Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

Savage leaned down and began to strip Holler of weapons. Destroyer did the same for Jacko. They tossed the guns, knives and brass knuckles into the back of the truck. Later, they’d leave them on the stage at the Gypsy Club with the bodies of the Venomous club managers. When Holler tried to rise up and fight, Destroyer casually kicked him squarely in the face, his motorcycle boot striking him hard in the jaw. Holler fell to the ground, his eyes rolling in his head. Destroyer picked him up, slung him over his shoulder and carried him inside the barn, where he threw him down beside Wings. Savage followed with Jacko.

“They brought plenty of condoms with them. Guess they planned to use them on the underage girl they lured to them,” Savage commented.

The three men were stripped naked and tied to the rickety supports holding up the tilted loft above their heads. Facing them was a screen brought in and set up ahead of time. Code had meticulously prepared the presentation for Savage. Their tools were laid out on the floor on a tarp. They didn’t much care about blood getting on the floor, but they were bringing the tools back with them and didn’t want them ruined.

Destroyer doused the three men with buckets of icy water, making certain they were awake. Savage smiled at them. “Good of you to finally join us. I have a little surprise for you, kind of a walk down memory lane.” He put the first slide up, a picture of a beautiful, smiling, very vivacious woman. “I’m sure you all remember her.”

The three men exchanged worried looks. Jacko moaned, blood dribbling down his chin, and he spit several times.

“What do you want?” Holler mumbled, his jaw already swollen on one side.

“Her name was Diane. Diane Miller. She was a single mother and had two kids. She worked at the Felix Club stripping. When she went to work, the policy was she didn’t have to do more than strip. If she wanted to do lap dances in the back room, that was her prerogative and she got the tip money and was paid extra for that. If she wanted to make arrangements beyond that, she was protected and, again, it was all up to her. Your club made it mandatory to do it all and she got nothing for it. She protested that shit along with the other girls, so you decided to make an example out of one of them. Wings, you chose her.”

Before any of them could protest, Savage put the next slide up, the email that had gone out to all the managers with the step-by-step details of exactly what they were going to do to Diane Miller. Her picture was on the email. She was in her stripper costume.

“Just so there’s no mistakes, I had the steps written in very large letters with bullet points,” Savage explained when he changed slides to show the step-by-step instructions in much larger print. “Destroyer wears those dark glasses of his and I don’t want to take chances that he might miss a step. Now, I know we’re only two here, not six of you, and I don’t like to brag, but your pussy floggers were shit. I brought the real thing and I’m damn good with a bullwhip. Destroyer claims he’s no slouch, so I want to see what he’s got. That might make up for the lack of manpower. I think we can pull it off, and we do have a pole waiting at the Gypsy Club to hang you off of later tonight,” he assured.

Holler struggled in the ropes. “You’re crazy. Do you have any idea who we are?”

Savage went forward several slides until he found the one of Diane Miller’s bloody body, hanging upside down on the pole of the stage at the Felix Club. “You’re the ones who did that to a single mother trying to make a living for her children.”

He put the slide back up of the step-by-step instructions and glanced at Destroyer. “Which one you want to start with?”

“Don’t much care. They all look like dead meat to me,” Destroyer said.

“I think we should leave Wings for last. He seems to be the brains behind all this. Holler is the idiot who believes no one can touch him because he’s part of a pussy club challenging the Diamondbacks. Too stupid to live.” Savage shook his head. “Those running your club sent you here as sacrifices. They knew the Diamondbacks would eat you alive.”

He slashed through the ropes binding Holler to the support beam and dragged him by his hair into the middle of the room, where he bent him over a sawhorse, anchoring his hands to the ground by a ring in the floor on one side and both ankles to rings they’d drilled into the flooring on the other, leaving his legs spread wide.