by Elle Gray
But my eyes are focused on the one man at the end of the bar. Staley. He’s dressed in a black turtleneck, black tactical pants, and black boots. Looks to me like he’s just come off a shift. I find myself wondering what he did. Was he tailing me? Was he looking through all the things in my apartment the way they had at Takahashi’s place? Or is he still recovering from his skull fracture and on disability? I have no idea.
All I know is that he’s here. In this bar. And I have Fish to thank for tracking him down for me. I don’t like the idea of being indebted to Fish, but under the circumstances, I’ll find a way to be all right with it. It’s for the greater good and it’s for Veronica.
Staley slaps some money down on the bar and turns away. He’s swaying slightly as he heads for the door. An electric charge shoots through me as I drain the last of my beer and get to my feet. Keeping a discreet distance, I follow Staley out of the Nail. As I step outside, I hear a loud peal of thunder crashing overhead. A cold gust of wind buffets me and I hear the dry, scratchy sound of leaves skittering across the parking lot.
Staley comes to a stop about ten yards in front of me. He’s still swaying, despite standing still, and he’s holding his key ring up, trying to decide which key is the right one. I look around the gravel parking lot. Fortunately for me, it’s even emptier than the bar, and the only light is a flickering street lamp in the far corner.
“Now or never,” I mutter.
I try to quell the nerves racing through me and steel myself. By no means am I new to violence, but it’s always been in self-defense. This is something different. This time I am going on the attack, and although I know it’s for a very good reason, thinking about it just feels wrong. I shake my head and try to banish those thoughts. It’s not like this is the way I am. It’s the situation I happen to find myself in.
If I want justice for Veronica and everybody else, I have to do it.
I get moving before Staley gets to his car. Veronica’s face flashes through my mind—I see her face the way it was in the video she’d left us and that’s quickly followed by the way I’d seen her at the morgue. The knowledge that Staley may have had a hand in that fuels my rage and guides my feet forward. Eyes sweeping left and right, I keep watch for anybody else in the parking lot. It’s still clear.
I get right up beside Staley and throw my arm around his shoulders and flash him a smile. His narrowed eyes are bloodshot, and he absolutely reeks of cheap booze, but he gives me that toothy smile drunks get.
“Hey, Staley. How you doin’?” I ask.
“Hey, I know you?” he slurs.
“You do know me,” I say.
“Yeah?”
I nod. “Uh-huh. Hey, I’ve also got somebody else you know, and he really wants to see you. Come on.”
Staley giggles as I steer him toward my car, which is parked right next to his. Using my key fob, I hit the button and the back hatch opens, revealing the cargo area. Devers, bound and gagged, looks back at us with wide eyes filled with terror. Staley looks at him for a moment, too drunk to comprehend. But something in his lizard brain clicks in and I can see the change in his face. He starts to turn to me, but I slip the needle into the vein in his neck, then depress the plunger quickly, dropping him straight down into a K-hole.
Staley’s body slumps forward. The ketamine must be interacting with the alcohol, because he’s out like a light much faster than I’d expected. I just give him a shove and he tumbles into the cargo area. I have to lift his legs to get him to fit, and once he’s in, I gag him, then use plastic cuffs to bind his wrists and ankles, then get both of them situated. The bigger man is screaming into his gag and thrashing about like a fish just pulled out of a lake and thrown on the dock.
“Relax,” I say, my voice cold. “We’re just going to have a little chat. Just the three of us. It’s all good, man.”
His cries are muffled as I lean forward and give him another dose of ketamine. It’s not long before his eyes flutter, then close. With them both out, I slam the hatch down, plunging them into darkness. I lean forward and brace myself against my car and let out a long breath.
“What am I doing here?” I mutter. “What in the hell am I doing?”
Staley finally starts to come around and sits up—as much as he can anyway. Both he and Devers are sitting upright in stiff wooden chairs, each of their ankles bound to a leg of the chair, their wrists bound to the arm. As they come back to themselves, they look at each other, then turn to me, their faces darkening, their eyes narrowing, expressions of rage crossing their features. They both start shouting, but the gags muffle their voices, rendering them useless. With a sigh, I get to my feet and walk over to Staley first.
“Okay, I’m going to take your gag down. Let’s not have any screaming or undue fuss, all right? Think you can manage that?”
Staley glares at me as I pull his gag down—and a stream of obscenities immediately flies out of his mouth. I deliver a vicious backhand that rocks his head to the side. He groans as a thin trickle of blood spills from the corner of his mouth. He turns his head back to me, the look of rage even deeper. But then his face relaxes, and he doesn’t look like he’s on the verge of stroking out anymore.
“Where are we?” he hisses.
“This is a cabin I bought a long time ago. Through a shell company, of course,” I explain. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere—literally—in a cabin that can never be traced to me. I dare say, I can do anything to you two and get away with it. And please, I’d prefer it if you didn’t scream just because it annoys me, but if you happen to scream, rest assured that nobody will hear you out here.”
“What do you want?” Staley growls.
“Information,” I say, with as much cool nonchalance I can muster. “It’s simple. You tell me what I want to know, you live. You don’t, you start losing a body part for every lie or wrong answer until you bleed out and die. Simple, right?”
