The Devil's Anvil (29 page)

‘Who’re you?’ he demanded.

This man wore the green PMC uniform I associated with Billie’s abductors. He was tall, with thick hairy forearms, and an old scar on his left cheek that had also nicked a chunk of flesh off the end of his nose. His pale-blue eyes danced as he took in my appearance, and tried to decide what was wrong with it.

‘I’m Miss Sheehan’s driver,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if she was ready to leave yet.’

The man came forward, sure of himself.

‘What the hell were you doing back there?’

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I was wondering where the desk guy was. I was going to ask him about Miss Sheehan, and just took a look at the cameras to see if I could spot him.’

‘You’ve no right to do that.’ He was now only yards from me, and his perusal was growing sharper. He checked out the cap, the ill-fitting jacket, and then down at my jeans and boots, and reflexively his hand went for a sidearm holstered on his belt. The time for deception was over. I snatched the cap off my head and threw it at his face.

I followed the cap, flying at the guard while he was distracted, and rearing back from the impromptu missile. The cap pinwheeled off the side of his head. I grasped his gun hand, keeping it wedged on top of the butt of his pistol, keeping that packed in the holster even as I rammed a knee into his groin. He emitted a woof of air and began to buckle forward at the waist. My forehead met the bridge of his nose and made it look even uglier, now flattened as well as scarred. The guard verged on unconsciousness, but wasn’t totally out of the fight. He swung in reaction and his left fist clumped off the side of my injured head, so that I wobbled a little. But then I got a leg behind his and forced my shoulder into his chest and he sprawled backwards. Immediately I followed, losing my grip on his hand but stamping down on his chest. Both his arms came up in reaction – without a hold on his gun – and I skipped to one side then volleyed his head as if it was a soccer ball. He lay still.

Ducking down by his side, I tugged his gun out of its holster and pushed it under the tail of my jacket and down my belt. Our violent interaction lasted seconds at most, but apparently it was time well spent, and good for my soul. For the first time in ages I felt my old self. Fuck the softly-softly approach, I decided, and pulled off the jacket and slung it aside. It was time to get on with what I was supposed to be good at.

31

‘Should I have Erick break another of your fingers?’ Amanda’s question was delivered amiably, as if she promised a treat rather than further torment. She’d grown weary with Billie’s continued denials, and had finally left her seat to prowl back and forth, her hands clasped behind her backside, while observing the work of her two male colleagues. Billie couldn’t see her, because she was folded over the desk with Daniel still controlling her while his older brother twisted and manipulated her fingers in unnatural directions. Three times now the bespectacled man had broken digits, and three times he’d administered anaesthetic to dull the pain, if not the shock.

Billie had tried partial truths, veiled lies, denial, and outright fabrications, all to no avail. Amanda wanted to hear a different story from any she could or was prepared to tell. Billie wept with a mix of soul-sapping torment and rage verging on eruption, both intense emotions coming in alternating, and sometimes overlapping, waves. She was confused and belittled, and those states of mind were unwelcome, bitter reminders of her marriage to Richard. She hated that she’d been brought to tears, because she’d always believed she was a tougher individual than that, and her only consolation was that she cried out of frustration, of anger, more than she did weakness. Her captors knew that by damaging her hands they were attacking her future as an artist, and fear of what was to come was always worse than what had gone before. Through mangling her fingers, and destroying her ability to wield a paintbrush with the same dexterity and skill, they could force her into submission, where she would give up her deepest held secrets. They were wasting their fucking time! They could chop off both her hands, blind her, and what could she say that she hadn’t already repeated a dozen times?

‘Richard’s dead and I know nothing about your damn money!’ she howled yet again.

Apparently Amanda still didn’t believe, because after Erick glanced in the woman’s direction he bent to Billie’s hands again, this time selecting the index finger of her right hand. Billie attempted to form a fist, but it was already too late and Erick forced her fingertip sideways against the knuckle. Billie experienced a liquid pop in the joint and the end of her finger stood out sideways. Perhaps she was beyond pain, or some of the localised painkiller had leached into her index finger by now. Erick wasn’t finished. He snapped the fingertip back to its original position, and now a flash of red went across Billie’s vision. She hissed an unladylike curse.

