“Oh, quite the opposite.” She takes the packet of adhesive hooks and scissors. “It’s invigorating. The most fun I’ve had in years,” she says, running up the steps as fast as Bryce does sometimes. “Maybe ever! I don’t know!”
Her laughter floats back down the stairs and makes me grin. I consider going up to check on things after a while, but don’t because she asked me to wait.
Instead, I open my laptop and do some research, anything new I can find out about Ray Gerard or the Cornaro Outfit.
It’s too damn quiet.
Davis is still out following up on a lead about a black SUV and a whole gaggle of goons with Cornaro tattoos being seen around Ray’s beach house in Maui, not far from the start of the jagged Road to Hana. He’ll figure it out, he’s a fine scout, the best man I can trust with this insanity outside Cash Ivers.
I hope to fuck Ray hasn’t left Oahu since Val cut him off, but maybe so.
His Maui vacation place is only a half hour flight or so away. And if he thinks Val was compromised, working with the law, trying to incriminate him, then it’s possible the rat jumped ship for what he thinks are safer waters.
I should be happy at the thought of having one less hyena lurking around after her. But if it just makes getting to the bottom of this harder, prolongs her agony, I’d rather confront him head-on.
There’s got to be something we’re missing.
And sometimes missing the smallest details can be nothing short of fatal.
I swore I’d never make that mistake again.
Not since Joel Cornaro taught me a lesson in pain, in failure, in fire and blood.
* * *
Five Years Ago
I grit my teeth, swallowing a painful groan as the terrible burning consumes my back again, consumes my mind. Then that loud grinding mechanical whir restarts, igniting my ears with its hellish growl.
I can’t help the tortured groan spilling out of me.
“Again, Mr. Calum? You know I don’t enjoy this, yes? Look at me.” Joel Cornaro’s polished shoe taps on the ground impatiently as he kneels, grabs my chin, and lifts my face up to stare into his dark eyes. “For you and your associates, this could all be over very, very quickly. If you’ll just answer my questions…”
“Fuck. You,” I spit back, the same response I’ve given him the last three times he tried to talk to me like an old friend while he’s got his man drilling holes in my back, savaging nerves I didn’t even know I had.
They want to know who I am. Mercenary or military.
They’re afraid we’ve got backup, enlisted men who’ll come swooping down on their little fortress at any moment from the sky.
Oh, how I wish that were the case.
If we’d come here officially, with proper backup from the US Navy, we might’ve had the surveillance goods to avoid hitting that goddamn mine in the first place.
They can go to fucking hell.
I won’t tell them anything. Ever.
My head throbs like death, the knot on my skull could fill my palm if I touched it.
My back is destroyed, this torn, raw meat flayed open to the bone.
Sometime in the last hour, I’ve been moved to another chamber in this place. I don’t smell the same dank mildew scent as before. I knew it as soon as they tore the dark hood off my head and went to work.
First it was just the minion, throwing punches. Nothing I haven’t had plenty of before.
Then a short time later, Cornaro himself came in to oversee the dirty work, watching coldly as that demon fuck took a power drill and trailed a neat line of hellfire down my back, one exploding pit at a time.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Calum,” Cornaro growls again. “You and your merry little crew are the first ones to make it this far, you know. You almost caught us by surprise. It’s almost like you saw right through the hostage story I left when we staged her disappearance…there was never any chance at bargaining for her.”
“Asshole, you’re right,” I snarl. “No fuckin’ bargaining.”
He stands and rolls out a deep chuckle, and I get a good look at him for the first time.
He’s dressed like a slick-dick banker, as well put together as he is ruthless. Only, those shoes he’s wearing are more like boots, I realize. And he must be wearing at least four heavy gold chains around his neck; they rattle softly like bones clinking together every time he walks.
The maniac even has this dark fucking cape flowing behind his double-breasted jacket, a cigar in his hand, flicking stray ash off on the floor as he regards me coldly. I expected the Godfather, but that’s only half of what he is.
He’s far more modern Blackbeard, a pirate bastard haunting the South Pacific with extensive holdings far beyond the Hawaiian Islands like this place in Bali.