“Really?” I asked. “What’d he do?”
Lynn flexed his fingers and my eyes were drawn to where they were hovering right around his hips, which then had me taking in other parts of his anatomy that were close to his hips, which then in turn had him clearing his throat because obviously I’d missed whatever it was that he said.
“Umm, what?” I asked.
The man with the dog chuckled.
“Seems you still got it, Joke,” dog man said.
“Fuck you, Laric,” Lynn countered. “I haven’t ever lost it.”
I had no clue what they were talking about.
“Who’s Joke?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“Joker, please,” the man hanging from the chains pleaded. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“We tried that, and you didn’t want to play.” Lynn, also known, apparently, as Joker, growled as he looked over his shoulder. “Bruno, get her a chair and let her watch. Maybe she’ll learn something interesting.”
He found me a chair, which happened to be one of those zero-gravity ones that you could lean all the way back in and kick up your feet.
I sat down and did just that, watching with not a whole lot of hidden interest.
“Does anyone have any popcorn?” I asked curiously.
Bruno snorted from beside me, and I turned my body slightly so that I was facing more toward the Laric dude.
“Hey, you got that kitten on you still?” I asked, hiding my nervousness with the hope that he had a kitty I could pet.
“Yeah,” he said, opening the leather pocket of his vest and pulling the cat out of it. He handed it to me with a raised eyebrow. “You’re weird.”
“I’m me,” I countered. “And it’s not every day that you get to see Stuck-Up Suit beating the shit out of someone. At least tell me he deserved it.”
Honestly, if Bruno hadn’t been here, I’d be a whole lot more scared right now.
However, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Bruno wouldn’t be involved in shit that was bad. At least, not what he considered morally bad.
This man in front of me, now getting the very well-placed jabs to the torso from the mayor, had done something wrong. And I had no doubt in my mind that he’d done something wrong.
“Tell me,” Lynn ordered as he backed off. “The stuff that you weren’t going to tell me earlier, but now you’re rethinking.”
He wasn’t even winded.
How was that possible?
He’d been hitting the man for a solid five minutes.
He wasn’t even sweating!
“He’ll kill me,” the man squealed. “The mayor…”
“I’m the mayor, and I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me. And I know a lot more inventive ways than just shooting you in the back of the head,” Lynn growled.
Jesus Christ, I was getting turned on!
The mayor was beating the crap out of someone, and my nipples were pebbled!
I shifted in my seat and tried to distract myself from the way I felt by petting the purring kitten in my hands.
“Fuck!” the guy sobbed. “Dave said that if I could keep my mouth shut, he’d pay off my mortgage. If I couldn’t, he’d make sure I burned right along with my house.”
“You sold your soul to the devil so he would pay off your mortgage?” Lynn asked, sounding disgusted.
“It was for more than that, okay?” whiney guy cried. “He took my girlfriend, and I wanted her back.”
“Your girlfriend left you,” Bruno piped in from beside us. “Either tell us something good, Tant, or Lynn’ll get back to what he’s good at.”
I looked at my childhood friend then, surprised to sense all that anger.
“Dave Jackson wants his position back,” Tant said. “I owe some hefty shit on my mortgage. Have two reverse mortgages on it, and the mayor, ex-mayor, knows that. He offered me loan forgiveness if I acted as the go-between with Dave and a guy that lives out of town. Somewhere in Louisiana. We meet at a gas station, I get information, and I relay it back to Dave. That’s it.”
“What kind of information?” Lynn asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
The kitten jumped out of my hands, and I couldn’t even muster up the desire to reach for her, I was so entranced with what was going on.
The guy swallowed, knowing that what he was about to say wasn’t going to go over well.
“He gives over kids’ names and addresses.” Tant swallowed hard.
My stomach all but dropped at his words. Kids’ names and addresses. I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but if I had to take a guess, this was some child sex trafficking ring.
Lynn reared back and hit him, square in the jaw.
One hard, fast stroke like a striking cobra.
Tant went out like a light.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
I was so turned on.
And so going to hell.
But that was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
“Laric, deal with that,” Lynn grumbled, pulling his brass knuckles off and cleaning them with a rag he pulled out of his pocket. One of those embroidered handkerchiefs with his initials monogrammed into it. “Get the rest of the information out of him, find out the guy’s name that is getting him the names and addresses. And then deliver him back home safely with a warning.”