‘No,’ Amanda said, again sounding almost reasonable with her proclamation. ‘No more painkillers for her. I think it’s time we up the game, don’t you agree, gentlemen?’

‘You should give her to me for five minutes,’ Daniel offered, ‘and I’ll have her singing like she’s a goddamn pop star.’

While Daniel had controlled her, he’d been more than intimate in the way in which he’d kissed her neck, sucked her earlobe, and rubbed his hardening member against her side, so Billie had no doubt about how he planned on forcing questions from her. She was almost glad that Erick was there, because despite his sadistic nature he found his younger brother’s sexual depravity distasteful and wasn’t slow in saying so. ‘Better idea if you do your job and hold her still,
goddammit
,’ he snapped.

‘I am doing my job,’ Daniel said, ‘just not gaining any job satisfaction from it. We could make this a whole lot more enjoyable for all of us if you let me take over.’

‘Enough of that talk.’ Erick sounded disgusted, but Billie had to wonder if the brothers’ interaction was designed to torment her more. Good cop bad cop didn’t even apply here. This was a case of bad cop worse cop. Erick proved her point when he took the end of her abused index finger against the opposite side of the joint as before and dislocated it again. Billie bit down on her bottom lip to halt a scream, and shuddered as her stomach spasmed.

‘She’s going to throw up,’ Erick stated.

‘Go fetch a bucket,’ Daniel suggested. ‘Don’t worry; she’ll be fine with me.’

Billie struggled to regain her composure. The last thing she wanted was for Erick to leave the room. Despite the monstrous skill of the man, Erick was the most human of the trio, and to some degree the only one she felt safe with. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Amanda had watched her torture with a certain amount of sadistic pleasure flitting across her hawkish face; she wouldn’t put it past her to enjoy watching Billie raped. In fact, the bitch might even join in with her violation.

A knock at the door sounded, and it was a welcome distraction.

Being the only person able to without releasing their prisoner, Amanda went to the door and opened it a crack.

‘Sorry about the intrusion, ma’am,’ a male voice said, ‘but I thought you’d want to hear this.’

‘What is it?’ Amanda snapped.

‘The team sent to recover the body from the forest; they’re back.’

It was apparent from the new arrival’s tone that something was amiss. ‘I take it there was a problem?’ Amanda said.

Billie’s ears pricked up.

‘The body was gone,’ the man announced.

‘Probably bears,’ Daniel said with a grunt of sarcasm for Billie.

Amanda must have hushed the messenger, because there was a scuff of feet and then the door closed as she joined him in the corridor. Billie listened hard, but couldn’t make out anything worthwhile from their muffled conversation. While Amanda was outside, Erick relaxed his hold on her and stepped away. She tracked the man’s gaze and saw a fleeting frown of worry as he looked at Daniel. ‘You did finish that guy like I said?’

‘He was shot in the chest, and then I broke his skull. No way anyone was going to get up and walk away from that.’

‘Apparently he did,’ Erick growled. ‘You should have made sure, you idiot.’

Daniel’s grip relaxed minutely as he peered back at his brother. For a moment Billie felt a space open between his body and hers, and if she was quick and determined enough she could twist out of his grasp and run for the door. What then? Amanda and another man were in the hall; even if she got past the brothers, she’d still be stopped. Better that she wait for another opportunity, one that she couldn’t help feel was coming, because suddenly there was a different air of expectancy in the room, one that told her the brothers had grown anxious.

The door opened, Amanda’s heels clopping as she entered, her steps fast and hard. She’d left the room for privacy, but apparently it didn’t matter if Billie heard now, and that was not good news for her prospects of release.

