Job Hunt (38 page)

“What the fuck?”

He didn’t get to comment any further. A kick to his ribs had the man trying to curl into a ball, and a kick to his jaw took him out. His head hit the road with an unhealthy crack, and Lisa had cuffs on him a moment later.

“Shit, he’s out for good,” she panted, dragging the guard’s still form to lean against the wall while Jack punched the access code into the keypad by the door with unnecessary force. His body was coiled, his movements urgent, and he yanked on the handle as if he didn’t believe the place had no other exit.

As soon as the lock disengaged and the door slid open, Jack was in the warehouse. And Lisa was right behind him.

T
HERE
WAS
no sign of Mitrovic as Jack slipped through the door. Low-level lights outlined the loading bay and painted lanes along the floor, leaving the rest of the space suspended in gloom. A small partition separated the loading bay from the main body of the warehouse space, blocking the sight of any merchandise, though the heavy scent of tobacco in the air was an easy clue to its nature. It hung around them, thick enough to catch in Jack’s throat and sting his eyes.

Scuffing sounds from an area to their right had Jack move in that direction until the muted yellow glow of a light cautioned him to stop. Lisa was close behind him, and Jack was unexpectedly grateful for her company. The sight of the two boys—the blank faces and confused gazes as they stared at the mass of bodies writhing around them—had fucked with Jack’s mind. More than Daniel’s nightmare screams and the sobbing words Nico had poured into his ears. Memories had boiled up from the tightly shuttered pit he kept them in, and Jack had been tempted to screw their plans and wring the pimp’s neck right there and then. The muted horror in Lisa’s eyes while she watched the boys and listened to Jack’s terse explanation had done more to pull Jack back from the edge than she would ever know.

The scuffing noise came again, followed by a metallic clank and a whirr.

“Safe?” Lisa’s voice whispered in his ear.

Jack nodded, not really bothered one way or the other. He needed what was in Mitrovic’s head, not his safe.

Three fast steps took him across the space.

He shoulder-charged Mitrovic into a stack of bales in plastic shrink-wrap, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and yanked him off his feet. Profanities rent the air as Jack’s fist found its target once, twice, a third time. Mitrovic flailed, trying to get away from Jack. The sounds he made could have been calls for his guard or incantations to the higher powers for all the difference they made. Jack clamped a fist around the pimp’s throat and shoved him back against the bales. Lisa had cuffs around Mitrovic’s wrists before he could regain his balance.

“We make a team,” Jack decided.

“Agreed. Now what?”

“Now I need to string him up. And I’m told that….” Jack tipped his head back and tried to make out the tracks that ran the length of the ceiling above the rows of bales. He could just see the darker lines against the whitewashed background. They terminated by the sliding doors of the loading bay, only a few feet away from where they stood. Jack looked for the controls for the chain hoist and found them right beside the safe.

Along with the switch for the overhead lights.

The hoist creaked to life when Jack pushed the buttons, and only moments later a large metal hook appeared right in Jack’s line of sight.

“Perfect.”

Positioning Mitrovic the way he wanted him was the work of moments. As was asking Lisa to keep an eye on the loading bay entrance.

With the seductive smile he’d practiced in the mirror until it was just this side of scary, Jack unwound the strap of the bullwhip from his waist and shook it out, not at all concerned when the pimp let out a high-pitched, gleeful cackle.

“You wanna whip me?” Goran’s breathing sped at the sight of Jack holding the whip, and his eyes dilated at the prospect. “Go ahead man, I get off on pain.”

“Yeah?” Jack reached into his boot and retrieved the knife he’d stowed on entering the warehouse. “Let me cut off your dick and feed it to you first, then. Let’s see how much you
really
get off on pain.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Says who?”

“The law.” Goran didn’t look nearly so excited when Jack offered him a close-lipped smile. “You’re not allowed to torture prisoners. I know my rights.”

“You don’t have rights, asshole. You’re not a prisoner. And I’m not the law. Just someone who’s been taking out men like you since he was old enough to hold a knife.” Jack stroked fingers along the pleats of the bullwhip, aware of Lisa’s eyes on him and sure that he looked a sight with the whip in one hand and a knife in the other.

