Chapter Fourteen
"All these fucking people, all fucking night," Taylor muttered belligerently and put the knife away where he could retrieve it quickly later if he needed to. The meat freezer was entirely secure, especially considering that the trio inside would have trouble standing at all, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
And he hadn’t lied, not entirely. The building did have a furnace and it was mostly functional. The parts were expected the next day along with those he needed for the boiler, but he had no idea what he could use it for as yet. Maybe if they really needed to forge and cut metal?
Either way, it would be complicated—if not totally impossible—to use it for body disposal. It wouldn't work for full corpses at all.
Besides, he wasn't sure if he actually did want to kill them and dispose of the bodies like that. He was seriously pissed, so it wasn't off the table, but it would be best to simply scare the absolute shit out of the dumbasses and drag them back to their boss in person to make sure he didn't try this bullshit ever again.
It wasn't like he was unreasonable.
Yet people constantly arrived to piss him off even further.
The failed raids aside, he doubted the disturbance outside was backup for his three prisoners.
They would have sent more than one person to get them out, for one thing, and based on the looks of the woman who approached his front door, he didn't see her as a member of whatever the fuck gang the three were a part of.
He moved toward the door and peered at the camera feed that showed him who it was. She was dressed in what looked like a grey pantsuit—though he couldn't be sure in the lighting—and heels, her long hair pulled into a rigid ponytail.
She looked tired, bored, and definitely not in a good mood, which coincidentally reflected his own emotional state at the moment. He was simply in no fucking mood to deal with much of anything at this point. All he wanted was to go to bed.
Was that so fucking wrong?
Taylor still didn’t think she was a member of the gang, but there was no real point in making assumptions. He chose one of the guns the goons had involuntarily surrendered to him and checked the magazine before he chambered a round in the Beretta and flicked the safety off. After a quick moment to think, he cocked the hammer back as well as he moved toward the front door.
Given recent events, he decided he couldn’t be too careful and pressed the barrel to the door so it aimed at the woman in question when he pulled it open.
It creaked softly and drew her attention to him.
“Hi,” she said with what he immediately recognized as a fake smile. “I’m looking for Taylor McFadden?”
He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head in query, and gave himself a moment to study her. She was armed judging by the gentle bulge under her left shoulder, although her hand position and body language told him she didn’t expect to have to use the weapon. Maybe she didn’t realize that he had a gun of his own aimed at her.
Or she didn’t care.
Either way, he had little inclination to give her the opportunity to explain the reason why.
“Hi,” Taylor said with deliberate rudeness. “We’re actually closed for business for tonight. Well, this morning anyway. There are issues with the labor force that, quite frankly, don’t involve you, so you could come back at about…well, never would be just fantastic."
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open before he shut the door in her face. He really, really hoped this would be the end of it. Or that she would at least take the hint and come back in the morning.
For some reason, though, he really doubted that would be the case.
She stepped in closer and pounded her fist against the door. It wasn't the sturdiest, to begin with, and still needed work to be a viable security barrier against people who wanted to enter.
He had actually thought about getting steel bars to reinforce the door itself as well as the frames. That way, even a battering ram would have difficulty gaining entry.
Unfortunately, the current, weak frame shuddered with each and every blow. He expected her to stop at some point, either because she ran out of steam or maybe because her hand would hurt.
But no, this was definitely not his lucky night.
"Listen to her," he grumbled irritably. "Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen… Goddammit, fine!"
He returned to the door—although he didn’t bother with the gun this time—and yanked it open. "What the fuck is the matter with you? Don't you have…like, sleep to get to?"
"I'll go ahead and assume you're Taylor McFadden," she said and shook her head as if to try to control her annoyance. He simply stared at her while she rubbed her hand meaningfully before she slid it into her coat pocket to withdraw a badge. "My name is Special Agent Niki Banks, and I'm—"
"A fed?" he demanded incredulously. "Now I want to talk to you even less."
Another shocked expression crossed her face as he slammed the door shut again. It was gratifying to see but he doubted that would be the end of it.
As if on cue, she began to pound on the door again.
"Seriously, if this is how the FBI runs things, I wouldn't be surprised if you have a thousand noise complaints on your hands!" he shouted from the other side of the door, took a deep breath, and headed toward the freezer.
He had to assume his prisoners had been left alone long enough to consider a way to escape and he didn't want them thinking that way. He wasn't done with them by a damn mile and hope in their minds would poison whatever punishment he finally decided to subject them to.
It took effort to ignore the furious assault on his front door as he pulled the lever to open the freezer and peered in at the three assholes he had strung up on the meat hooks. He had managed to secure them in such a way that kept their feet on the ground, but only barely, before he’d locked the hooks in place.
They wouldn’t go anywhere without breaking the pipe that kept the three of them in place, which would make almost as much ruckus as the fed at his front door made.
