by Ethan Cross
“Make no mistake, my friend. I know exactly who you are, what you do, and who you work for. I need your access code, Mr. Little.”
“What? I don’t—”
“All you need to understand in this moment is that I have all the power, and you have none. The drug I have given you will last long enough for me to inflict all manner of pain upon your body. You will not even be able to move or resist, and the more you fight, the greater the odds of suffocation. You can save us both from such unpleasantness. Give me the code.”
“My code wouldn’t let you into any of the vaults or boxes. Even if you could …”
“Shhh. I don’t need you to tell me reasons why I can’t do something. I’ve learned one lesson over and over again throughout my life: the only thing stopping any of us from doing and having what we want is fear. And if you’re not afraid, then anything is possible. You see, Mr. Little, there is much in this world that still frightens me. There are monsters much worse than me out there. However, I am likely the most frightening man you’ve ever met. You possess what I require, and I fully intend to employ every method of torture necessary to extract all that I need from you. And trust me, I am well-versed in such things.”
Kruger laid a massive left hand on Fred’s chest, felt the shallow breathing, the increased pulse, the man’s lungs struggling for air.
“You win. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just please …”
Tears rolled down Fred’s cheeks. Kruger fought the urge to wipe them away. He felt pity on this man, this innocent man who had done nothing more than stand in his way. He had never before felt such emotions toward a target. What was happening to him? He felt anxiety and panic rise in his own chest, flashes of the squatter camp flashing into his mind. Pushing them away, he reminded himself that he was Kruger. The lion took no pity on the gazelle.
“I know, my friend,” Kruger said. “Just give me the code.”
Fred rattled off the twenty-digit security code.
Kruger wrote it down in a small notebook and said, “If the code you give me is incorrect, we have plans in place to kill your son. And we won’t be as gentle with him as I’ve been with you.”
Kruger didn’t say the words with malice or anger, but he tried to convey a ruthless, uncompromising determination. The big man stared at the code a moment and then looked back to Fred. “I will do horrible things to your son if this code is incorrect. I won’t enjoy it. I don’t want to. But I will.”
“The code is valid. It will work.”
“Good. Now, where’s the watch?”
“How the hell do you know about that?”
Kruger sighed. Fred needed a demonstration. They always did. He grasped Fred’s left hand and snapped the pinky at the joint. The paralyzed man screamed, and his breathing became a fast wheeze like a panting dog.
“Do I have to ask twice?” Kruger said.
“My dresser. Top right-hand drawer,” Fred replied between gasps.
He walked over, opened the drawer, and found a metal lockbox with a digital code. Fred rattled off the digits, and Kruger opened the box. The watch was inside. Leaving the bulky metal box in the drawer, he stuffed the watch into a pocket of his black tactical pants.
“You have the code and the watch. Please, I’ll disappear for a while,” Fred said. “I won’t tell anyone that I gave you anything.”
Kruger returned to the bedside and took a seat beside the condemned man. He gave the type of consoling nod usually reserved for the receiving line at a funeral.
“I’m afraid that you are not going to disappear, Fred. I wish that this was a perfect world where a person like you could be trusted to do as you promise. But those words are hollow, and unfortunately, I’m going to need something else from you as well. I need to cut off both of your thumbs and scoop out one of your eyeballs.”
“No, please, no. I—”
Kruger clamped his hand over Fred’s mouth and nose, depriving the poor man of the oxygen he so desperately needed. In his diminished state, Fred Little died quickly and relatively painlessly, although his eyes were wide and full of fear as he passed. Kruger had always heard that suffocation was one of the best ways to go, that you simply fell asleep.
But he had also been waterboarded once. The lack of oxygen and feeling of drowning had been quite painful and traumatic, in his experience. Shooting Fred in the head may have been quicker and less terrifying for the poor man, but he didn’t want to leave behind any ballistic evidence.