“Screw you,” Staley snaps. “I don’t know nothin’.”
“Yes well, that much is obvious,” I reply. “But let’s see if we can jog your memory, shall we?”
“Screw you, man.”
“You said that already. Do try to be original. I hate being bored,” I say flippantly. “Before we begin though, I want to know if you remember me.”
Staley nods. “Yeah. I remember. You damn near killed me.”
“Don’t say that like it’s my fault. You two jumped me, if memory serves,” I snap. “Now, who gave you the order to jump me?”
“Screw you.”
I sigh and pull the black nitrile gloves down tighter over my hands, then walk to the rolling table. The wheel squeaks as I push it over to where Staley and Devers can both see it and I watch with grim satisfaction as their eyes grow wide. Spread out on the rolling table is an array of wicked-looking implements—pliers, knives, hammers, and even a blowtorch. I pick up a pair of pliers and let Staley get a good look at them.
“I’d prefer to not use any of these instruments,” I say. “But I will use every single one of them until you tell me what I want to know.”
“You are making such a big mistake, man. You don’t know how deep you’re in—”
“I’m over my head, yeah I’ve heard that before. But I’ll tell you what, I think I’m right where I need to be. I’m treading water right now, but I’m definitely not over my head,” I say. “See, I was built for things like this. I have little empathy or pity for people like you, Corporal Staley. Especially when it comes to hurting people I care about.”
“I didn’t do nothin’,” he insists.
“Brian Takahashi,” I say. “You and Sergeant Devers here murdered him.”
“That’s crap. We did not—”
I pick up the picture from Takahashi’s camera and show it to him. “That is very clearly you in Brian’s condo,” I say. “So, this would all be a lot easier if you didn’t lie to me.”
“F—fine. We broke into his pad, but we didn’t murder him.”
He squirms i
n the chair, sputtering and cursing as I grab the pinky on his left hand with the pliers and squeeze down.
“Who ordered you to kill Takahashi?” I ask. “Last chance.”
“We didn’t—”
His words devolve into a shrieking wail as I wrench his pinky upward. The snap is audible, and even Devers, who’s still gagged, looks on in horror at the now unnaturally angled pinky. He looks at me with wide eyes that are filled with terror. Staley’s screams taper off to a moan of agony.
“Let’s try that again,” I growl. “Who gave you the order to kill Takahashi?”
“We didn’t kill—”
The ring finger on his left hand joins the pinky in pointing skyward. Staley screams in agony, thrashing wildly in his chair.
“I don’t—I—I don’t—know who gave the order. We were—told by our boss,” he stammers through the pain. “That’s the way this works, man. We were just following orders.”
I point to the two guns sitting on the rolling table. “Which one of these did you use to shoot Takahashi?”
Tears spill down Staley’s face, and he looks at me like I’m the devil incarnate. Maybe I am. I kind of feel like it right now. It’s not a great feeling. But I am going to do what I have to do until I get the answers I want.
“Which one, Corporal Staley?”
“The one on the left,” he mutters.
“Very good, we’re making progress,” I reply. “Now, who gave you the order to kill Takahashi?”
“I swear to God, man, I don’t know. Our boss gave us the order,” he cries. “Talk to Simon Key. He’s our boss. We work for Black Crown Security. Call him. Call him.”
It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but the answer I should have expected. I turn to Devers and yank his gag down.
“What about you?” I ask. “Do you know Ethan Rogers and Didrik Sjoberg?”
He nods quickly, clearly not eager to have his own fingers broken one by one. “Sure. We’ve been assigned to protect them.”
“Uh-huh. And by protecting them, I assume you mean you’ve killed people they’ve ordered you to kill before, yes?”
He nods eagerly. The cooperation is refreshing. “Yeah, yeah. We’ve neutralized people for them before.”
“Did either of them tell you to kill Takahashi?”
His eyes drift to Staley’s two mangled fingers and he swallows hard. “No, man. They didn’t. It’s just like Tommy said, our boss gave us the order. We were just doin’ our job.”
“Right. Just following orders,” I growl. “What about the name Veronica Arrington? Were you two ordered to kill her?”
The man sighs. “We didn’t do it. But I heard the name before. And yeah, I remember that the other team on the protective detail was ordered to take her out.”
It feels like a punch to the gut so hard, it drives the wind out of me. I take a moment to gather myself and calm my racing heart. After so long, having this confirmation that she was murdered, that she didn’t die in an accident, leaves me feeling like I might collapse right here and now. My legs are shaking. My entire body is shaking, actually. The grief that washes over me is even deeper than anything I’ve known before.
“Who ordered the other detail to kill her?” I ask.
Devers looks at me with that fearful look on his face. But then he looks away and can’t meet my gaze.
“Who ordered the hit, Sergeant Devers?” I press.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t in the room.”
I turn to him and take his thumb in the pliers. He writhes away from me, yammering in protest, but I ignore it. He tries to pull his hand away but I tighten my grip and wrench it backward until it snaps. His howl of agony is minor compared to the pain that’s racking my body right now.
