Page 39 of Keeping Caroline
With my hand on the blade in my pocket, I followed the taller mobster into the hallway, but before he could push open the bathroom door, I shoved him through the back door instead and into a darkened alley. He startled, spinning around, but I already had him pinned to the exterior wall, forearm crushing his throat.
“Where is she?” I growled.
Panic flooded his eyes as he struggled for air, so I eased up just enough for him to rasp, “Who?”
Not in the mood for his stupidity, I slammed him against the wall again. “Don’t play dumb with me. Where the hell is the girl they took for Aresco?”
He sputtered something unintelligible, clawing at my arm. Snatching the knife from my pocket, I pressed it under his chin, cold metal biting into his skin.
“Last chance,” I warned, enunciating every word. “Where. Is. She?”
“I don’t know!” he choked out, his brown eyes wild with fear. “Aresco put out a bounty on her, and I heard some guys were hunting her, but I don't know where they took her!”
Hunting. The word was like a knife to my gut, twisting deep. I should have done more to protect her.
Having already scoped out the area, and needing to get him somewhere with more privacy, I dragged him away from the back of the bar. Fury burned through my veins, barely contained beneath my skin. He stumbled and fell to his knees, gasping for air and only pissing me off more.
“Please,” he rasped, hands held up in surrender. “I told you the truth.”
“You’re only still alive because you may still be useful.” Grabbing him by the collar, I hauled him to his feet and shoved him toward the abandoned building down the alley. “So, you’d better think really hard about how badly you want to keep those secrets.”
The old storage building was decrepit, needing nothing more than to be torched, but it was the closest place I knew I would be able to interrogate him further without his screams being heard by passersby.
With my knife put away and my gun in my hand so he would not fight, I bound his hands and ankles to a chair, the light of the moon providing the only illumination.
Once he was tied up securely, I opened up my duffle bag and pulled out my blade and my catfish skinning pliers. Somewhere, Aresco had Caroline, and this pathetic waste of flesh was going to tell me exactly where she was.
For twenty minutes, I pulled the skin from three of his fingers, gagging him to keep him from making too much noise. Still, he kept repeating the same stories, and my patience was running thin. Rage burning through me, I pressed the blade to his throat again. He was wasting my time. “Last chance. Where is she?”
He whimpered through the cloth, moisture puddling on the ground beneath him. “I told you. I don’t know!”
All I wanted was to slit his lying throat, but then he would not be able to give up his men. I slammed my fist into his jaw instead, relishing the crack of bone.
“Useless piece of shit,” I spat, stalking away. My hands shook with the urge to hurt him, to make him talk, but it was no use. Either he did not know anything, or he didn’t have enough of a sense of self preservation to choose himself over them. Either way, he was a dead man.
As I paced, he slumped against his bindings, whimpering through bloodied lips. Just as I was debating slicing his throat and being done with him, a sharp ring shattered through my thoughts, sending my pulse racing. I answered it on the first ring, dragging my blade against the table to remove some of the flesh.
“Tristan. What’s up?”
“It’s Caroline,” he said, panic clear in his tone. “She activated the tracker I gave her. She’s still in Alabama, a few hours from here.”
Heart flipping in my chest, I closed the distance between myself and the groaning man on the chair, slicing his throat, the dropping weight of his body making the chair fall over. I barely paid him any mind. He was useless to me. “Where? Can you pinpoint it?”
Tristan went silent for a minute, giving me time to spread the gasoline I had left in the alley all over the interior of the structure. “I’m trying. The signal is coming from a heavily-wooded area northwest of here—near the state line. But it’s deep in the southern Appalachians, so from the map I can’t even make out any buildings or dwellings of any kind.”
“Text me the exact coordinates the second you have them,” I said, tossing a match on the dead man’s body before stepping out of the building. “I’m leaving New Orleans now. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
Chapter 27
The Phoenix
I awoke with a start, my eyes blinking open to nothing but inky blackness. The lumpy mattress pressed into my back as a dull throb pulsed through my body. After finding the tracking device on my watch, I pressed the activation button, hoping the signal would find its way to Tristan. At some point after that, my body had given up, and I had passed out. I was not sure how long I’d been sleeping, but it was nighttime outside. It could have been a day or three later… I was not sure.
Willing the nausea twisting in my gut to subside, I took a steadying breath, blowing out slowly. I could not afford to lose the little food I’d been given, especially after vomiting when I’d overheard them discussing selling me on the black market. Just thinking about it made acid rise in my throat, but I pushed it down. Weakness was a luxury I could not afford if I wanted to survive this, and at least for the moment, I wanted to survive.
For Evie, I told myself. I had to stay strong for my daughter. She was out there somewhere, waiting for me to come home. After already losing her daddy, I could not take her mommy too.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I shifted onto my side, fear making it hard to breathe. The thin mattress did little to cushion my body as I shifted, trying to sit up. The movement sent pain radiating through my ribs and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out. As gently as I could, I reached down to feel along my side. Definitely bruised, if not fractured. I took as deep of a breath as I could manage, but it felt as if there was a knife in my side. Definitely fractured.