“Isn’t this why you dressed to look like Alex’s little wife tonight? Weren’t you dying…” She paused to look at Tara, her face contorted with sick, sadistic amusement. “…to see where I do my best work? Isn’t that why you deceived me into thinking I finally had the woman I wanted?”
“You wanted Kelsey? Is that why you targeted Mr. McCormack, to get at Kelsey? Why? What’d she ever do to you?”
“I don’t really want her. She’s just a means to a perfect end. And Jed…” Montego blew out a bored sigh. “…has outlived his usefulness. I’ll take care of him when I return to that mausoleum he calls a home tonight.”
“You want Alex then? This is about him? What’d he do?”
Like Tony, she’d found herself lashed to a wooden board when she’d come to in this… this dungeon that stunk of blood and death and fear. Only her board came with hinged sections like arms that now had her spread-eagled, her wrists and ankles restrained in metal cuffs that allowed no room to move. Still wearing her bra and pants, she fought against the wood, searching for the one weak spot that would get her out of there. She hadn’t found it yet.
The room where Montego did her ‘best work’ was large, rectangular, and concrete with cold bare walls, dusty ductwork high overhead, and a concrete floor that sloped toward a large, rusted floor drain. Green rubber hoses dangled from ceiling hooks. Heavy-duty shop brooms stood against the wall far to Tara’s left. Huge steaming vats waited beside her now, boiling oil at her left, boiling water at her right. Three portable spotlights on tripods aimed their bright beams, one at the chipper, the others at the wooden cross that held Tara and a metal table with chains, and… Oh, my God, stirrups!
Montego’s shoulders lifted. “Of course, I want Alex Stewart. He thinks he’s better than me, above the law. That he can come into my country, into my home and hurt me. His mistake was thinking he could get away with that, that I wouldn’t hurt him back. I intend to show him how wrong he is.” She said that as if there were no reason to lie or hold anything back, as if she feared no reprisal.
Which meant she intended to kill Tara. “But he’s a good man. He loves his country.”
“But does he love you enough to sacrifice himself to save you?” Montego asked, one brow spiked.
“Why should he? He barely knows me. He’s married. He loves his wife, not me.”
Montego made a dark, sinister sound. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve watched him these last few months, and I’ve seen how he suffers the loss of every serviceman. He doesn’t even have to know them, he still takes responsibility for each death or injury, for every coffin. In a way, I’ve come to respect him, maybe even love him.”
She stretched the bungee cord then let it go with a mean snap. “Which is why I want his bitch, that Kelsey. Trust me. I’ve loved a few men in my life, but him more than any others. It’s only fitting I give him the best gift a woman can give a man… A piece of his wife over there…” She fluttered her fingers at the wall to her left. Then to the right… “A piece over there... And the great Alex Stewart wouldn’t be able to do a thing to save her. Not a thing. Just watch. And scream. And know for certain the woman he truly loves is—me. Not that insipid creature he calls wife.”
Montego loved Alex? God. This woman was insane. “Wait. You’ve been killing and torturing men all these months because you love Alex Stewart?”
She tipped her head back and laughed. “You’ll never understand the complexity of hate and love, how close they are, or how the slippery feel of their blood is…” Montego’s chest heaved as she filled her lungs, then let loose a growling, breathy, “…orgasmic.”
A full body shiver shuddered over Tara. “You’re right. I’ll never understand.”
“But you will…” Montego said in a sing-songy voice as she lifted her face to the thing suspended from the ceiling that Tara hadn’t noticed until now. A movie camera, the red light under its lens blinking. Oh, shit.
Gone went the last of her courage, every foolish, wishful, pretentious bit of it. Montego was filming this—her. She meant for Alex to see everything that Montego would do to her. Every cut. Every scream. Every base defilement.
For that one split second, Tara hated Kelsey. It didn’t make sense, because with all her heart she truly loved the woman who’d saved her life. They were survivors born of similar tragedies. They were soul sisters who’d lived and endured. And despite her temporary panic, Tara wouldn’t change her mind. She wouldn’t trade places with Kelsey even if she could. She took back her fleeting feeling of hate. She wouldn’t wish this nightmare on her worst enemy. But love did hurt. Every damned time. And it was really going to hurt tonight.
