Ice Monkeys
Page 35
Hannibal wanted to blanket the region with the drug. That would look too suspicious. He told his crew to slowly let it trickle out, to let it gradually build, and not to distribute it all in the same place. They were doing very limited distributions at this time, just a selective few people at a time who could, in return, bring more people in. They were being told it was an experimental program, a secret one. A new pain-relief medication trial.
Desperate people were frequently more gullible.
The St. Louis lab wasn’t any closer to finding a vaccine than the government was. Farther away, in fact, since they didn’t have any Kite samples to use to test with.
He’d had a come-to-Jesus talk with that crew as well, to lie their asses off to Hannibal about their results.
He was slowly and carefully building a cocoon of lies around Hannibal. He could not afford for the man to go off the rails again the way he had with the Atlanta crew.
Unfortunately, scaring the blogger deeper underground had apparently made their Indianapolis contact throw up his hands and give up. The man had disappeared.
Whether he’d willingly disappeared or not was still up in the air. With so much money flowing into the guy’s bank account between what he’d paid him and what Hannibal had paid him, it wasn’t a stretch to think he had simply taken off. None of his calls to the man had been returned, and when Jerald had sent someone to the man’s apartment earlier today, they’d found no one there, but all his stuff was there and undisturbed.
Well, except for his computers. They were missing. But no sign of a struggle or anything else missing.
All Jerald could do was keep the status quo going for right now until he could get his hands on Mary Silo.
And have his plans in place for once he did.
* * * *
Halloween night, Bubba sat at the cheap desk, his fingers flying over the laptop’s keyboard. He was in a lot of fucking pain, but that didn’t matter. The safe house they were using for this chore was located in an old apartment building on the outskirts of Indianapolis, and the goddamned elevator had apparently quit working since the time he’d bought the apartment years ago with black ops money. That meant climbing two flights of stairs with his shrapnel-studded back.
And it put him in an even less-charitable mood than he already was.
The apartment lay empty and bare except for a couple of chairs, a cot, the desk, and a comfortable desk chair for Bubba. He’d used this place on occasion over the years, but had never needed it fully equipped before.
Bubba’s friends had brought the subject, and his cell phones and computers, here three days earlier after snatching him from his apartment. They’d kept him on ice until tonight, when Bubba knew they’d have their best chance of an interrogation being the most productive with the least amount of worrying about anyone hearing or reporting anything.
It should be productive following a few days of fear on the guy’s part as he lay tied up, blindfolded and gagged on the kitchen floor, under guard and naked except for an adult diaper, now combined with some not-so-subtle persuasive tactics. Bubba had stayed clear of the safe house before now because he’d wanted to run surveillance on the guy’s apartment for a few days. He’d also waited to go through the guy’s computers until now because he wasn’t sure if any activity on them would be tracked by others or not.
Plus he’d wanted to go through the guy’s cell phone records first. Several of them burners, the guy had received numerous calls over the past three days from two different burner cells in St. Louis, as if someone was looking for him. Both male callers, one whom Bubba’s voice recognition software said was Jerald Arbeid, the other Hannibal Silo himself. The men left terse, non-informative messages to call them back.
Today Bubba had watched on the remote video feed he’d set up as, sure enough, someone had shown up looking for the guy at his apartment. Funny thing was, they broke in and took a look around before making a call to the burner cell in St. Louis Jerald Arbeid had called from, and then left without taking anything.
Now the fun could really begin. Bubba had an iron-clad connection tied from Silo and Arbeid to this man. With a completely clear conscience, he could begin the in-person interrogation. Had he discovered there wasn’t a solid connection to Silo or Arbeid, he would have had one of his friends bring him the computers only. He didn’t want to harm someone who was innocent.
That concern had been fully laid to rest.
At least it hadn’t looked out of place that, when Bubba had arrived tonight to start the fun, he’d been wearing a scary mask. Hell, everyone was wearing masks tonight.
It was Hallo-fucking-ween.
It was a bonus that no one had even looked curious over the fact that he carried a tool bag. It was the night of tricks and treats.
And boy, were they performing a trick.
Right now, the asshole lay naked on the floor, his arms and legs spread and securely screwed into two two-by-fours spread out on plastic sheeting in the tiny kitchen. He had a dirty sock shoved in his mouth to keep his screams down to a minimum. After the first screw went in through his left wrist, the guy had sung like a fucking canary.
The other three screws were just for fun, and a fuck-you to the asshole for sending intel info to the team who’d killed Scooter’s friends.
Bubba had let his two friends who were helping him with this mission, retired buddies of his from his military intel days, handle the wet-work. They hadn’t gotten their hands dirty in years and were thoroughly enjoying themselves.
Bubba knew he’d be paying for this jaunt later in terms of needing pain meds, especially after those stairs, but he’d wanted to handle this part of the mission personally. Extract a little payback on Scooter’s behalf, and cut this asshole out of existence.
Literally.
Besides, he’d missed the hell out of field work.
This guy had been playing Jerald Arbeid and Hannibal Silo against each other. The trojan he’d launched onto Scooter’s laptop hadn’t grabbed any info from Ax’s computer, because Ax had been smart enough to keep it clean. Fortunately, his brothers weren’t in any danger.
But another few interesting tidbits cropped up during Bubba’s search of this guy’s computer.
He swiveled the desk chair around, forcing himself not to wince. “So what the fuck is up with Houston, asshole?”
One of his friends pulled the dirty sock out of the guy’s mouth and he started to sing again.
Oh, how their pretty little captive pigeon began to sing.
Bubba, who was also videotaping this, settled in for a long and productive night with a pleased smile. He pulled a peppermint patty from the bag that sat on the desk by the computer. The unopened bag of candy had been in one the computer bags his friends had grabbed when they’d kidnapped the guy.
“I love these fucking things,” Bubba said as he unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth, savoring it. “Guess you can afford to buy candy to hand out when you’re taking blood money, huh?”
“Please, don’t kill me!”
“Hmm. Funny, that’s exactly what those two poor girls begged before they were murdered. That’s a first-hand report from the assholes who murdered them. Assholes who got information courtesy of you. Said assholes are also dead now, by the way. Give us a reason to keep you alive.”
Bubba tossed peppermint patties to his friends, who grinned as they unwrapped them and ate them.
“Don’t forget to pocket the wrappers,” Bubba cautioned. “Don’t want to leave evidence behind.”
“We look like amateurs?” Kant teased. His hair was completely grey now, but the spark of the twenty-five-year-old he’d first served with still brightly burned in his eyes. “Just because I haven’t been in the field in a while don’t mean I don’t remember the basics.”
“You should invite us to help you out more often,” Dark added. “This has been a hell of a lot of fun. Ain’t had this much fun in years. Retirement was getting boring as fuck.”
“The
fun’s only just beginning, boys,” Bubba said as he smiled at their captive. “Only just beginning.”
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tymber Dalton lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC winner is also the bestselling author of over ninety books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many more.
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