Chapter Thirty-Two – Luke

 

Molly, the driver’s suit jacket draped over her shoulders as she hugged herself with one arm against the chill of the desert night, stood off a ways from the SUV. Her other hand held my sidearm, unloaded, of course. When you’re dealing with moving, tying, and untying captives, it’s better to be covered by someone else. Every time you put your pistol within arm’s reach of a prisoner, you exponentially increase the chance of their getting it. Normally, I wouldn’t be too worried. But, I had silver bullets in the car, and if Bobby did manage to get hold of those, he’d have the one thing capable of killing me.

“Ready?” I asked, squeezing her forearms.

“Are you sure about this?”

“It’s the only way to get in, babe. We can’t just make wild guesses about what the password is—we need something more concrete, and I can’t think of a better way to get it.”

She lowered her eyes and glanced away. “We’re not going to hurt him or anything, are we?”

“I don’t do torture, all right?” Torture never worked. They’d just tell you what you wanted to hear. The best way to do interrogation was to empathize with them, to make a connection across borders. Right now, though, we didn’t have that kind of time, so we were going to have to take another tack on this front. “I won’t lay a finger on him. Promise.”

“Okay,” she said. “I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt, that’s all. Even if he is a piece of shit.”

I rubbed her arms. “I know, babe. I know.” I leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek, before letting her arms go and turning back to the Tahoe I was about to borrow from Chuck and Bobby. We’d left my rental back on the highway, parked on what little shoulder there was. Even if it did get found by the sheriff or state troopers, the worst that would happen was a towing.

Face dour as I put myself into the necessary mindset, I pulled open the rear door.

“Fuck you, motherfucker!”

“Well,” I said, “nice to see you’re awake. You ready to talk?”

“See my previous statement, asshole.”

There Bobby sat, his wrists bound behind his back and his ankles tied together. I hadn’t quite hogtied him, but the effect was similar. He wasn’t going anywhere. But, like any tough guy in this situation, he was going to be a lot of bluster before he gave up the information we needed. Sometimes, that was just the way it worked.

“What the hell you doing?” Bobby asked, trying to wiggle and undulate away as I reached in for him.

“Just wanting to talk, Bobby, that’s all. Can’t do that in here.”

“Fuck you! I got rights, man!”

“You keep struggling,” I said through gritted teeth as I positioned him for a good hold, “and I’m going to drop you. That paracord can take four hundred pounds of force. You’ll snap your wrists before you break it, so you can just stop trying.”

“Fuck you,” Bobby shouted as he continued to thrash about like it was going to do some good. I’d tied his wrists together behind his back, and he couldn’t get any leverage no matter how hard he tried.

“You can shout all you fucking want, and it’s not going to matter. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town. You can scream till you’re hoarse, and you’ve got polyps forming on your vocal cords, but no one’s going to hear you. All you’re gonna do is sound like you smoke a carton a day. You want that, Bobby?”

He looked me right in the eye. Then he threw back his head as far as he could in the cramped space, and yelled again. His scream rolled out over the desert like some strangled peal of thunder, a strange, hoarse sound that sounded as hollow as the sky above this beautiful, desolate landscape.

I rolled my eyes and pulled him out of the SUV, and he kept kicking and trying to wiggle like a fish out of water, his whole body undulating as I fireman’s carried him a few feet away and dropped him in the dirt and rocks. He let all his air out with an oof as he landed on his side.

“All right, Bobby, you comfortable?” I asked as I dragged him to a sitting position, just so I didn’t have to get down in the dirt to look him in the eye.

“Fuck you,” he said, shifting a little in the dirt. It was impressive to see how much of a defiant asshole he actually was, especially when he was sitting half-naked in the middle of the desert with a man who’d just choked him out on the highway.

“You kiss your sick mother with that mouth?”

“My mom ain’t sick, you asshole!”

I hunkered down next to him, elbows on knees. I made sure to stay a few feet away from him so he couldn’t try anything crazy or ill-conceived, like a lunging head butt or some other kind of nonsense. “Yeah, that’s kind of what we figured,” I said through gritted teeth. “So we’ve got a missing girl, and we’ve got the same guy who took her now after Molly.”