When he removed his hand and looked into the dead man’s eyes, he saw more flashes of men, women, and children bleeding from their mouths, eyes, noses, and ears. Their stares were cold but still mirrored their last seconds of pain and agony, just like the eyes of Fred Little.
He tried to tell himself that it had all been necessary, merely part of a mission. He didn’t choose who lived or died. He just carried out the orders of someone with a lot of money. If it wasn’t him collecting that money, it would have merely gone to someone else, and the targets would have been just as dead.
Kruger accepted that argument, understood the ways of the world, the food chain and his place on it. But Idris Madeira kept thinking of the missionaries who had once visited his village and their tales of a place of burning and weeping and eternal torment.
He checked his watch, cursed himself for losing another few minutes, and then removed his tools, laying them out on the dead man’s chest. Four tools in all—a speculum to hold open the eyelids, an evisceration spoon and an enucleation snare for removing the eyeball, and a pair of ratcheting pruning shears for cutting off the thumbs. After examining the tools and planning out the procedure, Kruger picked up the speculum and evisceration spoon and set to work.
Chapter 3
Dominic “Nic” Juliano swerved around a Sunday driver and then used the emergency brake to drift the black Maserati GranTurismo MC Stradale around the corner onto Lead Street. He slowed as he bumped up through the entrance marked with a red sign stating Do Not Enter posted above a white sign that read Reserved Parking—Police Vehicles Only.
He rolled into a spot and looked over at his passenger. She was ignoring him, which was pretty much the standard for LJ these days.
The building in front of them possessed a vaguely Persian flair. Maybe it was the sandstone and the palm trees, but it had always reminded Nic of the Sultan’s Palace from that cartoon, Aladdin.
He shut off the Italian sports car’s engine, and the purring beauty fell silent. He gave the dashboard a pat and a rub and said, “Sleep well, baby.”
LJ rolled her eyes and, in a rapid burst of sign language, used her hands to say, “So, Uncle Nicky, does it make you feel cool to drive my dad’s car around like you just stole it?”
He signed back, “Don’t call me Nicky, and considering that I probably don’t make enough on my SWAT team pay to cover the monthly interest on a car like this … the answer is hell yes. It does make me feel cool. And it’s the only perk I received for taking you in, princess.”
Nic had already stepped from the car before he realized the implications of the words he had just signed to his niece. He growled. He was twenty-eight years old, single, and the only life he had known since he was eighteen was defusing IEDs in the army and kicking in doors as a cop. He didn’t have any business raising a thirteen-year-old girl, especially one who was hearing-impaired.
He dropped his six-feet-four-inch frame back into the cab of the sports car. LJ wouldn’t look at him. Her jaw was set, and her cheeks were wet.
He knew she could see him in her periphery. He started to sign that he was sorry, but she cut him off. She didn’t look at him as she signed out, “I can’t even deal right now. If you don’t want me around, then maybe I should go live with Grandma and Grandpa. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“We’re family. I didn’t mean that how it sounded. I love you, and you’re not a burden, and your dad was very specific in the will. He didn’t want you growing up in that house.”
“Yeah, be
cause I’m much better off living in your crappy little apartment than in a mansion.”
“I told you I’m looking for a new place. And trust me, kid, it’s much more important who you live with than where you live. You know about our family history. That’s not the life your dad wanted for you.”
“Doesn’t seem so bad to me.”
Nic gritted his teeth. “That mansion you mentioned was actually built by my Grandpa Angelo. They called him ‘The Grand Executioner’. I didn’t really understand what that meant when I was a kid. You know, baseball players had nicknames like that, no big deal. When Grandpa Angelo died, we inherited the place. It was cool at first, much better than our place in the city, lots of room to play ball and get into trouble. There was even this big room in the basement that we used as a skating rink. Used to invite girls over and go skating.”
“Oh, yeah. Sounds rough.”
