Unseen (Will Trent 7)

Maybe that was the point.

Everything about Tony screamed petty criminal. He worked a shitty job. He drove a shitty car. He lived in an apartment that was three doors down from a strip mall. As for his police record, he’d been arrested twice under the open bottle law, both misdemeanors. There was one charge for possession that had rolled off after a successful stint in rehab. Another charge for dealing had disappeared from the court docket on a technicality. Loitering. Jaywalking. He was a nuisance criminal, not a heavy hitter.

If Tony Dell was really Big Whitey, then the man was a genius.

Will’s iPhone was in the front pocket of his jeans. He wondered if the tracking chip would work through the club’s metal roof. Sara had GPS in her car. The system cut out the minute she drove into an underground parking lot. Will guessed it was all the steel and concrete messing with the signal. Probably the same thing would happen to his phone inside Tipsie’s.

They were ten yards from the door, but the music pounded so hard that Will felt it traveling up from the asphalt. His eardrums turned the noise into one long rumble.

Tony glanced back at Will before pushing open the door. He wasn’t smiling, which should’ve been Will’s first warning. The second warning was more obvious. The minute the door closed behind Will’s back, a hand gripped his shoulder.

Will turned around. He was used to being the tallest guy in the room, but the man behind him was approximately the size of a refrigerator. Not a standard one, either—more like a Sub-Zero with the motor on the top.

There was no use asking questions.

The Refrigerator nodded toward the back. Will got the message. The man’s hand stayed clamped to Will’s shoulder, acting as a rudder as he pushed Will through the crowded bar.

Tony led the way. He didn’t appear to be surprised by this latest development. He certainly wasn’t worried. There was a nasty grin on his face, which Will saw every time the man glanced over his shoulder to make sure Will was following. The strobe lights and mirror ball picked out the cuts and bruises on his face, making them look like badly applied makeup. Tony must’ve been hurting, but his expression was one of pure glee.

There was no denying that he’d set this up beautifully. Tony had wormed his way into Cayla’s house. He’d tricked Will into leaving with him. It was Tony’s idea to fix the sink. It was Tony’s idea to strap Will’s bike into the truck. He’d obviously anticipated the problem. There just happened to be a winch in the back of the truck along with a couple of four-by-four posts to use as a ramp. When this was all done, he would probably use them to roll the bike into the river.

Will took the deepest breath he could manage. The sour smells of alcohol and sweat filled his lungs. He reached his hand into his pocket. His thumb found the power button on the phone. He pressed it three times to engage the recording device. Either Amanda would listen to Will talking to some bad guys or she would listen to some bad guys murdering Will.

The Refrigerator jerked Will to the side, avoiding a crowd of boisterous drunks. The route to the back of the club was circuitous. The stage snaked through the room. Every pole had a woman doing something obscene to it. The men crowded in, pushing against the stage until a bouncer shoved them back, then pushing forward again on the off chance that it’d work the third or fourth or hundredth time.

Tony stood at a closed door with a sign on it. The shit-eating grin was still on his face. He waited for Will and the Refrigerator to catch up. The grin got wider as Tony pushed open the door. The room was dark. The hand on Will’s shoulder shoved him forward. Will saw that the room wasn’t a room, but a long hallway. What little light they had came from the open door. The last thing Will saw was the Refrigerator closing it.

Tony’s mouth went to Will’s ear. “Move.” He pushed Will down the hallway.

Will considered his options. He could easily take Tony Dell. He’d pushed him around like a rag doll before. But that had been the old Tony, not the Possibly Big Whitey Tony. Sometimes, the physical size of a man didn’t matter nearly as much as the size of the fight in the man.

And Tony had help.

He had a lot of help.

Will pressed his hand to the cement-block wall as he walked down the hallway. He became painfully aware of his full bladder. Sweat dripped down his back. He imagined his Glock, the way the grip felt in his hand, the fact that the safety was a hair trigger built into the main trigger that only engaged when your finger pulled back. Not that any of this mattered. The gun was locked in a safe in his closet back in Atlanta.

There must’ve been soundproofing in the back of the club, because the music wasn’t so unbearable anymore. Will felt something in front of him. He panicked, then realized he was touching a curtain. Will pushed the material apart. There was more light in this part of the hall, courtesy of a green Exit sign over the door. Will would’ve run full out toward it if not for the second Refrigerator blocking the way. He made the first Refrigerator look more like a mini-fridge. His arms bulged at the sleeves. His shoulders were almost as wide as the doorway. He had a Bluetooth device stuck in his ear. As Will approached, he tapped the earpiece and mumbled something incoherent.

Refrigerator Two pulled back a curtain on the wall. There was another door with a sign. Will could recognize words he’d seen a million times before. This one said OFFICE. The second Refrigerator opened the door. His hand was so big that the knob completely disappeared.

Will shaded his eyes against the sudden bright light. The back room of the club was remarkably similar to the type he was used to seeing in mob movies: Black ceiling, dark red walls. Liquor posters with naked women. A white shag rug. A large metal and glass desk. A black leather couch with three fat rednecks sprawled across it.

They were eating pizza from a box on the glass coffee table in front of them. The odor of cheese and sausage turned Will’s stomach. He tasted bile, felt some black-eyed peas roil up into his mouth.

The rednecks examined Will and Tony with idle curiosity. In a mobster movie, they would’ve been well-dressed Italians. Macon’s version was considerably more down-market. They wore T-shirts that stretched across their bellies. Their jeans were low on their hips, but only because they didn’t want to go up six sizes to accommodate their expanded waistlines.

Refrigerator Two closed the door. Will saw that he’d missed something across the room from the couch.

There was a man tied to a chair. Rope cut into the bare flesh of his arms and chest. His head hung down. The scalp was ripped at the crown. The head wound wasn’t the only source of blood. His hands and feet had been sliced open. There were dozens of X’s cut into his chest and abdomen. The wounds weren’t deep enough to kill, but deep enough to cause excruciating pain.

The man had been tortured.

“Damn,” Tony said, not with shock but with admiration. “Didn’t know y’all had company.”

“Shut up,” one of the rednecks said. He used a folding knife to clean underneath his fingernails. “You do what I tell you to do?”

“Don’t I always?” Tony answered.

“Watch your tone with me, boy.”

“Yessir,” Tony demurred.

So much for Tony being Big Whitey. Will gathered the redneck was in charge. He had the air of a man burdened with responsibility. His two henchmen ate their pizza like they were waiting for their turn at the bowling alley. One of them had a bottle of beer to wash it down. The other had a Diet Coke.