“Who ordered my wife killed?” I roar.
“It was Rogers!” Staley finally yells. “It was Rogers. Now, for the love of God, turn us loose.”
I drop the pliers on the ground and feel my legs nearly give out under me. After all this time, I have the name of the man who killed my wife. But instead of relief, it’s only brought a fresh wave of pain. A fresh wave of grief. Tears roll down my cheeks. I rest my weight against the table and hang my head for a long moment, then turn back to my two captives. A rage as dark as outer space fills me as I stare at the two men before me.
My mind fills with images of Veronica as she was in life were followed by how she looked in death. Rage blends with grief in my mind. I take the large dagger from the table behind me and stare at my own reflection glinting in the blade. The urge to lash out and kill consumes me, overwhelming every fiber of my sanity.
I lift the blade and take a step toward Staley and Devers…
Twenty-Nine
Loving Hearts Hospice Care Center; Seattle, WA
“I’m going to record this. Is that all right?”
Emma Welsh nods weakly. “Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t care.”
I set up my phone to record, making sure she’s in frame. When I’m ready, I give her a nod. She swallows hard and licks her dry lips. She looks so fragile that the slightest wind could blow her away.
“How long have you been here, Emma?”
She shrugs. “A while.”
“You can leave any time you want, though,” I say.
“I don’t want to,” she replies. “I’m not well. I want to be, though. But right now, I’m just not. I’m not well.”
Emma looks so small sitting there. She’s dressed in blue scrubs under a white bathrobe. She’s got a kerchief over her head to hide the fact that she has no hair. Her blue eyes are watery and bloodshot with dark, heavy circles beneath them. Her skin is sallow and dry, and her cheeks are sunken. Indeed, she looks like little more than a skeleton with parchment stretched over it. I’m not a doctor, but it doesn’t look like she has much longer to live.
We’re sitting in the common area of the hospice center Brody finally managed to trace her to. The room is nearly silent, even though there are half a dozen other people scattered about. Most of them are looking off into the distance. They’re here, but not really here. Perhaps contemplating their own mortality. The fact that she would choose to spend her final days here, alone, rather than be surrounded by friends and loved ones, is heartbreaking. It tells me she’s never recovered from the trauma inflicted upon her by Didrik Sjoberg and Ethan Rogers.
To be given hope that her cancer could be beaten only to have her child suffer horribly before he died is bad enough. To then have her cancer return, worse than before, is monstrous. Sjoberg peddles hope to people only to snatch it away from them in pursuit of the almighty dollar. They knew their drug didn’t work. Knew it caused untold pain and suffering. Yet they bribed the right people and falsified their records to get it to market anyway. Veronica got too close to that truth, and she too, like Emma and all the others, paid the price for their greed.
What they do is horrific. Monstrous isn’t even an appropriate word. It’s infinitely worse than that. They offer hope yet deliver nothing but suffering, misery, and death. If I had my way, I’d throw them to an angry mob. Sjoberg and Rogers should be made to pay with their lives for what they did. For what they’re doing. Somebody needs to stop them. But because they’re paid up with the right people, nobody will.
“I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions, Emma. I truly am. But I’m trying to stop the men who did this to you. I’m trying to keep them from hurting anybody else,” I tell her softly. “Do you have any of your paperwork from the trials? Anything?”
“I’ve got a dead child who looked like a monster,” she says softly.
I look down and purse my lips. Doing what I did at the cabin was hard, but talking to Emma, who is still so clearly suffering, is a thousand times more difficult. I hate having to be here to ask her these questions. But if I don’t, there will be nobody to speak for her. To speak for the countless other people who’ve suffered because of Lomtin’s drug. Nobody to speak for Brian Takahashi or Veronica. That task has fallen to me, and regar
dless of how much it sucks or how hard it is, I’m going to see it through.
“Emma, is there anything you can tell me about the trials? Anything you can tell me that might help me stop them from doing this to anybody else?”
She looks at me, her eyes shimmering with tears. “They said they were going to cure me,” she says softly. “But then they sent me home. I never got to finish the trial.”
“Why? Why did they send you home?
She shakes her head. “They didn’t say. They ran a lot of tests and when they did an ultrasound, all they said was that my pregnancy was interfering with the drug. They said being pregnant made me an unsuitable candidate.”
“But you were pregnant when they accepted you?”
She nods. “They told me the medicine was perfectly safe for my baby. They lied.”
“How do you know they lied, Emma?”
“I talked to some of the other women from the trial. Women who were pregnant like me—Judy, Casey, and Monica,” she says. “All their babies came out looking like monsters too. All their babies died like mine.”
“Did they ever reach out to you after that?”
“Dr. Sjoberg called. He said he was sorry, but his drug wasn’t responsible,” she says. “He told me they found traces of heroin in my blood tests and that was the likely cause of my… problems, as he described it. I’ve never done a drug in my life. Never.”
“I believe you, Emma. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
There’s a long pause as Emma looks away. She wipes away the tears that roll down her cheeks and clenches her teeth, trying to stop her tears.
“I said I wasn’t going to cry,” she admits with a wry chuckle.
“It’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with it.”