Page 83 of Edge

I leaned closer to him to answer. “I don’t know, but judging by the smile on his face, it’s nothing pleasant.”

When Carbon was set up, he sat in a chair beside the man and freed one of his hands. Then he held up a fishing hook for everyone to see. “Let’s try this again. What’s your name?”

“What are you going to do with that?”

Carbon made a sound similar to the one game shows used to indicate an incorrect answer. “Wrong answer.” Then he quickly pushed the fishing hook through the tip of the man’s finger. The guy tried to pull his hand away, but Carbon didn’t relent until the hook popped through his fingernail.

The guy screamed and stared at his finger in horror. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Try not to move next time,” Carbon said calmly. “If it doesn’t go through the fingernail, it’ll probably rip through the skin when we hang you from the ceiling.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding? Now, what’s your fucking name?”

The guy was breathing heavily and sweating. His eyes darted around in panic, but he didn’t answer the question.

Carbon grabbed his hand and pierced another finger with a fishing hook. The guy looked like he was going to puke, and I couldn’t blame him. Between the pain medicine, lack of breakfast, and the morbid manicure I was watching, I felt like I was going to be sick as well.

“What’s your name?” Carbon repeated.

The guy hesitated but blurted his name when Carbon picked up another hook. “Gary Doyle.”

Carbon dramatically stuck out his lower lip and dropped the hook to the table. “You’re no fun.”

“There’s still time,” Phoenix assured him. “We need to know a lot more than his name.”

“What do you want to know?” Gary asked.

“Why did you start a fire at the diner?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Carbon picked up a hook. “Can’t or won’t?”

“I was hired to do it,” he rushed out.

“You know what we want to know. Keep talking or I will literally pull it out of you,” Carbon said and yanked on one of the hooks in his finger.

“They’ll kill me if I tell you,” he squealed.

“Do you think we’re going to just let you walk out of here if you don’t tell us what we want to know?”

“Fuck, man,” he whined. “This isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Carbon grumbled and slammed his hands on the table. “Start fucking talking.”

“All right. All right,” Gary blabbered. “The Mad Dogs paid me to burn down the diner.”

Carbon rubbed his hands over his face. He was losing his patience by the second. “This is your last chance. Start from thebeginning and tell us everything.” To emphasize his point, he tugged on the hooks in Gary’s fingers.

“Okay! Okay! Please stop!” Gary begged. Carbon gave him a moment to catch his breath. “I’m a private investigator. Well, I was. I lost my license a while back, so I take what jobs I can get, which are usually the ones licensed PIs won’t take. A while back, Carl Sinclair hired me to find his daughter, Evie Sinclair. There wasn’t much to go on, and it seemed like she disappeared into thin air. I used traffic cameras to track her to Tennessee, but I lost her shortly after she crossed the state line. I tried tracking her phone and her debit card, but didn’t have any luck. Finally, I got a hit on her license plate. Her car was on the back of a tow truck. I traced the tow truck to the Blackwings garage.”

“Son of a bitch,” I blurted. He didn’t have to say it. I knew I was the one who led him to Evie.

“I went back through the traffic cameras and tracked the tow truck to Cedar Valley. I didn’t know exactly where it went to pick up Evie’s car, but I had it narrowed down enough to make a trip to Cedar Valley. It didn’t take me long to find her at the diner.”

“Keep going,” Carbon ordered.