‘Erick! You told me that you tracked Mrs Womack via the distress beacon in the vest she was wearing?’ Amanda made her questions sound like accusations, and for good reason. ‘Did none of you think to disable the damn thing before you brought her here?’

Instead of answering her directly, Erick looked squarely at Daniel. ‘Tell me that’s not something else you fucked up, Danny.’

‘Hey, man, not my problem.’ Daniel released Billie to stand and face his accusers.

‘Daniel’s correct,’ Amanda snapped. ‘Who is in charge, Erick? Whose final responsibility is it to ensure his men don’t neglect the small points?’

Erick didn’t reply.

‘I’ve just been informed that the body of this “Joe Hunter” is missing. Considering that Mrs Womack was wearing a bulletproof vest, and its tracker was used to find her, the team checked for the signal from Hunter’s vest. It wasn’t locatable. Do you know why? Because – even wounded – the man had the presence of mind to disable it. Unlike the incompetence shown here by you, Erick. When the team found that the beacon in Billie’s vest was still sending out a signal, they thought it imperative that I know. Because it would be apparent to anyone with an ounce of intelligence that if we could trace it, then so could those looking to protect Billie.’ Amanda’s tirade had been delivered with venom. She had lost her cool, Billie understood, because she was suddenly afraid. The woman’s fear was soothing for her. Hunter had survived? That meant that someone was probably looking for her then, and might not be far away. Billie felt hope rise and swell in her chest like a bubble, but Amanda popped it.

‘We have to move her now,’ the woman said.

‘Yes,’ Erick replied. ‘Before we’re all implicated in her abduction and torture.’

This last was meant to sound as dramatic as it had, because Erick wanted Amanda to understand that he wasn’t prepared to take the fall for her, not when she was obviously so disrespectful of everything he’d done for her and for Procrylon.

‘This has been a waste of our time and effort, anyway,’ Erick went on. He looked down at Billie, and though his eyes twinkled behind the lenses of his glasses it wasn’t through pity. ‘I believe her. She doesn’t have a clue about Richard or the money.’

Amanda huffed once in her chest. It was a sound of disappointment, but also of decision. ‘Then she’s no good to us. When you move her, lose her. And make sure that the job is carried out to the letter this time.’ She turned her attention on Daniel. ‘And you, go and ensure that damn beacon is disabled instantly. And hope that you haven’t brought the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team down on our heads. Remember, Mrs Womack isn’t the only person I can have buried without a trace.’

32

I moved through the same corridor I’d earlier watched the two workers walk along, before I’d entered the building. I had my silenced gun in my hand, and the spare in my belt. The PMC I’d taken it from was tied up in the same storage room as the security guard; he was still sound asleep. If the guard had wakened in the meantime he had the sense not to let on for fear of another smack around the head, and I’d left him to it. I’d considered plugging in and taking another quick scan of the security monitors, but without knowledge of the layout of the building to compare against the images, I wouldn’t see anything useful to lead me to Billie. So I left them disabled and decided to simply follow my nose and my intuition deeper inside the building.

The lower floor of the main building was primarily offices and workspaces, and at this time of the evening deserted. I bypassed a bank of elevators, and headed for an adjacent staircase. It was too easy to get trapped inside an elevator. Stairwells could be dangerous areas too, but there was no alternative way of getting upstairs. The security guard let slip he thought that Amanda Sheehan could be found in one of the conference rooms up there, and I believed that where she was then so was Billie. Sheehan was quite obviously someone sent by Procrylon to turn the thumbscrews on their prisoner. I’ve fought and killed women before, but never out of choice. It was a dilemma having to go up against a woman now, but considering it was to free another woman I guessed the universe was balanced again. I had to be cautious of Sheehan, who hadn’t arrived because she had a sweet disposition; she was some kind of professional torture artist. But more so I’d to be wary of the Jaeger brothers, since when it came to gunplay they’d be the ones I’d be up against, plus whatever sized private army they had at their backs. Once already they’d beaten me, and I didn’t want history repeating.