All I could picture was how serene she looked in her sleep. All throughout the conversation with Carter and all throughout the drive to the club.
If she knew her sister was still alive, she wouldn’t sleep like that. If she finds out I knew and I didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t cling to me like she had last night.
I only have one lead that could change the course of where this is all going. One chance, one moment, to hold on to Bethany like I want to. One lead, who’s waiting for me just beyond the glowing red lights of the sign ahead of me.
The Red Room isn’t just a cover. It’s not just for laundering and meetups. Just like the storage shed behind it isn’t exactly what it looks like. It’s inconspicuous, large and organized with wide open spaces. Everything clearly seen on first glance when you walk into the storage shed which measures forty feet on each side. I demand it be kept clean and tidy. So anyone looking for any hint of it being anything other than a place to keep the extra bottles of liquor and tables would know at first glance there’s nothing else here.
Unless they opened the safe and found the secret door in the back of it. It leads to a winding iron staircase, down to a long hall in the basement with a vault door to a room.
The skinny hallway that leads to the room reminds me of the old warehouse I’d sneak off to when I was a boy. Back when I needed to be alone and get away. It was quiet, and offered the comfort of both safety and a place to simply be alone.
The room in that basement exists for one purpose. And one purpose only.
The men who find themselves here aren’t feeling the security I did when I was younger and hiding in the warehouse.
No, the men who end up in this room are here to die, although they would say and do anything to believe that they’ll get out of here still breathing.
The vault door opens with a slow, plaintive cry. It’s heavy and made of thick steel. With Seth behind me, we enter the room comprised of four smooth concrete walls. It’s soundproof and the floors are made of steel grids with a drain in the center of the room.
There’s no furniture in the room, save an old iron chair bolted to the floor over the drain. I bring everything I need with me each time.
This time I’ve brought a pair of hedge clippers, the kind most people use for their gardens. They’re in my back pocket, as is my pocket knife.
The muffled screams that come from behind the balled cloth in Luke Stevens’s mouth fill the room as the two of us walk in.
His skin’s paler and almost gray in this light than it was in the video we had of him and another man talking about where Marcus wanted Jenny Parks delivered. That’s the word that came out of his mouth. Delivered. As if she were only an object to be shipped off.
The steel cuffs leave bright red marks around his wrists and ankles, along with a trail of dried blood as he wrestles with his restraints, still screaming. Like it would do him any good to fight.
My nostrils flare with the stench of piss in the damp underground as I get a few feet from him and then look to my right to ask Seth, “How long?”
“Twelve hours now.”
He stands closer to the prisoner than I do. We have a system that works. When something works, you don’t fuck it up. He knows that and he stands where he always does, just behind the subject of our interrogation, where he can’t be seen.
Crouching in front of Luke, a man who may know where Jenny is, I look into his dark eyes, taking in how dilated they are. Wondering what the hell he’s on.
“You think twelve hours is enough?” I ask Seth and he shrugs. Luke struggles to look behind him, and his ass comes off the chair just slightly, but the chain wrapped around his waist keeps him down.
Standing up straighter, I pull the clippers from my back pocket and unlock them to look at the blade. “They’re dull,” I comment as if I didn’t notice before.
“They’ll still work,” Seth says and this time he places a hand on either side of the back of the chair, close enough to Luke so our victim notices, but still not touching him.
I can imagine how Luke’s heart races, how the adrenaline takes over. The fight or flight response failing him and every instinct in his body screaming for him to beg. Just like he’s screaming now, behind the old shirt shoved in his mouth. Seth’s silent and that’s how he’ll stay until I ask him if there’s any reason not to kill the man in the chair.