Page 18 of Sweet Refuge
Mustang and Frost had longer legs, but she was compact enough to squeeze into tight spaces and she was fast too.
Lena launched her body at the guy, knocking him off-balance. He started to topple over, and she threw herself fully on top of him just as Frost got him by the arms and Mustang took his ankles.
“You can get off him now,” Frost said in his blandest tone that didn’t convince her that he wasn’t boiling with anger. She could see the dark glower behind the poker face he wore.
She climbed off the guy she’d pinned down in a straddle and let her teammates carry him off.
Mustang jerked his head toward an opening. “Try that door.”
She pressed on the lever and found it locked. She moved a few steps and tried another. It was open. She peeked in and found an empty office.
“We’ll just borrow this space.” She held the door open for them to carry the man inside. They dumped him on the floor and all three of them loomed over him, prepared to subdue him if he tried anything.
“Tell us your name,” she demanded.
He lay there staring up at them with blank eyes.
When he didn’t speak, she tipped her head to study him. “You can drop the dumb act. You knew you were made the minute you locked eyes with me.”
Mustang bent and in a flash had the man’s fingers bowed backward in a grip meant to snap bone. “You better start talking,” he warned in fluent, unaccented Spanish.
Another heavy moment of silence ticked by and Lena tried the Nahuatl language. He still didn’t speak, so she used Maya. After that failed, she switched to Mixtec. None of those indigenous languages got him talking.
She grabbed his other hand and without hesitation snapped his index finger. He screamed in pain.
“Goddamn,” Frost drawled.
Mustang released the man’s hand, giving over control to Lena. “Don’t fuck with her, buddy. I’ve seen her crush a man’s balls for less. You’d better state your name.”
She eyed the guy for all of a second before he blurted, “Angel Hernandez.”
She bobbed her head. “Good. Now tell me why your face was captured in a photo taken by our friend who happens to be missing.”
His eyes widened until the whites surrounded each brown iris. “You lie.Puta!”
“Oh fuck,” Frost bit off right before Lena cocked her boot back and slammed it between Hernandez’s legs. He screamed like a little girl, and the high-pitched keening continued while she applied more and more pressure to his fragile gonads.
“I will pop each of your testicles like grapes if you don’t answer me nicely,” she said with a smile.
The man writhed.
“Hope you already have a son to carry on your name, man,” Mustang quipped with a grimace at the sight.
“Why did you follow him?” she demanded.
His face swelled with purple blood as she kept all her weight on the foot squashing his nuts. When he still didn’t answer her, she swung her leg back to deliver another brute-force kick.
“People are looking for him and a few others who got the brother of an arms dealer locked away,” he said in a rush. Spittle gathered at the corners of his lips.
“Give me the names of these people,” Lena demanded.
“Roderigo.”
The name struck Lena as familiar. If she wasn’t mistaken, Blackout Charlie was working the ring, trying to get someone to trust them enough to spill important information they could use to take down the entire operation.
She never heard the outcome of that op, but clearly it worked if the dude in charge was hunting members of Charlie.
“Do you work for Roderigo?” she grilled him.