"Hey, guys," Taylor said as he checked each one to make sure none of them had managed to loosen their bonds. "How are you all doing? Do you need something to drink…eat? I can whip something up in the kitchen…nah, that would be funnier if I actually had a whip to use, but anyway."
None of them responded and all avoided his gaze like they wanted to avoid attracting his attention to any one of them. It wasn't something he really cared for since it could mean they were, in fact, trying to find a way out of the restraints they were currently in and didn’t want him to read it in their eyes.
"No?" he asked and checked the integrity of the pipe. "No comments about how I won’t get away with this or how I'll suffer once your boss finds out? Maybe begging me to let the cops pick you up?"
Silence was the only response.
"Ugh, fine, be like that." His mockery aside, he hadn’t expected them to be anything but less than helpful and maybe a little surly about being held against their will, but he really didn't give a shit.
If they wanted to piss him off further, he would simply kill them and most of his night would be wasted finding a way to get rid of the bodies.
Of course, the woman who continued to knock at the door now got on his last damn nerve. He could still hear her from the back, and from the sound of things, there was a real danger that she would simply break it down soon.
She had stamina, he had to admit, and her determination drew reluctant admiration although the sentiment behind it wasn’t entirely complimentary. In other circumstances, he might be appreciative of it, but he wanted to get some fucking sleep and he had the feeling that she would be a serious obstacle to that.
More so than the trio inside, he acknowledged grimly.
"Hold on. It looks like I have a caller," Taylor said. "Don't move. I'll be right back."
"No!" Bruce called. "Leave the door open."
"I can't hear you over the sound of…" He paused and shook his head. "Some…joke about you three
having vaginas. Let your imagination fill in the rest. I'm too tired for this shit."
"Please, do—" they started to say but he cut them off when he closed the door behind him.
It was comforting to know that the room was at least soundproofed. He didn't know when that might come in handy, but he was sure he could be creative enough to find a way to make it useful. When he'd had a full night of sleep. Preferably in this lifetime.
The woman was still beating the door to within an inch of its life when he reached it and yanked it open.
"For fuck's sake, what?" he roared and forced her to take a step back. She looked surprised and more than a little pissed.
Still, she showed more self-control than he was capable of at the moment and took a deep breath before she spoke. "Taylor, is it? Do you mind if we talk?"
"If we do, will you continue to break your hand on my fucking door?" he demanded.
"Well, I think I was closer to breaking the door than my hand."
"Yeah and considering that I'm in the middle of remodeling this whole fucking place, I'd rather not have that charge added to everything else," he retorted. "Say your fucking piece and get the hell off my property."
"Well, I think I should preface this with the fact that I know you have a trio of criminals strung up in there somewhere—assuming they are still alive, of course," Banks said and folded her arms over her chest. "With that and the fact that I am a federal agent in mind, are you sure you can't invite me in?"
Taylor scowled. He didn't want to let her in but he also didn't want to have a horde of other federal agents trampling over his business either. He assumed that she wanted more than merely to talk but at this point, he really didn't give a shit. He only wanted to get some fucking sleep.
"Fine." He finally stepped aside and let her enter.
"Thank you," she replied, her voice still calm. "You should also know that I'm not the kind of agent who wants to be embroiled in the paperwork of arresting you for killing the three men, so assuming they're still alive—"
"They are."
"I'll be able to take them off your hands without too much trouble," she continued. "In doing so, we’ll also save you the trouble of doing something you probably wouldn't lose any sleep over."
"Not a wink," he admitted.
"Right. Not a wink. That said, would you consider keeping your mind open to what I have to say? I have the feeling you have a habit of tuning out anything and everything any authority figure might say."
"You're not wrong." He folded his arms and regarded her warily. "And you only want to talk?"
"Well, I want much more than that but talking is how we'll get there," she replied.
"So, you take the three stooges in there off my hands," he said. "And I get six hours—"
"Four hours," she said.
"Four more hours of sleep," he continued and scowled at her. "And we'll talk then?" She simply stared at him and he sighed. "Sure, what the fuck ever. I am curious to know about how you plan to take them off my hands, though. It's not like you can write them up after what I did to them."
"What did you do to them?" she asked as he guided her through the empty grocery store toward the back where he had them bound in the freezer.
"I worked them over with a baseball bat," he said. "I was rougher than I needed to be, but given that they arrived with gas and the intention to burn this place down, I thought it was warranted."
She shook her head. "Of course you did."
He snipped, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," she replied quickly. "Let's get this over with."
Taylor yanked the lever and pulled the door open. He was greeted by the surprised and even a little hopeful eyes of the three men when the light filled the space again. They weren't happy to see him obviously, and no discernible emotion crossed their faces when Banks stepped in behind him.
After a moment, their stoic expressions gave way to a little surprise, but they said nothing. They didn't really want to know what his friend would want to do with them.
"Well, boys, it looks like today is your lucky day." Taylor checked to make sure their restraints were still in place. "Special Agent Banks here is willing to take you dumbasses off my hands as long as you are really, really sorry and promise to mend your ways."
