Vendetta Road

by Christine Feehan

  Ice removed the knife again, very slowly, wiping the blood from the blade on the pedophile’s shirt. “Is this brochure familiar to you, Richie?”

  Without hesitation, the man nodded over and over. “Yes, I’ve seen it.”

  “You know this man is a murderer and he’s killing to take these children, so no one remembers they even exist. Isn’t that right, Richie?” Ice’s tone was low. Mild. All the scarier because of it. His eyes were twin glaciers, so blue they looked crystal—and completely merciless.

  Richie nodded over and over. “Yes, yes, I know that’s what he does.”

  “I want his name.”

  Richie looked terrified, and his gaze once more shifted to Bitters. Ice again moved with that blurring speed, and this time the knife went in very high up, close to Marshal’s groin. The man shrieked, sobbed, screamed—one long, intense wail that didn’t seem as if it would stop. Unfazed, Ice slowly removed the knife and again wiped it clean. He sauntered over to Savage and took the bottle of water his brother offered. He drank down a third of the liquid and then capped it.

  “He’s kinda dumb. Thinks Bitters is gettin’ out of this alive and somehow is going to do worse to him than we are.” Ice shook his head.

  Maestro grinned at him and shrugged. “Got to know who you’re dealing with. Guess he doesn’t get it yet.”

  “Say the word, Ice, and I’ll start on him,” Savage offered. “No fuckin’ fun just sittin’ here.”

  He meant it too. Savage was a mean bastard, and he didn’t mind in the least hurting someone. Didn’t matter if it was his fists or weapons, he knew more ways to take apart a human being than most people ever dreamt possible.

  “You’re so impatient,” Ice said. “I think Richie will cooperate with us. He just has to come to the understanding that Bitters is going to die a very hard death. He’s not getting that.”

  Savage stood up then. He’d been sitting on the table, one foot on the bench beneath it. When he stood, it was a show of muscle. His chest was thick with roped muscle, his arms big. He looked what he was, a formidable machine with no fat, all stamina and power. He sauntered over to Bitters as if he were taking a stroll in a park. Even that was menacing.

  Rich’s frightened gaze jumped to Savage. He stopped screaming as if mesmerized. His eyes widened when Savage drew back his heavy boot and kicked Bitters in the ribs, hard, deliberately driving deep, smashing through bone. Bitters shrieked and writhed on the floor; the chair he was tied to looked as if it was thrashing too.

  Ice found the sight strangely humorous, with the chair moving all around the floor as if it were alive. He stood over Rich but looked back at Bitters. “He just pissed himself, Richie. That’s the man you’re afraid of? I think you’re afraid of the wrong person. You want to try this again?” He kept his tone mild.

  They didn’t raise their voices when they did this kind of shit. What was the point? They were in control, and in the end, they usually got the information they needed. Sometimes it took a long time, other times they got it fast. It usually didn’t matter to Ice how long it took, but tonight was his fucking wedding night.

  Richie was staring at Savage, swallowing hard, bleeding from three different wounds, the blood running down his leg. He didn’t see anything but Savage as the big man crouched beside Bitters, took out a large knife and began to cut off the prisoner’s clothes in strips. He wasn’t in the least careful. Several times the tip of the knife bit into flesh, so long streaks of blood rose on the man’s skin.

  “Richie, I suggest you pay attention to me. You don’t want that man working on you. I’m the nice one.”

  Maestro snorted and picked up his coffee cup.

  Ice gave him the finger. “You were going to give me the name of the asshole known as the collector. You don’t want to tell me you don’t know who he is, because if you do that, I’m going to use this knife on you.”

  Savage cut through the ties holding Bitters to the chair and then sent the chair away with a hard kick. He caught the pedophile by his hair and dragged him to his feet. “You take those little children away from their parents and put them in cages and then you force yourself on them.”

  Bitters threw out both hands and screamed at the top of his lungs. “Children are sexual beings. They love it, they want it. You don’t understand. Let me explain. Don’t kill me. Please. Just let me explain.” They’d all heard that speech on the website, Bitters spewing his beliefs to other pedophiles to justify their actions.