At least Tony was still unconscious, but—
“No!” Tara cried again. She could see his face now. He was dark-haired, olive-skinned, and so, so young. He didn’t look like a soldier. He had a beautiful babyface. He was Giuseppe and Lenna D’Angelo’s little boy. But Montego had turned the augers on. She really was going to feed him into that chipper like a piece of meat.
“Please, I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt him. Can’t you see you’ve already done enough?”
Montego’s head jerked up. “Anything?” She snapped her fingers at the tall, angular man helping her.
He shuffled to her side, his head down like a whipped puppy. Oh, God, he was another victim. His ear was missing.
Tara’s heart sank. “Hey you. W-what’s your name,” she asked, directing every beat of her heart at yet another poor tortured man who just might be her only hope. Tony’s last hope. She needed to make contact with this guy’s soul if he still had one.
Which made Montego smile, if that’s what you wanted to call what her twisted lips and her soulless eyes did. “Please stop bothering him,” she said, her voice gone soft and ultra-feminine. “He can’t help you; he wouldn’t even if he could. I own him, you silly thing.”
“You can’t own another human being,” Tara told the nameless male, wishing she could get him to look at her. Maybe seeing a defenseless woman would jog something lose in his demented, zombie head. Maybe there was a shred of humanity in him.
“Yes, you can,” Montego insisted. “It’s easy. Want to watch how it’s done?”
“No. I don’t.” Tara leaned back into her wooden crucifix, for that’s what this wooden framework was. Her body was no longer hers, not restrained like it was on a contraption that Montego could easily raise or lower, lifting Tara’s feet over her head or spreading her arms and legs wider if she wanted.
Montego stretched one hand out to her henchman and—
He slapped wickedly sharp cutting-shears into her open palm, then grabbed hold of Tara’s left foot.
No! Just no! “Please don’t do this,” she begged him.
He still refused to look at her, the coward.
“But I have to do this. You don’t believe me,” Montego purred. She was not a good-looking woman up close. There was an evil spirit to her, an inky black shadow deep inside her. In her eyes and in her countenance. It was part of her. Like poison. Like death.
“I can see it on your face. You’re scared, but you still don’t think I can own a man’s soul. But I do, and I can own yours, too. I’ll show you how it’s done.” The jaws of the shears opened and closed with a click like alligator jaws. “It’s simply a matter of what you’re willing to give up to let your boyfriend live.”
Tara swallowed hard, her mind spinning at the brutality of what was about to happen.
By then the henchman had released her foot and walked back to the woodchipper. He looked at Tara, then placed one hand deliberately on one of the machine’s many handles, the other on Tony’s securely bound legs. He’d go into that hopper feet first. If he came to then… If he woke up shrieking and screaming and... He could watch his body being churned to death.
“Anything,” Tara cried, knowing how much this would hurt, but steeling herself to keep Montego from harming Mama D’Angelo’
s baby boy again. He could still survive. He should!
Yet she prayed with all her heart, ‘God, oh, God, please don’t let this happen. Not to Tony. Not to me! Save us, Renner.’ Why his name burst into her mind at the end of her prayer, she didn’t know, but yes. ‘Send Renner,’ she pleaded with her Heavenly Father. ‘Please. Send Renner! He’ll save us all.’
The sleek, smooth blade of the shear’s pincers came down around her littlest toe, pinching it, cutting a half circle of skin. Just the skin. Tara still had her toe and most of the flesh around it. But she shook at the degradation of the cruel act Montego had done, the humiliation of once more not being in control of her life, her freedom, or her body. Shadows of Jorge swelled around her. His evil spirit was here.
She swallowed hard. Afraid to breathe again. Afraid to think. Afraid to take her eyes off the gleaming scissors now lifted above her foot to her big toe.