He cracked the whip, and the tip tore a broad gash into the nearest bale of smuggled nicotine. The tobacco scent got stronger, and flakes of mangled cigarettes snowed down around them in a lazy twirl.

He did it again, just to see Mitrovic flinch.

These days the bullwhip was an affectation. Once upon a time, it had seen a lot of use, mostly to lecture would-be molesters on the errors of their ways. The whip had been a good tool to deal with the ocean of anger inside him. Now it wasn’t about anger anymore. And he had better tools at his disposal.

He stepped close to Mitrovic and ripped the maroon shirt open in one savage move, the silk-covered buttons popping and tearing. “Where are you keeping your boys?”

A sneer was all the answer he got.

The whip sang through the air, close enough to Goran Mitrovic’s flesh that the man flinched and swayed… toward the flick of the tightly woven leather cord, not away. Son of a bitch really wanted to feel that whip on him. Maybe it was going to be just that easy. Jack sent the tip tearing into bales of fragrant tobacco until a snowstorm of dried leaves swirled around them.

“Where do you keep your boys?”

Mitrovic’s eyes were dark with want. His tongue smoothed over the lip Jack’s fist had split, worried at the cut. He didn’t look frightened or cowed. He looked smug.

“You won’t ever find them.”

“Tell me where the boys are, and I’ll give you what you want.” The back of Jack’s throat burned with bile as he offered the bargain, but he touched the whip to Goran’s neck, dragged it over his nipples and down his crotch, not surprised to see a visible erection straining against the fine black wool of the man’s tailored trousers.

This was all shades of fucked up. And he just couldn’t do this.

Beat the shit out of the man? Sure.

Kick his ass into next week until he begged to talk? Sure.

Get him off? Hell no!

Jack focused on the image of six boys locked into a living hell and raised the whip again. “You frequent a bevy of clubs, you run an escort service….”

“Jack!”

Lisa’s voice stopped him midswing. She stood by the bales he’d shredded with the tip of the whip, peering intently at something beyond Jack’s line of sight. Jack wound the whipcord around his hand and crossed the open space to stand beside her.

What he saw sent a hard cold shiver through his frame, just as if someone had stepped on his grave.

The bales of cigarettes he’d been decimating were nothing but a shell that surrounded a hollow space with a blanket at the bottom.

A space that was far too small to accommodate an adult.

Sounds dimmed and the warehouse blurred around Jack. The lights receded into distance until they resembled glowing baubles on a lopsided Christmas tree, and he heard his mother’s voice tell him that he now belonged to Jericho.

Jack whirled around and returned to Mitrovic. The first stab of the knife produced a shocked yelp. Then Mitrovic clamped his lips together and panted breath through his nose while his eyes dilated and shivers washed over his skin. Fucker hadn’t been lying about liking pain. Not that Jack cared.

“Where. Are. The. Boys.” Jack punctuated each word with a slice of the knife, not bothering to listen whether any of the resulting groans and grunts formed recognizable words.

He couldn’t save the children who had cowered in those bales, scared and lost and alone.

He could save the ones he knew about.

He
would
save those boys.

“Where are the boys?”

“Fuck you!”

Blood pooled in the cuts, ran down Goran’s torso, and soaked the waistband of expensive, tailored wool. It would stick and start to itch soon, and Jack hoped that he wouldn’t still be here when that happened. For now he repeated the same question like a grotesque mantra as the knife marks on Goran’s torso grew more numerous.

They all started begging in the end.

Jack always prayed his targets broke before it got that far, so he could walk away, end the nightmare before it took over his mind, stop the voices before they crawled inside him, impossible to shift or erase. It didn’t happen often. Men who thrived on inflicting violence against weaker opponents begged for their miserable lives long before they did anything useful.

Jack focused on neat, even slices so he didn’t have to listen to the whimpered pleas of
No, don’t!
and
Please, God!
and
Please, stop!
Words that never did anyone any good.

The past tunneled his vision. Reality disappeared under memories of being held down, his face pushed into stained, threadbare sheets while his body fought for air, of cruel laughter when he begged and pleaded for his tormentors to stop, of pain so fierce he threw up, and of cold water waking him to new tortures when his body and mind had called a halt.