  Savage hit him square in the mouth, driving through his teeth so that the front ones snapped off. He had a big fist and he could hit hard. He’d honed his fighting skills from the time he was a child, and he knew how to throw a punch with maximum force. Bitters went flying backward and hit the cement hard.

  Savage followed him up, not hurrying, not paying any attention to the blood and saliva leaking from Bitters’s mouth on the cement. He kicked him hard, driving his motorcycle boot into the other side, caving in those ribs as well. He didn’t stop there. He systematically began to kick and then punch Bitters, beating him over and over.

  “Oh my God.” The voice was faint. Richie turned white. “I don’t know the collector’s name, but I do know who does. His name is Avery Charles. He runs the website for someone in Russia. He makes snuff films whenever the Russian tells him to. If we sell the kids to him, we get top dollar.”

  The truth came out in a rush of fear, but then he realized what he’d revealed and tried to backpedal. “Not me. I’ve never done it. Paul makes money that way. Sometimes he just grabs kids off the street and sells them to Avery. We . . . he doesn’t sell the kids we . . . he gets from the collector. That price is too steep.”

  Even Savage had paused in his pursuit of royally fucking up Bitters to listen to Richie. The three Torpedo Ink members exchanged long looks. They had run across a “Russian connection” before. More, most of the children in the “school” where they had been held had been tortured, raped and then disposed of, but a few had been used in snuff films. In investigations, snuff films were deemed to be not real. They knew better. They had lived through such films when other children, friends they’d been in school with, had not.

  Ice looked down at Richie without seeing him. Instead, he was back at that school, tied to a pole, whipped, beaten, raped and used repeatedly. That was bad. He thought it was the worst, but it hadn’t been, not by a long shot. Not when there was Alena and Storm . . . He wiped the sudden sweat from his eyes and shook his head to clear it. There was no stopping the roaring in his head.

  “Richie.” His voice was very low. His blue eyes had gone pure crystal. Bile was in his throat. “I think you’d better come clean. It wasn’t only Bitters who snatched kids off the street and sold them, knowing Avery Charles was going to have them tortured, raped and killed in a film for other sickos to get off on. You did too. How many? Where did you find them? I’m not fucking around with you. You don’t answer me and keep in mind I can hear lies, you’re going to be in a world of hurt like you’ve never known.”

  The memories crowded in, so that his gut churned, and his wedding cake threatened to come back up. The demons Soleil had managed to chase away returned in full force. His sins crushed him with their weight. Rage burned in his belly. He could barely see through the haze of red across his eyes, but Maestro and Savage looked equally as enraged, not that Richie could tell. It was in their eyes, and he was too scared to look that close.

  “From the park. We’d get them in the park. The young ones. Avery wanted them about six or seven. Girls or boys. He paid top dollar when the Russian wanted new films.”

  “How often did the Russian want new films?” Ice asked. He put his hands out in front of him and spread his fingers wide. Rock steady. He’d learned to always keep his hands steady. It didn’t matter how much blood was in the room, or who was giving orders, or if he knew what was coming, he’d learned absolute control. Absolut
e.

  “It wasn’t often. Not often,” Richie said. “I didn’t like that kind of thing, but Bitters wanted us all to be in as deep.”

  Ice slapped the man almost casually across the face. The blow was hard enough to rock him backward. Blood and spit sprayed out of Richie’s mouth. He sobbed and hastily clamped his lips together in an effort to remain silent.

  “Richie, I didn’t ask for your excuses. You need to listen to the question.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He bobbed his head up and down. “I’m sorry. I should have. About every five months or so. Maybe six. I didn’t keep track.”

  Richie’s gaze went again to Bitters, who was moaning and crying.

  Savage took scraps of material, wadded them up and thrust them into Bitters’s mouth. “Done with your noise. How many times did you make a child scream?” He got to his feet and walked back to the table to pick up a bottle of water.

