The King(53)

Eduardo woke up in a rush, torso jerking off the snow.

Assail took the man’s jaw in a hard grip. Wrenching the head around, he growled, “Say hello to your brother—let us be polite.”

Eyes popping wide, Eduardo immediately started speaking in Spanish, and Assail cured him of the impulse by taking out his dagger and pointing it in his face.

“Your brother has a place where he takes people to kill them. Where is it?”

“I do not know what you are—”

Assail straddled the man and grabbed the hair on the top of his head—as Eduardo used a great deal of product, it was a greasy mess, but he managed to get a passable hold. Putting the blade under the man’s chin, he made sure to speak nice and slow.

“Where does he take people. I know there is a place, private and secure. Not at his house. Not downtown.”

The elder Benloise brother finally spoke in a rush, the words to his brother guttural and punctuated with ragged breaths. In response, Eduardo’s eyes became even larger, and one didn’t need to know Spanish to catch the drift: You say anything and I will kill you myself.

Assail put his body between the two and got down eye-to-eye with Eduardo. “I’m going to hurt you now.”

Pick a place, anyplace.

Assail decided to start with the shoulders. With a quick stab, he thrust the blade deep into the flesh below the collarbone—painful, but not fatal by a long stretch.

As his ears rang from the screaming, he kept the dagger in place. And his grip on the hilt.

“Where is it?” When he didn’t get an immediate reply, he twisted the knife. “Where does he take them?”

More twisting. More screaming.

Which was when Ricardo spoke up again, his voice cutting through the drama to reinforce his message. Agony was going to win, however—Assail would make sure of that.

Backing off and giving dear boy Eddie a moment to rest and recover, he watched the hilt of the dagger move up and down in time to tortured respiration.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Eduardo was always the nattily dressed financial controller. But here he was, hair a mess, eyes bloodshot, snow smudged all over his naked skin.

Assail regarded him with all the compassion one would bring to still-thrashing roadkill. “Don’t listen to him. If you do, I will kill you slowly. The only way to save yourself is to tell me what I need to know.”

Ricardo barked something sharply.

“Do not listen to him.” Assail kept his eyes locked with Eduardo’s. “Talk to me. Save yourself.”

Eduardo kept trying to see his brother, but Assail shifted positions with that panicked stare until Eduardo moaned, his eyes getting hidden amidst his crinkled face.

Assail gave him some more time, until patience was lost. Reaching out for the dagger, he announced, “I’m going to hurt you again—”

“It’s north!” Eduardo yelled. “On the Northway! North! Southern side of Iroquois Mountain! Only road up to the property breaks off from the base! Go a half a mile and you’ll see the drive!”

Up against the SUV, Ricardo exploded, fury evident in every syllable even if the sentence particulars were lost for lack of translation.

Assail breathed in deep through his nose. There was no scent of subterfuge coming from Eduardo. Fresh blood, of course, and the acrid sting of terror. Also, a rather touching shame that reminded Assail of root vegetables fresh out of a cellar.

The man had spoken the truth as he knew it.

“Put Ricardo back in the car,” Assail said gruffly—

“Wait,” he called out as the cousins complied. “Turn him back around.”

Assail shifted so that he was behind Eduardo and propping the man’s floppy torso up. Staring across the distance between Ricardo and himself, he said darkly, “You take from me, I take from you.”

Jerking the dagger free of the shoulder meat, he streaked the blade directly across Eduardo’s throat.

Ricardo tried to look away, his torso twisting between the cousins.

“This is only the beginning, Ricardo.” Assail shoved the choking, bleeding man out of the way like the garbage he was. “We are just starting the now.”

He closed in on Benloise. “I did, however, believe it was important for you to have one last memory of your brother’s weakness. Just think, if he had been as strong as you, he could have died honorably. Alas, not his destiny.”

Assail got into the passenger seat in the front. Retrieved his vial of coke.

As he snorted two spoonfuls into each nostril, the cousins put Ricardo into the rear compartment, and the squeal of duct tape being ripped free attested to how secure his relations were making things.

Reaching up and clicking on an overhead light, Assail unfolded a New York state map marked with three red As on it—and had no idea where to look.