Montego widened its shiny pincers. “You have to be more specific,” she said, her voice low and sultry as if this despicable act of depravity was turning her on. “‘Anything’ is ‘nothing’ if you don’t understand the cost of losing it. What’s that stupid American saying, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’? So, choose wisely. Know what gifts you’ve got now. Decide what you value most, and what you can live without. Only after you’ve freely given, will I let your boyfriend live.”
By then Tara’s lips were bone-dry, and it was hard to talk. Her head all but bounced from fright against what would soon be her wooden deathbed. But she had to try. “For how l-l-long? Will you let him leave? Will you let everyone leave if I s-stay with you?”
Montego shook her head, her black eyes piercing. “No one leaves me.”
“Then what… God! What do you want?” Tara cried, her voice nothing more than a wisp of despair. She knew it now. No one could save her. No one was coming. Renner didn’t know where she was. How could he? She’d done this to herself, and even if she screamed her hardest, no one could hear her through these concrete walls. Roger was right. They were all going to die in this prison. Only Tony would not die tonight. Somehow, she would make sure of that.
“My, my, my, you still don’t understand, do you?” Montego asked as she stepped alongside Tara’s arm, jerked a lever and stretched her arm wide. “It’s not what I want, it’s what you want to give me. What you are willing to sacrifice of your own free will to save your boyfriend? A finger?” she asked as she traced her fingernail up the inside of Tara’s arm. “A hand? An arm?”
“A t-toe?” Tara asked timidly, ashamed she had whined like Roger. That it was her ego that had brought her here, that had reduced her to bartering her body away. She could almost see Jorge grinning behind Montego’s shoulder, laughing at this ungodly comeuppance.
Montego’s visage changed as if by magic. A glitter replaced the flat black stare. Her lips twisted into a sick, joyful smile. “See how easy it is?” she breathed into Tara’s face, those awful eyes now fastened on Tara’s lips.
Bile crept up her throat at the thought of Montego kissing her. Another wicked debasement, somehow worse than having her toe severed. Tara would never be able to lick her lips again and think of Renner’s first kiss. His taste. His soft touch. His genuine concern for her. Was it love? God, she hoped so. It would be nice to have been loved at least once in her life by an honest, decent man.
“Which toe?” Montego whispered, stroking Tara’s cheek like she would a sick child’s. But purring, the sadistic bitch. How had Jed McCormack ever tolerated sleeping with this woman? She reeked of too much perfume and sweat.
Turning her head away from her tormentor, Tara squeezed her eyes tight. There was no need to watch now. There was no escape. The ‘gift’ had to be given. She had to commit. Only then would Tony live to see another day. “Little toe,” she whispered, her heart pumping up high in her throat. “J-j-just my little toe.”
“Not good enough,” Montego sing-songed again. “You have to say it like you mean it. Beg.”
“P-Please… Just my little toe, please…”
“See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”
The auger churned to life. “Wait!” Tara growled. “You said you’d let him live.”
Montego’s eyes narrowed. “And you, you stupid little pig, believed me. Now watch!”
Oh, God, no! Tara couldn’t watch. Not poor Tony and not the cold blade nestled into the still bleeding cut around her toe. She felt the first sharp pain that would only get worse. A tear of regret trickled down the side of her head and—
“Get your son of a bitchin’ hands off that woman!” some guy roared.
Montego jolted upright and—pffft, the seductress was gone. In her place, the dominatrix bitch hissed, “How dare you bring your little group of merry men back here?” She strutted toward the man who’d spoken, the shears—thankfully—in her hand, waving them forward. “Come in, boys. Join the party if you’ve got the balls. Oh wait. I’ve got them, don’t I?”
“Shut the fuck up,” the stranger bellowed.
Tara’s belly expanded with a full breath. “Thank you, God,” she whispered.
But who was the scarred, one-eyed man aiming a gun at Montego? And who were all those scary looking guys behind him? Renner! Mixed in with all those guys. It was Renner!
Chapter Thirty-Five
Christ on a cracker, what a gruesome sight. Renner cleared the doorway behind Tom, the men whose names he still didn’t know, on his six.