  Maestro took his place, crouching down beside Bitters, a blowtorch in his hand. Bitters didn’t seem to be aware that he was there. His gaze followed Savage. Richie, however, stared at Maestro in absolute horror. He tried to move his chair back away from the three members of Torpedo Ink. The chair tipped but didn’t go over backward.

  “What’s he going to do?” Richie asked in a low, frightened voice.

  Ice shrugged. “Ask him, not me.”

  Richie licked at the cracks in his lips. “What are you going to do?” His voice was still low, almost a whisper. His gaze was fixed on the white-hot blue flame coming from the small torch Maestro held in his hand.

  “This is the kind of thing they use in those snuff films, Richie,” Maestro explained. “Paul knows, don’t you, Paul? You have quite the collection. Code found them. You even have them labeled so nicely, the ones with ‘your’ kids. The ones you sold. You get off on that sick shit, don’t you?”

  Paul began screaming around the gag.

  “You might want to give me every name in this ring you have going across the country that you know, Richie. Now would be a good time.” Ice didn’t look at him. He spoke very softly. Very matter-of-factly. He didn’t sound like he was making a threat, but it was there, right on the cement floor in front of him, along with muffled agonized screams, and the smell of blood and burned flesh.

  “I don’t know very many. I wasn’t in the inner circle like Paul. I know Avery. A man named Harold McDonald. He lives in a little place near the coast, Occidental, or something like that. He’s a cop, a sheriff.”

  “Small fuckin’ world,” Ice observed. They had rescued a teenage boy from a desperate situation with a pedophile. The boy now lived with Torpedo Ink’s president, Czar, and his wife, Blythe. “We had a little run-in with a man in Occidental. Walter Sandlin, did you know him?”

  Richie’s eyes widened. “That was you? No one had a clue who did him. Some thought the kid he had did him, but Harry said it was too professional to be the kid.”

  “Who else?”

  “There’s David Swey. He’s a vendor. Sells hot dogs out of a truck. Goes all over town in Santa Rosa. Lives in Graton. He’s got eyes everywhere. He’s close with Bitters and Avery.”

  Richie frowned, trying to remember others, but his body was shuddering, almost in shock, watching as Maestro shut off the torch and patted Bitters’s shoulder as he stood up.

  “Stop your whining, Bitters,” Ice said. “You’re pissing me off. You like this sort of thing, or you wouldn’t get off watching it.”

  Richie began to shake his head. “I don’t watch it. I don’t. I didn’t know they did that to kids.”

  “What did you think they did, Richie?” Ice asked, once more conversational. “It’s called a ‘snuff’ film.”

  “I thought they just killed them. Quick, you know. These films aren’t for distribution, they’re only used for private collectors.” He sounded as if that made all the difference in the world. “And each person who asks for a film has to be thoroughly vetted before they’re allowed into the circle. It’s hard to get in. We’re not judgmental. Everyone has different needs and preferences.”

  “So, you’re not judgmental about anyone who likes to hurt a child and then kill him or her,” Ice pursued.

  “You’re twisting my words,” Richie whined. “I didn’t say that.”

  “What are you saying, Richie? Because I’m very interested,” Ice said.

  He walked past Bitters, who appeared to be unconscious, and stopped to nudge him with his foot. The man groaned but didn’t open his eyes or move. Ice kept walking to the table where he picked up his bottle of water and downed another third.

  “That piece of shit thinks he can escape us by going to sleep. Not going to happen.” Fury rode him hard. He despised men like Bitters. They had money and they thought they were above the law. The law would have treated them a lot kinder than the assassins riding after them.

  Savage got up, scooped ice and water from the cooler on the floor by the table and stalked over to Bitters. He threw water right in Bitters’s face and then stepped on his chest, mashing his foot into the cuts and burns.

  “Wakey, wakey, Paul,” Ice said. “We’re not done with you yet. Until Richie here gives up the name he’s protecting, we’re going to have to keep showing him what’s in store for him if he stays quiet. None of us like you much. We don’t mind fucking you up and making sure you feel what those children felt every time you hurt them. So, stay the hell awake.”

