Page 23 of Justified (Ruthless Vigilante #1)

Chapter eight

I was now back in my own skin and wearing my sexy vigilante outfit.

Walter was naked and tied to a metal chair in the middle of a dusty, dark, and dirty abandoned store.

It was a place where a local serial killer had once taken his victims just over three years ago.

Since then, the neighborhood had gotten more and more desolate and corrupt.

Good news for me was Walter could scream his ass off and no one would hear him because of all the other surrounding abandoned businesses.

And if someone did happen to hear, well, they might not give a shit.

Walter stirred a little as the drug began to wear off. I decided to help him along by slapping him repeatedly in the face until he came to. “There you are. Hello, Mr. Jingles,” I greeted.

He blinked at me as he struggled to see who I was in all of the darkness. “Who are you?” he asked.

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I walked over to a spotlight I had set up that ran on batteries, which was perfect for these kind of interrogations where the building lacked electricity.

I turned it on, shining the powerful beam of light directly at Walter, blinding him.

Doing this would certainly disorientate him and up his fear factor, which was exactly what I wanted.

“Tell me about the Killing Game,” I ordered.

“The fuck? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Who are you?” he demanded.

“A concerned citizen,” I stated. “And you can cut the shit, because you do know what I’m talking about.

Now, we’re in a place where no one is going to hear you scream.

No one is coming to your aid. Whatever tracking devices you had in your clothes is long gone, so no one knows where you’re at.

You see, you’re my little bitch right now, so you better start playing by my rules. ”

He licked his lips as he struggled to find some way to take control of this situation. “Listen, if it’s money you want, I can arrange that. You don’t have to do whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”

“I always want money—”

“Okay, fantastic, we can work something out—”

“But I don’t want yours,” I said. “What I want is information.”

He sighed heavily as if exasperated. “Jesus fucking Christ! I’ve already told you I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” he yelled.

“And we both know that’s a fucking lie!” I yelled back.

“Tell me about the Killing Game. Who runs it? How many people are involved? Where are you getting the victims you all bid on to kill? Where do they kill them? How long have you been a member? Who do you send money to? I want to know everything you know, Mr. Jingles.”

“You’ve got the wrong person. I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear,” he said weakly, like a man who was at the end of his rope after trying to reason with someone who was being unreasonable. His act was convincing, but I wasn’t fooled.

I walked over to him with the file in my hand.

“Recognize him?” I asked, showing him a photo of the boy he paid to have killed his way.

In the photo, the boy was still alive and crying in fear.

It was a screen captured image that Jordan had made before shit got real.

I studied Walter’s face and he was hiding it well, but there was a slight change in his expression.

Recognition. He knew damn well who that boy was.

“I’ve never seen this child in my life,” he lied.

I smirked. “Sure you have. You won the bid of five million dollars to have the chance to have this poor child’s hands and feet cut off while he was still alive and screaming in pain.

You then wanted his eyes gouged out, his tongue cut off, and his penis split in two.

Oh, and let’s not forget that you wanted to see that boy suffer in ways no human should ever have to suffer, especially not at the hands of another human.

But calling you human is taking it a bit far, I’ll admit. ”

“I don’t—”

I backhanded him hard before he could finish his line of bullshit. “Save the lie. You don’t want to talk the easy way, I can make you talk the hard way. That poor child bled out until there was nothing left. His death was slow and full of anguish. Would you like to see how that felt?”

Walter stiffened in the chair and his squirming picked up a lot more, but the bastard wasn’t going anywhere.

I knew how to tie a fucking knot and I used a sturdy metal chair, not a wooden one he could break.

I walked over to my spread I had set up on a crate.

I had an array of knives, scalpels, and even a mini blow torch.

I was going to have fun with this evil motherfucker.

“I’m trying to tell you, you have the wrong person!” he yelled again.

I picked up one of my very sharp knives and walked back over to him. The light might have been blinding, but he could see me well enough by now. He could also see what I was holding in my hand.

“Who runs the site?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear. Please… please don’t do this,” he begged.

“Funny, that’s what the kid said before you had his nipples cut off.

” I leaned over, grabbing one of his tiny, hairy nipples, which felt mushy between my fingers.