“The room was nothing but concrete with a drain in the middle of the floor. No pictures or furniture. Just the drain and a few weird-looking pulleys hanging from the ceiling. One day, Junior and I were playing hockey in there, and Ma catches us. She freaks out.”
“You weren’t supposed to be in there?”
“Pop didn’t care. He knew we played in there, so when Ma flipped, we didn’t know what to think. She forbid us from ever going into that room again. It wasn’t until a few years later that I learned that Grandpa Angelo called our skating rink ‘The Slaughter Room’. And there were lots of times when Pop used that room and had the door locked. But then the next day, he’d unlock it and tell us to have fun. I never wondered why the floor was usually wet and the room smelled like bleach after Pop was done with it.”
LJ didn’t speak. She merely looked at the floorboard and seemed to consider the implications. After a moment, she signed, “Did you ever go into the Slaughter Room again?”
Nic felt a chill despite the blistering heat beating down on the car. “Point is, kid, growing up in our family, in that house, with Tommy Jewels as a dad, well, that stains you. Makes you feel dirty on the inside, and I’m still trying to wash myself clean. Your dad knew that and didn’t want that for you. It’s that life and your Grandpa Tommy that got your mom and dad killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t. But trust me, Grandpa Tommy is the kind of guy who death follows around. He has a knack for turning people into something they hate or getting them killed. I think he did both to your dad. And Junior was too scared of Pop to get out like I did.”
“You made your point. Still doesn’t make you surrogate father of the year, Uncle Nicky,” she said and stormed from the car.
One thing about raising a hearing-impaired teenager was that, when they ignored you, there was no amount of yelling you could do to get through to them. But from what he had been told by the other guys on the job, most teenagers were like that anyway.
Nic grabbed his gear and a big white box out of the trunk and followed her inside the secure entryway of the City of Henderson Emergency Services Facility. From here, they had to be buzzed inside and clear security. He knew the woman on guard duty well.
“Come on, darling,” he said. “We’re freezing out here.”
Over the intercom, Betty—a sixty-eight-year-old African-American grandmother—said, “Freezing. Ha. This is Nevada. What is it out there, 117 degrees? And you can save that darling crap.”
“You’d miss it if I stopped. Now, are you going to let us in?”
“I see the way you look at me,” Betty said. “It’s sinful.”
Nic laughed, and then looking straight at the security camera, he said, “Would you open up already. Some of us have to work today.”
“You men are all the same,” she said, and the door buzzed open.
As they came through security, to where Betty stood guard behind a reception desk, Nic was about to ask a favor from the grandmother when the most gorgeous blonde woman Nic had ever seen walked around the corner.
Most single twenty-eight-year-old men who drove Maseratis would have probably loved to have been greeted by someone like Bristol Whelan. The reason such a radiant beauty didn’t set Nic’s heart on fire was that he had already dated her, bought a ring for her, and messily broken up with her.
Bristol stopped short, tensed up, and seemed to be telling herself that she was a beautiful, confident professional, or something of that nature. Nic had been the one always whispering those kinds of encouragements in her ear, before the breakup. Despite her good looks, she was very insecure about herself. And very jealous. Of everyone. She was probably jealous of Betty. Still, that wasn’t why they had separated. The jealousy he could have forgiven. Everyone had faults. But the one thing that had clinched it for Nic was the constant tension between Bristol and LJ.
The two most important ladies in his life were constantly at odds, and the three of them had never felt like a family together. And LJ was a part of him now. He had to not only think of what was best for himself, but also what was best for her. The woman he married would not only be his wife, but also LJ’s mom, and he knew that Bristol would never be able to fill those shoes.
Bristol seemed to finish her personal pep talk. Then, she walked over, gave Nic a curt nod, leaned down into LJ’s face, and said, “Hello, Elisabetta.”