“Jack?”

His mind registered the concern in the simple query, and Jack swallowed bile. He fought through the haze, searching for something—anything—to ground himself.

The knife in his fist.

Sticky warmth on his skin.

The overwhelming scent of tobacco and the metallic tang of fresh blood catching in the back of his throat.

Finally, the excuse for a man right before his eyes, his chest decorated with neat rows of sluggishly bleeding cuts.

He looked over Goran’s shoulder and found Lisa’s eyes on him. The fierce teal gaze was muted, the woman’s eyes brimming.
Why is Lisa crying?
The sight confused Jack enough that the memories released their hold and let him breathe.

Flashbacks as vivid as this one were rare. He tended to take down the pimps before he met the victims. This time there was Ricky. And Jack’s failure to save him.

Jack didn’t care if Lisa had guessed what was happening. He was glad for the distraction, glad that she’d called out to him when their objective got buried under an avalanche of memories. Without her intervention…. Jack had no illusions what the result would have been.

His focus returned to his task, to the man who still believed that he would get out of this situation with his life and his string of boys intact. It was time to crush that belief.

“You realize that I’m still being nice, right?”

Jack dragged the knife straight down Goran’s abs. The cut would hurt like a bitch every time the man moved. He traced the blade through the blood that had collected along the waistband of Goran’s trousers, then lower, let the edge bite through fabric to reach skin. He muffled his mind to the screams, nothing but grateful when Goran Mitrovic finally got the message.

J
ACK
RELAYED
the address, voice urgent. “You got that?”

“Got it.” Raf was already moving. A few minutes later, a car door slammed, and Jack heard Clive and Gareth’s voices in the background. It reassured him as much as Raf’s next words. “Going in to check it out. Just hang in there, okay?”

The call disconnected and, as many times before, Jack wanted to be in two places at once. It rarely worked out that way, and his task here wasn’t finished until Raf confirmed the information he’d extracted. He couldn’t relax, couldn’t call Rio to tell him that his target smuggled more than tobacco, couldn’t switch off while adrenaline kept him hot and twitchy.

Jack paced to the far side of the loading bay, away from the smell of blood and vomit, away from the rasping sounds of sobbing breaths. He leaned his back against the wall close to the sliding doors where Lisa kept watch and tried to keep his body still, melt into the background as he’d been taught.

The phone in his fist was slick with sweat and blood. Jack had been in too much of a hurry to get the intel to Raf to make sure his hands were clean. He’d have to get a new phone once he got home.

Gareth. Raf. Clive. Jack wondered how the three got on. Clive knew what to expect. Raf might. Gareth…. Jack guessed that Gareth had never seen or even imagined what he thought the men would find in that house. His mind was right there with the three of them.

Then it wasn’t.

He brooded over makes and models of phone. Wondered how many boys they would find and whether they’d be alive. Listened for the sounds of Mitrovic’s ragged breaths in case the man had lied to him. Dismissed the very idea. Worried. His mind ran itself ragged like a hamster on a wheel. And Jack didn’t move a muscle where he leaned, plastered to the wall.

“We should call it in.” Lisa’s voice distracted him. She sounded cautious, as well she should. Jack was aware, but he wasn’t ready to swear that he was all the way back. “At the very least, we should let your contact know that we’re dealing with more than smuggled cigarettes.”

“Not yet. As soon as they know, they’ll swarm this place and won’t give a hoot about anybody else’s case.”

“You think Mitrovic lied to you?”

“Wouldn’t be the first one. If he thinks he can get away with it. If he owes someone higher up the food chain. Or even if he runs more than one string of boys.”

“You’ve seen all of that.”

“Yes,” Jack agreed. He didn’t elaborate. He wanted this over with. Wanted out of this place where tobacco scent clung like an oily cloud of loathsome memories. Wanted to wash the last few hours off his skin before taping his hands and hitting a bag until exhaustion forced his mind to shut up.

He wanted all of these with a passion so fierce it burned, but only professional detachment showed when he spoke: “Let’s wait for Raf’s call.”