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15

CONOR

The body bags on the ground started shuffling.

It’d have been amusing if it weren’t creepy as fuck.

“That antidote worked fast,” Troy muttered.

“Updated version,” D answered. “Good shit, right?”

Troy grunted. “I wish I’d had that in Mombasa.”

“That little issue with the US ambassador over there was you?” D inquired.

She sniffed.

D and I took that as an answer.

“I think I need to address the fact that you’re all my heroes,” I drawled.

“Heroines, dude. Get it right,” D corrected, kicking Foundry when, screaming, his hands scrabbled against the fastener from the inside out. “Shut the fuck up, you piece of diarrhea splatter.”

“Love the imagery,” Troy slotted in.

“I thought it was fitting,” D agreed with another kick when Foundry’s hysteria was shoved up another notch. “If you don’t shut up, we’ll just never let you out of the fucking bag, prick.”

His heaving breaths slowed down, but there was a whine behind them as if, in the next couple minutes, he’d be sobbing for his momma.

Smythe, by comparison to Foundry, was still, but he was talking to himself. Low mumbles that, I assumed, were supposed to calm him down.

I jerked in surprise when, from the shipping container, a scream echoed around the clearing.

Troy chuckled. “She’s still got it.”

D shot her a smug look. “I told you.” To me, she muttered, “You didn’t break her.”

I blinked. “She’s cracking his nuts?”

D cackled. “That’s a euphemism.”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” I mumbled, barely refraining from cupping myself because I knew if I did, these two would find that hilarious.

“You probably don’t,” Troy confirmed. “Lots of ways to torture people without spilling a drop of blood. Star used to?—”

As if Star wanted to make it known that she agreed with her, Reinier screeched out his agony at whatever she was doing to him, stopping Troy from finishing her sentence.

For once, I wasn't altogether desperate for an answer.

“On the positive side,” D mused, “it’s shut these two fuckers' traps. Guess they know it’s best to stay off the radar before they’re dished up for the entrée and dessert.”

The body bags were still now. Smythe wasn’t even mumbling anymore. Not that staying small and quiet, no matter D’s spiel, would save them from their fates.

They’d signed and sealed that deal years ago—it was being delivered to them today.

Justice was mighty fucking sweet sometimes.

Their eternal resting places had been dug out after Star had locked herself in with Reinier.

We’d gotten confirmation that this place was a dead drop because Troy had uncovered a small lean-to that housed a mechanical digger.

That meant we’d been able to adjust our plans for maximum hurt.

And thank God for machines because the soil was still frozen and it’d have been a real bastard to dig as deep as we had otherwise.

“The beauty of being in the middle of nowhere,” Troy mused as Reinier started sobbing, the howling noises echoing around the clearing, “is that the only creatures who can hear you scream are mostly hibernating, and you wouldn’t want to disturb their sleep. We are the lesser of two evils.”

Both women started chuckling at that, and it triggered a discussion on whether bobcats would eat through the vinyl of the body bags or if they were too discerning about getting plastic stuck between their fangs.

Troy had been relatively quiet up to now, but I found her to be an odd mixture of D and Star. D’s sense of humor was undeniably dark, and the more you knew her, the more it came out to party. At first, she’d been stilted around me, but that had broken down quickly because of how glued Star and I were to each other.

The same went with Troy—there was a certain level of comfort there that made D relax and her whacko idea of what was funny or not surfaced.

As for Troy, she was more serious than Star but found humor in these situations too. I didn’t think Star did. Not particularly, at any rate. If she did, it was founded in satisfaction.

Depending on who you asked, though, I’d guess that made it worse. Star’s pleasure was sadistic but after what she’d endured, who the fuck could blame her?

Another hoarse scream from the shipping container had me glancing its way and prompted the women to bump fists.

When Reinier started entwining a shriek with a sob on an endless loop, the noise echoing around the clearing because of his intermittent cries, there came the sound of beeping.

A few moments later, Star slipped out of the container, her cell to her ear.

As the door creaked open, both Troy and D moved to stand guard as they’d done earlier where all four of us had tackled the CIA director who’d been fighting for his life. This time, he didn’t rush out, but his sobs were even louder than before.

“Who is it?” I mouthed as she strode over to me.

“Kuznetsov.”

Nodding, I turned back to the still body bags. Behind them, two open graves had been dug, and I watched as D and Troy shuffled over to Foundry after replacing the padlock on the shipping container door, proceeded to pick him up between them, and, despite his wriggles, pushed him into the thin pit.