“What the fuck’re you going on about?” he asked, his face screwed up in disbelief. “That’s fucking bullshit. Heidi left with some guy last night. That’s what Chuck told me. She wants to pick up some side action, that’s none of my business.”

I nodded. “That’s what we hear from the people in the mansion, too. Unfortunately, no one’s seen hide nor hair of Heidi since then. And they haven’t heard from her, either. Phone’s off, and all we hear is that she left with some rich guy.”

“She’s just a whore, man! Whores go missing in this town all the time! What the hell difference does one more make?”

“Whore?” Molly asked as she came stomping up in her high heels, my pistol in hand, gleaming in the moonlight. Up until now, she’d been staying back and away from us. Apparently, she couldn’t take it anymore. “Whore? She’s my fucking friend!”

“Whore’s a whore,” he spat. “That’s all you were going to be, anyways! Besides, Chuck said she’s fine, which means she’s fine.” His eyes traveled down to the pistol in Molly’s shaking hand, and he paused for a moment. “Fuck. Who the fuck are you people? What kind of cops are you?”

I shook my head. “Think a cop would hogtie you in the middle of the desert and threaten to leave you for dead if you don’t talk?”

“Fuck you, pig.”

“Told you, I’m not a cop. Would a cop care about a dead prostitute any more than you do?”

“What the hell do you want, then, if you ain’t a cop?”

“The password to get in the gate, for starters. We’re going up to that party on the mountain, and you ain’t coming.”

He shook his head. “Fuck you, pig.”

“Told you I’m not a cop, Bobby. Give me the password, followed by anything you know about their security, what happens when drivers go in, access to the house. The works. And then we let you go.”

He hawked up a phlegmy ball of saliva as he reared his head back. He leaned forward like some lizard that could project its venom, and launched a big spit wad right into my face. As close as we were, there was no dodging, and the thick, slick wad hit me right on the cheek.

“Fuck you!”

I gritted my teeth and controlled my breathing. “Right,” I said as I wiped it off with the back of my hand. “Now we go to plan B.”

“What’re you gonna do? Torture me? Cops don’t torture people.”

I sighed and looked up to the sky as I prayed for patience and guidance. “Bobby, for the last time, I’m not a cop,” I said as I rose from my squat.

“Well, what the fuck are you then, huh?”

“I’m worse.”

I undid my belt and unzipped my pants.

Bobby’s eyes went wide. “Whoa, hey, what the hell are you doing?”

“You’ll see,” Molly said, her lips compressed into the thinnest line I’d ever seen, almost to the point where I could barely see them even with how full they were.

“Yep,” I agreed as I began to strip my jacket off. The night air sent goosebumps up my arm with its chill as I handed the jacket off to Molly. She draped it over her free arm.

I hadn’t wanted to do this. I’d wanted to just talk to the guy, but some people there was no talking to. And then there was the timeline. We needed to get in there, kill this thing, and get out.

Genuine fear began to enter Bobby’s eyes as I took off my t-shirt and unzipped my jeans the rest of the way.

“You some kinda fucking pervert or some shit?” Bobby asked as I leaned down to untie my combat boots and kick them off to the side. A little bit of a tremble had entered his voice, and I could see the genuine fear. “You…you ain’t gonna rape me or anything, are you?”

“Oh, Bobby, you’ve got no idea what I’m going to do to you. You see, there’s a whole world out there you don’t even know about. A big, wild world that’s far outside your little everyday world.”

“Jesus, you’re going to rape me.” He started to wiggle back through the dirt, slithering his body like a snake across the ground as he did the best backpedal he could manage in his current state. “You and your fucking sicko girlfriend here are going to fucking rape me. Ah, geez. Ah fuck, ah shit. I ain’t gay, man! No!”

He kept going, and I could see the genuine fear in his face as I stepped out of my pants. I stood there in just my briefs as I looked down at him.

“Don’t worry, Bobby, I’m not going to rape you. But I am going to change your life forever.”