"Actually, all I really need is a confession from you three and we should be good," the woman said, retrieved her phone, and set it to record. "I only need to hear how the three of you broke into this man's property with the intention to burn it down with him inside and all that."
"We didn't know he was in here," Bruce said and shook his head vigorously.
"Yeah, because that shit somehow makes it all better?" Taylor snorted.
"I don't need any interference from you," Banks said and focused her full attention on the three men who were still strung up on meat hooks. "So, continue. Why did you come here?"
"We had word from our employer that there was a certain character who didn't want to pay his protection money in this area," Bruce said. "We didn't know who he was or why he didn't pay. We were sent here to torch his place of business since apparently, he gave the first guys our employer sent a hard time."
"I beat them up and let the cops arrest them," Taylor explained.
"I know," the woman snapped. "I spent all day getting your name off that particular police report, dumbass. Sorry gentleman,” she said to the hoods. “Continue."
"Anyway, the three of us filled up with gas and came here to do our business," Bruce continued. "We were trying to decide where to start the fire when this guy showed up out of fucking nowhere and beat the shit out of us with a baseball bat. I have a concussion and a broken hand. Con looks like he has a broken knee and a cracked skull too, and Cal…well, he's in a bad way too."
"With a bat, huh?" Banks said. "Well, I think that's all I need for the moment, really. Thank you, gentlemen."
"What—you know none of what I said it admissible in court, right?"
"Court?" She raised an eyebrow. "This is enough for me to send your sorry asses to the Zoo. Do you think you guys could handle that?"
"Not to be overly judgmental, but my money's on them getting shit out of a monster before the end of the week," Taylor said and grinned. "In fairness, though, that’s still paradise compared to what I had in mind for them."
"Shut up McFadden and help me get them to my car," the agent said as she rescued the first one from the hook.
Any worries he might have had that they would try to make their escape were quickly allayed. None of them wanted to risk their unexpected way out of there, and once he released the other two from the hooks, they put up no resistance to being walked—or in Con's case, carried—outside.
When they reached the vehicle, however, Bruce seemed to suddenly grow a spine as he shoved himself away from Taylor's hands, yanked hard, and writhed out of his grasp before he attempted to make his way to where they had apparently parked their own car.
The man's fear of what might have occurred in the walk-in freezer had apparently dissipated and he thought he had a chance at freedom.
In fairness, with his captor still mostly carrying his comrade, he might have had a chance if Banks hadn’t been there.
The man had apparently forgotten her and he stumbled into a run. She released Cal and rapidly gained on the runaway.
Taylor's eyebrows raised when she caught up with him. He stopped and spun to lash out at her but she planted her feet, caught him by his collar, and flipped him expertly over her hip to land with a loud groan.
"You are almost more trouble than you are worth," she muttered and hauled him up again. "Do you want to stay here? I really don't care. I only need two of you to cooperate so he will meet with me later.”
Bruce made no objection to being shoved into the back of her SUV, followed quickly by his comrades.
"Are we good?" Taylor asked, anxious for the whole thing to end.
"Sure," she replied and wiped her hands clean on her pantsuit.
"I’ll see you in four hours."
"Yeah, don't fucking remind me," he retorted. "I need to get some sleep. See you on the flipside, Banks."
"Yeah, whatever." She slid into the driver's seat and headed off without a backward glance.
Chapter Fifteen
Four hours went by all too rapidly, and the persistent and now appallingly familiar buzz dragged him from sleep yet again. He felt for the bat he had hidden under his bed with one hand while the other fumbled for his phone.
Instinct told him that more invaders tried to break into his property and recommended that he prepare himself to deliver the next round of pain.
As his eyes focused and his fingers finally unlocked the phone, he realized he was both right and wrong in this instance. The motion sensors told him that someone had moved through the perimeter and parked a car in front of the entrance.
The buzzing wasn't only the alert from his security system but also an unknown number that now made a third attempt to reach him.
He answered when the caller tried again and pressed it to his ear as he pushed himself into a seated position.
"What?" he mumbled.
"What? That’s not very nice." Banks sounded inordinately chirpy on the other side of the line. "How are you doing, McFadden? Are you ready to have that talk we agreed to have?"
"Fuck off. You wouldn't believe the night I had."
"Get dressed, maybe take a shower, and get out here," she replied. "I assume you smell like the south end of a northbound cow. I'll wait for you here in my car—and I have coffee."
Well, that was one way to get on his better side, he decided, pushed from the bed, and did as he was told. He was a little whiffy, he had to admit, and so it took him about ten minutes before he headed down to where she was parked outside the entrance in the same SUV she had been driving the night before.
Hell, she looked like she hadn't had any sleep but still looked rested—or active, anyway—as she pushed the passenger door open for him.
The aroma of coffee greeted him as he joined her in the car, shifted to get comfortable, and scowled when she handed him one of the disposable cups.
Hired Killer (Cryptid Assassin Book 1) Page 13