LJ’s face scrunched up, as if she had just opened a dirty diaper. Nic looked back and forth between the two of them. If it had been a Disney animated feature, they would have been perfect for the roles of villain and heroic princess. LJ had the same thick coal black hair that Nic and his brother had inherited from their father. LJ was also built just like him, tall and muscular. Bristol was petite with golden blonde hair cut short and swept over to one side. LJ wore a T-shirt with a funny but inappropriate saying on it, which was her usual, while Bristol wore a gray pantsuit to fit her role as Assistant City Manager.
LJ turned to him, the disgust still on her face. She signed, “This is the one you buy a ring for? She didn’t even learn a single sign. Not even hello. You should have kicked that b—”
He signed back, “Elisabetta Juliano, watch your hands.”
LJ rolled her eyes and replied, “Let’s see if she understands this sign.” Then LJ flipped Bristol a middle finger and swaggered her way over to Betty.
“She’s as pleasant as ever,” Bristol said.
“Yeah, she drinks shark tears for breakfast. I wouldn’t stand too close.”
“What’s in the box?” she said, pointing to the large white box he carried.
“It’s a surprise.”
“You’re always full of surprises.”
“Thanks,” he said before he realized she had probably meant that to be an insult. “Remember the time that I rented out the Eiffel Tower over at the Paris casino for your birthday?” he added.
She smiled weakly. “Yeah, I still don’t know how you pulled that off. With the table and candlelight and dinner on the observation deck.”
“Best view in the city,” he said. “That was a pretty good surprise.”
Her smile fell, and tears welled up in her eyes. “Remember the time that you broke up with me and told me that you had been cheating. That was quite a surprise too.”
“Bristol, listen—”
“Save it. That night when you told me that we needed to talk, I thought you were going to propose. Instead, you tore my heart out.”
“I never meant to hurt you. That was last thing I would ever want to do.”
“You have a funny way of showing it. I should have known that any guy who drives a Maserati and lives in a crackerjack box for an apartment wasn’t husband material.”
“What does the car and my apartment have to do with anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “You are so selfish. You could sell that car and buy a house with the money, but then I guess you wouldn’t be able to pick up chicks with your cool ride.”
He was dumbfounded for a moment. The thought of selling the car had never even occurred to him. It had been
his brother’s pride and joy. Selling it would feel like a betrayal. But maybe she was right. Maybe having a nice home for LJ would be a better way to honor Junior’s memory.
“I’ve actually been looking into selling it,” he lied.
“Whatever, Nic. It doesn’t matter. Not my problem anymore.”
With that, she pushed past him and didn’t look back as she exited the building.
He joined LJ and Betty at the security desk. “What am I doing wrong, Betty?”
“Most everything, but I’m not one to judge. Then again, I don’t think Ms. Whelan is tough enough for you anyway.”
“What does that mean?”
“You need a woman who can kick your ass. Now, what’s in that big white box? If that’s donuts and you force me to screw up my diet …”
“It’s not donuts. It’s full of nunya.”
Betty gave him a dirty look. “Don’t you pull no ‘nunya’ business shit with me, boy. Don’t get sassy with me. I invented attitude. It was me and Whoopi Goldberg. We pioneered the sass.”
“I don’t know who that is. Whoopi? Wait … was she on Hollywood Squares?”
“I can’t even look at you right now.”
He laughed and was about to fire back when their rookie team member, Hank Stromberg, stuck his head around the corner and said, “Sir, we have a hostage situation. The officers on scene are requesting immediate assistance, and Sgt. Ortiz isn’t—”
“I’m right behind you.”
Then Nic gave Betty his best sad puppy face. He didn’t have to say a word. She rolled her eyes and said, “I’ll get her to school. You just be careful out there, kid.”
Chapter 4
Standing beside the white panel van, Kruger watched the family of five as they exited the private vault company’s front door. The youngest boy on the end kept staring at him, despite his mother’s tugging. The big South African didn’t blame the boy for gawking. After all, Kruger was a seven-foot man dressed in a long coat and a stocking cap amid the sweltering heat of a Las Vegas summer.
