle, an escape.
Nope.
Not today.
There’s nowhere to go but hell.
It’s just us here and the steady slap of the waves on the hull, and somewhere distant, the cry of a few night birds hunting.
Even if I threw him overboard, I doubt he’d make it swimming the twenty or so nautical miles back to shore. Not in his shape.
But I step back, lifting my heel off his throat, letting him breathe. He hisses out a relieved sigh, his hands clenching and unclenching.
I lean back on one heel.
Let him get comfortable and think the worst might be over.
Then I whirl around in a sharp, downward-driving roundhouse kick that catches him square in the side of the head with the toe of my pumps. My foot snaps to the side so hard there’s a hollow thunk of impact that echoes as his skull goes bouncing off his own shoulder.