Page 55 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

Dying is a Character Flaw

Cobra

Teri fainted. Thank God Trinity caught her. The relief that waved through me when Trinity called out, “It’s not life threatening!” felt like getting doused with cold water.

I sent Trinity to the hospital with her mother while Daria and I hog-tied Clark and dumped him in the trunk of her vehicle. She had plastic in the back of her truck, along with a saw, and a small arsenal, and enough cleaning supplies to remove our DNA from the filthy house.

“I’m not even going to ask why you have that,” I said as I shut the trunk lid down on a screaming Clark. Thankfully, the duct tape over his mouth kept him quiet.

“It’s an occupational hazard,” she said, with a shrug. “So, are you ready to tell me about how you killed a man with a squid?”

I chuckled.

“There was a dirty uranium shipment in Monaco…”

My brother had a torture shed. He didn’t call it that. He just said it was a “work” shed, since his wife no longer allowed him to conduct enhanced interrogations in the house. She said it was bad for the spirits… whatever the hell that meant.

“Welcome to the party.” Jericho crossed his arms in front of him, his forearms covered in blood. “I hear I’m offering this one a job.”

He nodded to the woman at his side. Norkus.

Her arms crossed as she observed the three bodies strung up by their wrists in a stress position.

“This one already died,” she said, exasperated, like the man had just been too weak to keep on living.

The man was beaten and mangled at her hands, and it was his fault.

“So this is Raymond Clark.” Norkus appraised him, then scrunched her nose in disapproval. “Rather unimpressive.”

Clark was still gagged. If he hadn’t been, I’d assume he had a lot to say.

“We’ve gotten quite a lot of information from these three.” Jericho tilted his head pensively.

“They sang like canaries.” Norkus’ commentary wasn’t necessary, but it was amusing.

“Oh?” I said, when neither of them enlightened me.

“Ladies first,” Jericho said with a sweeping bow towards Norkus.

“I’ve been tracking shipments that have been coming into the United States.

Just a few irregularities that, on their own, seem like small clerical errors.

Weights that don’t match listed cargo, that sort of thing.

” She paced back and forth. “Human trade coming into the United States is a tale as old as the nation, but something funny happened when those irregularities ceased.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” If the trade had stopped, surely that’s a good thing.

“Do you think human nature changed in the last six months? That all the bad guys just suddenly stopped trafficking humans?” She lifted a brow. “No, the only reason no supply was coming in was because they found another supplier.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they’re getting supplies of human bodies from the inside.” She blinked, staring at me, as if I was supposed to understand her cryptic language. “The calls are coming from inside the house.”

“Sweetheart, can you just spit it out?” I wanted to get back to Teresa.

“They’re trafficking humans, Guerro.” She looked at me like I was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

“These three, specifically, have been picking people up, and disappearing them, and enriching themselves in the process, using their status as Immigration Customs Enforcement Agents to cover their tracks.”

My head shot up to Clark whose eyes widened.

“He used a government vehicle to torment his ex,” Norkus shook her head. “I mean, we should expect a shit ton of government fraud, waste and abuse.”

Norkus paced, her hands balled at her side.

“What do you expect from an agency that accidentally deports dozens of actual citizens a year with no recourse?” She turned to one of the guys, the one with a scar down his face. “You have one fucking job!”

She poked him on his bloody chest, and he groaned, air wheezing from his mouth as he gurgled.

“What the hell did you do to him?” I asked, looking at the blood dribbling down his chin.

“I cut out his tongue.”

I stared at Norkus, the vicious little thing. “Why?”

Daria's crystalline laugh rang out through the shed. “Nice! It’s actually really hard to cut out someone’s tongue while they’re alive. I respect that.”

Norkus gave her a lopsided smile, then bowed.

To me, she said, “he called me a slur. I took offense.”

Her foot kicked something on the ground. It was wet, and soft, almost gelatinous looking and covered in dirt and rocks. Holy fuck. That was his tongue.

The guy looked down at it with complete despair and horror.

“You asked me why I wanted a job with Paradigm.” Norkus smiled. “I have a lot of reasons. One of them is a jurisdiction problem.”

I stared at her, waiting for the rest of her explanation. She walked up to Clark, and stared up into his terrified eyes.

“The CIA can’t operate inside the United States.

Let’s just say I’m like a cat with a ball of yarn.

” She looked Clark up and down, her fang-like teeth glinting in the sparse sunlight.

“I pulled the threads and found a vast conspiracy happening in my home territory, and you’re the only people who have the power to do anything about it. ”

She gestured to the four men with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“As I said before, the calls are coming from inside the house.”

“And, what?” I asked, still skeptical as hell about the woman. “You intend to clean house?”

“Exactly.”

I snorted. “Why don’t you get your own house in order first?”

She stared at me, my insult obviously landing, no matter how vague the phrasing might have been.

“I intend to.” She turned around and walked out of the shed.

To where, I wasn’t sure. Nor did I particularly care. She was hired. That was that. I’d held up my end of the bargain.

“What the hell was that?” Jericho asked, still using his fake Russian accent, probably because it was scarier than his Upstate New York voice.

“She’s Roland Griffith’s mistress.” I bit my cheek, trying to hide the scorn from my voice. For her, and for her lover.

“Good for her,” Daria said.

“What?” My brows knit together.

“Roland Griffith is a hot daddy.” She shrugged. “Kamilla has never been nice to Wifey.”

By Wifey she meant Trinity. Her theory was that since she was Kai Griffith’s work wife at Cerberus, then Trinity was her sister-wife.

Daria’s a weird cookie.

“I don’t even know how to react to that,” Jericho said. “And we’ve offered her a job?”

“Yeah.” I sighed, staring up at Raymond Clark.

Should I keep him gagged? Or did I want him to scream?

“Got any garden shears?” I asked, quietly.

I needed to get this guy down to his underwear. Teresa had broken at least a dozen bones. She had a dozen more cuts and scars. And she’d been sexually assaulted. Add the wounds she now had on her hands, and I was going to be in for a very, very long day and night.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said, staring up at Clark. “If you want me to stop. If the pain gets to be too much… just tell me to stop.”

He started to scream, his terrified eyes wide, his sky blue eyes, a much duller, weaker color than Teresa’s beautiful cerulean irises were already begging me to stop, and I hadn’t even done much yet.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying?” I said, leaning forward, as he mumbled through the gag on his mouth. “Can you guys hear anything?”

I turned to Jericho who shook his head. I turned to Daria.

“Did you hear him say stop?” I asked.

Daria just smiled. “No. In fact, I think he just called Mrs. Guerro a bad name. Isn’t that what you heard?”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard.”

A slicing noise came from the side, as Jericho played with a large pair of garden sheers. Snip. Snip. Snip .