  Maestro grabbed the naked, bloody man by his ankle and dragged him across the cement to place him right in front of Richie. Bitters’s head bounced on the cement a couple of times, and the hard surface scraped at his skin. He left a trail of blood, urine and feces behind.

  Maestro glared at him. “Fuckin’ mess we’re going to have to clean up. Should have put a tarp down.”

  “I had one down. You pulled him off of it. There’s one over there,” Ice said, indicating the long table under the bank of blacked-out windows where the tools were. “I brought two more.” His eyes were on Richie, and he caught the shudder and fearful moan. The man couldn’t keep his eyes off Bitters. He was fascinated, repulsed, yet couldn’t look away.

  “Good thinking,” Maestro said. “I hate cleaning up copious amounts of blood.” Shoving at Paul’s legs contemptuously, he stalked around the man and went to the narrow table to find the other tarps. “Nice, Ice. Big ones.”

  “They burn well too. My favorite brand.” Ice kept watching Richie. “You think you want to give me that name you’re holding on to? You gave me a couple of names. A sheriff who we already suspected, a fuckin’ hot dog vendor and good old Avery, who runs the website which we already know about and infiltrated. Who are you protecting, Richie? Because I promise you, it isn’t going to be worth it.”

  Maestro and Savage laid out the tarp and rolled Paul Bitters onto it, keeping him on his back, legs apart. He moaned continuously, a steady sound around the material still stuffed in his mouth. Savage pulled out his knife, the big one, the one that had Richie pulling back in his chair and Paul trying to roll over to crawl away. Both men stared at the obviously razor-sharp knife. Paul made horrible gurgling sounds around his gag as Savage sank a knee onto his chest to prevent him from moving.

  Richie started a chant calling on a higher power, for what, Ice wasn’t sure. “I need that name, Richie. What is it? Not Avery, but the one who really knows the collector.”

  Richie shook his head, moaning, crying. He didn’t take his terrified gaze from the knife, not even when it slashed down through flesh so fast that when it was raised, there was barely a stain of blood on the blade.

  Richie watched as Paul’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. His skin turned purple. He tried to thrash, which sent blood pumping out of his body. It was a slow, ugly death.

  Ice waited until Bitters was dead. He turned back to Richie with a raised eyebrow. “We didn’t like him, Richie. I’m beginning not to like
you either. Fuckin’ give me the name or I’m strippin’ you and laying you on that other tarp. You’ve got about three seconds to give him up.”

  Tears poured down Richie’s face as he stared, mesmerized, at Paul’s body. He kept shaking his head, but when he looked at Ice, there was a defeated look about him. “Terrance.”

  “Last name, and where do we find him?” Ice snapped.

  “Terrance Marshal. My brother, Terrance. He knows the collector. He’s helped him a couple of times. He was in the ring long before I came in. He sponsored me.” As he talked, he kept shaking his head. “He went to school with Avery. They both were contacted by the Russian. That’s what they call him, just the Russian.”

  The information spilled out fast. Once the dam burst, he couldn’t stop. “Terrance helped recruit the ring here. The Russian seemed to know who to send him, and Terrance would get blackmail material on them just in case they didn’t want in on the fun. That was what the Russian called it, not me. My brother told me he only had to use the blackmail material on one man and in the end, the Russian ordered him to kill that one, so he did. The others were happy to be part of the circle, so the blackmail material was just filed away. Terrance has it in his safe.”

  “But he’s not the collector?”

  “No, no, he just knows him.”

  Richie began to gag. His stomach heaved and he began vomiting. Savage grabbed the back of his chair and dragged him over to where the second tarp was laid out. He kicked the chair over, stood behind him and cut his throat.

  “Fuckin’ pussy,” he snapped. “What a mess.” He stood up, holding up his arm. “I’m showering first.” He started to walk away and then turned back. “I was ten years old the first time they burned the fuck out of me, and I didn’t even piss my pants, but I cried like a fuckin’ baby. Got the shit kicked out of me for it too. Second time I was fourteen and I never made a sound.” He stomped off.