Walter was a thin man, but not very toned, not that it mattered.

I brought the blade close to his nipple and that was when he really went into a panic, twisting and screaming in the chair.

“Hold still now. We don’t want more cut off than what I’m aiming for,” I taunted.

“No! No please! Don’t!” he screamed.

I smiled, because I wanted him to get a really good dose of what he’d given that child.

A part of me didn’t enjoy having to see the blood and flesh peel away.

I mean, I wasn’t a fucking psychopath. Hurting people didn’t get me off in that sense.

It was a rush, but not on a lunatic’s level.

However, the other part of me was relishing what I was about to do, because the son of a bitch deserved it.

That was the part that got me excited, meting out justice well earned.

I pushed the blade of my knife into his skin and watched as blood seeped from the wound.

Walter screamed and thrashed, which made his wound open wider.

I didn’t really care. I planned on cutting off a lot more.

I continued carving into his flesh as more blood poured from his body and down his chest, until the nipple was removed.

I held it up to him, jigging it. “Kind of pathetic looking, if I may say so,” I commented, then tossed the piece of flesh over my shoulder.

I looked at Walter and he was crying and snarling at me.

Yeah, he wasn’t quite ready to talk just yet, but he would be soon enough.

Right now, he was still in that indignant stage.

“Fuck you!” he spat at me. His chin was covered in saliva and he looked like shit. That made me happy.

“Ready to talk? No? Okay,” I said, then leaned over, grabbing his other nipple. Again, he screamed and thrashed about, but I continued slicing through his flesh as more blood poured from his wounds. With one more slice, his nipple came clean off in my fingers and I held it up for him to see.

He had snot pouring from his nose now as more tears poured from his eyes. Yeah, he was being tenderized. “P-please… no more… please,” he begged.

“Who runs the site?” I asked.

“I… I swear… I don’t know,” he stammered.

Ahhh, now we were making progress. “You’ve already lied to me multiple times tonight, Mr. Jingles. How am I supposed to trust what you’re saying now?”

“I swear, I’ll tell you everything I know. Please, just stop,” he pleaded.

Sorry son of a bitch couldn’t even take a fraction of what he’d put that child through. If I wasn’t concerned about leaving my DNA on him, I’d piss on his ass right now, that was for sure.

“Start talking,” I ordered, holding my knife up with his blood on the blade for him to see.

“I swear, I’m telling you the truth,” he huffed. “I… I don’t know who runs the site.”

“How did you become a member?”

“Through a friend of mine.”

“Who?”

“Jesus, you can’t expect me to tell you that!” He looked at me as if I’d asked him the dumbest question in the world.

“I do expect you to keep your word. You said you’d tell me everything you knew. So far, you haven’t told me shit.” I decided to improvise a little and stabbed him hard in his thigh, making sure my knife went straight through his bone.

“Ahhhhhh!!! Fuck!! Jesus Christ!” he yelled and slobbered as he struggled in the chair once again.

I left my knife in the wound and walked over to my collection and picked up another with a jagged blade. “Who’s your friend? If I were you, I’d be worrying less about him and more about what I’m going to do to you if you don’t start giving me shit I can use.”

“You’re… you’re fucking crazy!” he whined.

“Yeah, I am. So, who’s your friend?”

“Tate… Richard Tate,” he panted, then moaned in agony.

I looked at his wounds and the blood was flowing pretty freely.

Not so much where I’d stabbed him because the blade was still inside the wound.

Yeah, he could last for what I had planned.

As for the information he’d given me, I didn’t know who the fuck Richard Tate was other than another dick.

However, I was sure Jordan could find out everything I’d need to take him out, too.

“Okay, keep talking, stop teasing me with the goodies. I want it all,” I snarled.

“I’ve only been a member six months. We all pay an annual fee of five million dollars and we get the privilege to outbid each other for a chance to fulfill our darkest desires.”

I sneered. “Killing a kid… that was your darkest desire? What in the hell is wrong with having a normal fucking kink like letting someone piss on you? Or dressing up like a grown ass baby?”

“That’s what I know,” he said.

“How often do you log on? How often do they do the Killing Game?”