With his arms and legs bound, he was stuck upright in the narrow aperture. I moved over to their side, picked up a shovel, and started helping to pack Foundry in place.

With three of us working, as well as Star when she was done ‘talking’ to Kuznetsov, it didn’t take much work to bury him alive.

Next came Smythe.

He struggled more as, I assumed, he’d figured out what our plans for him were. It was no use—he was restrained and contained and his only destination was the afterlife.

Once we’d buried him too, and when both men were packed in deep to their shoulders, Star squatted in front of Foundry and tugged on the zipper.

Exposing his face to the elements, his terrified eyes darted around the clearing as he took us all in.

“Who are you?” he garbled out from behind his gag.

“Your worst nightmare,” Star replied, her tone as calm as anything. Hell, I’d heard her be less calm when talking to Kat about which Pokémon was her least favorite.

“I’ll pay anything,” he burst out as she shoved his gag aside. “Anything!”

“You could offer me a billion dollars,” she assured him, “and I’d still tell you to go suck your own dick.”

“His dick or his stump?” I questioned dryly.

Star winked at me but, to Foundry, as she replaced his gag, tugging on his hair to hold him in place, she drawled, “You’re going to die, David. But it’s going to be deliciously slow and it’ll hurt.” She shot D a look, who tossed her one of those honey bottles shaped like a bear. “It’s cold out, David. Very cold. Lots of predators hunting for food.

“Aren’t they lucky that you’re just lying around…” She opened the bottle, grabbed his hair, used it to tip his head back, and squirted the oozing amber liquid over his face. “I hope they eat your eyes. All the soft shit first.” He screamed, face whipping from side to side as she worked, but it wouldn’t dislodge her and just made the syrup slip and slide over his features. “You’re going to feel yourself being eaten alive,” she promised. “And I can tell you now, it’s nothing to what you’ve done to the millions of women who you’ve pimped out, that you’ve enslaved, that you’ve turned into fucking animals.

"You, you soft, white asswipe, who sat in your ivory tower and made money off of women’s misery, women like me…” Her smile was as vicious as could be. “So, no, you could offer me the earth, and it wouldn’t be enough.”

She kicked her boot into his face, not stopping until he was yowling and blood spurted from his nose.

“I hope it hurts. Just like I hurt as I was raped, over and fucking over. No one cared if I said no. No one gave a shit if I was bleeding or if I was hurting. I was a piece of meat, but you’re the one who’s about to be something’s dinner.”

When Foundry was a mess, she moved over to Smythe and anointed him with another bottle of honey and a kick to the face.

Just as she had with Foundry, she shared her own truths with him, truths that made me glad this would be their deaths.

Truths that hurt my fucking soul, knowing that she’d endured what she had. But there was pride in the mix too—she had survived, and together, fuck, together , we’d live. We’d bring these assholes down, but that would only be the start of our story.

There’d be so much more to our future than destroying the lives of these pieces of shit.

Smythe, unlike Foundry who’d sobbed and snotted his way through Star’s ‘makeup’ process, garbled something as she made to move away.

Whatever it was clearly held her interest because she froze in place and pulled out his gag to let him speak.

“You wanted to talk so badly,” she rumbled, a warning in her tone that he’d be a fool to ignore. “Then talk.”

“I know who you are.”

“I’m sure you do,” she agreed. “I’m sure I’m on a lot of watch lists, and I’m doubly sure that ever since I escaped the prison you fuckers slammed me in, that you all learned my resume from front to back.

"I’m certain you’ll know my weaknesses and that you’re strategizing about how to bargain your way out of this situation.

“But that’s the joy of living, Smythe. People change.”

“Not this much,” he snapped, sounding remarkably cool and calm for a man in his position. “Fundamental parts of your core self don’t change. Like how you only got into this life because of your mother.”

A soft smile curved her lips, one that surprised me because it was so discordant with the situation.

I watched her.

Warily.

“Are you going to tell me who plotted her demise? Are you going to tell me some hard truths but only if I let you go?

“See, I know who killed her. Maybe I don’t know the why, but I can figure out a semblance of the truth, and even if you did know exactly what happened, how the fuck can I be sure that it isn’t a fairy tale that you’re trying to sell me?—”

“Nobody killed her,” Smythe rasped. “She didn’t die. She’s alive and well and I can take you to her.”