“Which way do you want me to go?” the driver questioned, his body shaking as a mix of fear and regret flashed in his wide eyes.
“Turn left on East 8th and drive until I tell you to turn left, right, or stop.”
Unshed tears flashed in the eyes of the passenger, aware that if they were with me in any capacity, they were going to die.
“Can we work something out? You don’t need to do this,” the passenger pleaded.
He may as well have been bargaining with the devil for his soul. Any mercy I should have had, never surfaced. It never did.
“Who the fuck are you? Why were you spying on the women? Who do you work for?” The questions were delivered to them in a quiet tone, the kind of tone that traveled a hair above a whisper and landed on death’s eardrums.
“FBI. We’re undercover,” the driver lied as smoothly as his shaky voice would allow. In the quickest motion I could muster, I yanked the knife away from the neck of the passenger and sent one quick stab into the neck of the driver.
By the time the driver grasped that he’d been stabbed, I had the knife back at the neck of the passenger, blood from the driver’s open neck dripping onto him now. The driver gasped and hissed as blood trickled past the trembling fingers he clasped over the knife wound.
“Lie again and I’ll open a fucking artery.” My stiff gaze was a promise and appeared to fuel his already amped-up nerves. The gun kissed the back of his head to remind him that I had another option for killing him.
“Who the fuck do you work for? Why the fuck were you spying on the women? I’m not going to keep repeating myself.”
“You’re going to kill us even if we tell you,” the passenger was brave enough to say.
“That’s right.” There was no reason to lie to them. I didn’t play with my food. Fresh death fed a wicked energy into me that I often craved.
“You don’t need to do this. We can work something out,” the driver stated, his voice cracking with desperation as he drove with one shaky hand and gripped his bleeding neck with the other.
“All I’m interested in is who the fuck you work for and why you were spying on those women. The only deal that I can make you is how quickly I’m going to kill you.”
“Please. You don’t...”
I shook my head at the man, cutting off his statement. As many times as I had done this same song and dance, I hadn’t yet figured out why people who were afraid to die got involved in this type of business. I yanked the knife away from the neck of the passenger and slid back in the seat.
I breathed, allowing my eyes to fall closed as I embraced the calm before my storm. The patience I had honed in on was being eaten away by anger, but I’d taught myself to never let anger prevail over me, but to use it as my weapon. Slowly, my lids lifted to the men eyeing me in the mirror with bated breath.
Back and forth, my gaze bounced between them before I plunged the knife with maximum force into the passenger, an upward thrust at his nape. Two additional quick and deadly jabs followed, causing the driver to glance at him and seemingly forget he was driving.
He had chanced a glance at the passenger, but a tap of my gun to the side of his head set his eyes back on the road. The sight of his dying friend had made him forget about his gushing neck wound. Maybe now, he’d be more inclined to talk.
The passenger choked out a series of loud gasps as a mixture of shock and unrelenting horror was playing out on his face. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth, which gaped open as he started to slump. He reached for his neck, attempting to touch, but failing to reach where he’d been stabbed.
He choked on his gasps, struggling to take in oxygen. The suffocating sound filled the interior of the car as the reality of his impending doom was nailed home.
“Make the next left,” I instructed. Fear-frozen, I don’t believe the driver had blinked since I’d tapped the side of his head with my gun.
“Next left,” I reminded because sooner or later, desperation would lead him to fight for his life by any means necessary. The car swerved across the lines, but he managed to focus enough the keep us on the highway.
He slowed the car with a screech, his shaky legs not working the peddle properly. He turned us with a severe swerve down the back road, the sharp movement caused me to lurch sideways. The car bucked, not built for the rough, hard-packed and rutted road. I had only taken them about ten miles outside the city, far enough to find a good hiding place.
The area wasn’t wooded, but the road wasn’t well-traveled and surrounded by mountain ridges on three sides. The most important part of our location was that there wasn’t a way for our actions to be recorded. It was a dead zone.
The passenger had been embraced by the fiery hands of death, and his body was being tossed about the front seat. His head had smacked the dashboard a couple of times, causing him to bounce wildly in the seat. His limp body gave up the fight with gravity and slid between the seat and the dashboard and stuck there.
“You can stop,” I instructed the driver. The car came to a screeching halt, rocking me into the back seat as dirt and rocks scratched under the tires.
“Are you going to tell me who you work for, or am I going to have to find out another way?”
“You don’t…” I shut him up with a loud resounding whack, not killing him but knocking him out. My patience had evaporated, and the animal that people called me had emerged, seeking a taste of blood that I had decided to postpone. I gave the interior of the car a once over before I peeked at my watch. It was time I got back to Desiree.
A regular phone was spotty due to the mountainous region I had directed the man into, so I retrieved my sat phone from my cargo pocket.