Tara lay across the room to his left, stretched over an X-shaped frame. A crucifix, damnit. Some unconscious guy was tied to a board on the other side of the room, that board in the hands of a skeletal man the size of Lurch off “The Munsters,” or some other eighties, black-and-white sitcom rerun. Looked like Lurch meant to send that kid feet first into the industrial-sized, two-wheeled woodchipper, a monster of a diesel. Had to cost tens of thousands, the thing was heavy machinery, as big as a tractor. A heavy chain kept its tow bar anchored to the floor, but God damn. This had to stop.
“You drop him, I drop you!” Renner yelled, walking straight at the idiot who had to be another of Montego’s twisted sidekicks.
The guy’s eyes popped, his gaze on Renner’s pistol. Yeah, he damned well knew Renner could and would kill him. Scarred, his fingers and face hideously deformed—make that mutilated—he stood nearly seven feet tall. Renner pegged him to be Air Force. Maybe a Coastie. He didn’t have a thick enough neck to be a jarhead.
Lurch settled the board to the floor, then dragged it away from the chipper. Like a good boy, he slapped the handle that shut the machine down. The auger stopped spinning.
“No!” some bitch screamed. And there she was, Catalina Montego, back at Tara’s side with pruning shears in her black-gloved fingers. So that was why no one had ever found DNA. She’d dressed like some maniac surgeon from a horror movie when she murdered and tortured. All in black and on her way to Hell.
“Back off,” she commanded.
Really? Me? Back off? “Why should I?” Renner cocked his head. “I’m not the one who backs off, not tonight. Can’t you see I’ve come with the men you tortured? Can’t you see they’re ready to kill you?” He almost laughed. It felt good finally coming face to face with her, knowing she was done terrorizing American military. Knowing that with just one shot he could kill her.
Her nostrils flared even as she stared him down. “I think you have it all wrong, Mister…” She made a fluttering gesture with her fingers, willing him to answer.
“Agent Renner Graves, at your service,” he replied, his pistol now aimed at the middle of her chest, between those breasts she’d rubbed all over McCormack, over that sucking black hole where a heart should have been. No head shot today. Only full body. This woman was going down like the rabid dog she was.
“Agent Graves,” she purred. “Of course. Let me guess. Alex Stewart sent you. You’re another one of his.”
“Nope. He doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“But he will,” she said as she took an imperious step toward him. “Trust me, he will.”
“How the hell do you figure that?” Renner met her step with two of his own. This woman had her nerve.
Montego cast her gaze upward to a—
Shit. A camera. She was filming what she was doing to Tara.
“Renner!” Tara cried out. “Behind you!”
Renner whirled to find that Tom, the son of a bitchin’ liar, now had his weapon trained on him. “Sorry,” he croaked, shrugging like he was embarrassed.
“You’re with her? This was all a setup?” Renner cursed, his gaze taking in all seven of Tom’s men, their weapons now zeroed on him, too. WTF? Was this why Tom split the team? Why he’d sent Seth, Beckam, and Aaron off in the opposite direction? Were they in trouble, too? Had he sent them straight into another group of alleged escapees? Was this her plan all along, to lure more of Alex’s men into this shithole?
Tom held out his prosthetic hand. “Give me your piece, Agent Graves.”
“Why don’t you just try and take it,” Renner spat as he shifted the reticle at the end of his weapon’s barrel to Tom’s ugly face. No way he could miss this head shot. “You were working with her all along. You fuckin’ bastard!”
“Not really,” Montego said, her voice a chilling mix of triumph and threat. “But Tommy and I have worked together before. He owes me and he knows it.”
“You don’t owe her anything!” Tara called out from her cross. “None of you men owe her anything. You’re better than she is. You’re honorable. You’re righteous. For God’s sake, you’re Americans! You’re free!”
Something about Tara’s frantic rant registered deep in Tom’s eye. He blinked, then blinked again. His head canted, then shook as if he had something in his ear. But then his lips twitched.
Renner (In the Company of Snipers Book 19) Page 28
