“You aren’t going to like this. None of you are.”
“I haven’t liked a damn thing you’ve said so far,” Absinthe admitted. “Why should I start now?”
“She spent her last year training under Adrik Orlov.” Code dropped the name like a bomb because it was one. Adrik Orlov had gone to one of the schools Sorbacov had created, the one Gavriil had attended, and he’d risen fast, just the way Gavriil had, as one of the top assassins for his country. He was used by Sorbacov to interrogate prisoners because he was very good at disassociating and, like all of them, knew the techniques that caused the most pain, prolonged life and consciousness.
Once free, he made his way to Thailand and lived far away from others. He didn’t seek out company and anyone with any sense didn’t seek him out. He was known to be hard on women. He never kept a woman for very long, making their life too miserable for them to want to stay with him. He did train fighters, but his students didn’t always survive their training. Adrik had a very bad reputation. Torpedo Ink had come across him more than once in their travels when he was working or they were. They respected one another, but kept their distance.
“Gavriil?” Czar turned to his birth brother. “You spent the most time with him.”
“A dangerous man,” Gavriil confirmed. “But you all know that. He just wants to be left alone. I know what that’s like. We all do. He isn’t a bad man. He doesn’t know how to operate within the rules of society, and he isn’t a team player. You cross him and you’re not going to live very long, but that’s pretty much saying the same thing about any one of us here, me included.”
That was Gavriil, short and to the point. Absinthe had the same opinion of Adrik both times he’d run across him. He just wanted to be left alone. He worked hard when he worked. He didn’t talk much. He kept to himself. He took on the occasional student if they could pay or if they worked for him in some capacity. No one stayed around him long because he expected them to work the way he did, using the same brutal conditions he’d trained under.
“A year?” Transporter said. “She lasted an entire year training under him?”
Code nodded slowly. “It appears so. She returned to the States and took a job a hundred miles from her hometown as a librarian, and a few months later the first of the frat boys, Beau Cabot, died an ugly death.”
“How?” Reaper asked.
“Someone went into his home, taped him to the bed, shoved sawdust down his throat, packed it in deep and taped his mouth closed and waited for him to suffocate. His parents were sound asleep in the other room. They never heard a sound. Found him the next morning.”
“Classic,” Maestro said. “An easy one. Where did the sawdust come from?”
“His father’s a cabinetmaker. Right out of his very classy, high-end workshop. Not a single sign of a break-in. No tampering with cameras. Not at the shop. Not at the house and they live in a gated community and have security everywhere,” Code said. “The cops looked hard at the father and his employees, especially because the son was a screw-up and constantly got good workers fired. Frat boy also made very costly mistakes. The father didn’t want him working there, but the mother always made it the employees’ fault and insisted her husband fire the workers.”
“They found nothing that could connect Scarlet to the murder?” Lana asked.
Absinthe glanced at her sharply. He knew what she was thinking. Scarlet had managed to slip past them. Neither of them knew how she’d done it. He still hadn’t figured it out.
“No. The cops assured both Cabot and Holden Sr. she couldn’t have been involved. They’re wrong,” Code said.
Absinthe’s heart dropped. If Code found some trail leading back to Scarlet, the police could find one.
“Your reasoning?” Czar snapped.
“Several.” Code picked up the eight-by-ten photograph. “Her eyes when she looked at the Holden kid. She was taunting him right back. She believed absolutely those boys raped her little sister. She knew they did. Something they did. Something she saw that no one else did, but she knew, and she was telling him she was coming after him. He thought he was too out of her reach, but he didn’t realize what he’d unleashed. He should have. There were three of them that night. Scarlet was drugged when they’d tried to rape her. She fought them off, managed to get a knife and nearly killed them. But no, the suffocation is one of the many ways we were taught. But both the other boys are dead too.”
Absinthe thought those were all very good reasons. He was glad none of those were reasons the cops would be able to trace the killings to Scarlet. “How did the next one, I presume it was Arnold Harrison, die?”