“Where he left Rodney Sauer,” I say. “Seems appropriate.”
Rivard doesn’t keep talking. Maybe he’s trying to figure out what buttons to press this time, and not finding any. I keep my gun pressed close and tell him to keep his hands up. He’s an old man. His arms tremble, and the shakes get worse the longer we drive. Good. I want him tired and afraid.
We park in a darkened alley between two warehouses. Everything on the block is derelict and empty. The only tenants are rats and pigeons.
While Mike takes a turn holding him at gunpoint, I open up the back, grab his phone, and strip the battery. I wouldn’t put it past a man this rich to have a fail-safe tracker in it, so I find a handy brick and batter the phone into bits, then drown the bits in a muddy puddle. The violence feels good.
I climb in, then kneel down so I’m on Rivard’s level. When he studies me, Rivard’s face changes. It tightens, and for moment I see a skull under the skin, and hell in those eyes. “You’ll go to jail for a long time for this,” he says. “And I’ll still be free. You know that.”
“I know that if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you’re going to die here,” I say. I mean every word. I’m already in this deep.
“You’d kill a helpless old man in a wheelchair. That’s sick.”
“You should know,” I tell him. “Billions of dirty dollars in your bank account from worse than that. You think we don’t know?” I put the gun under his chin. “Because we do.”
Rivard’s eyes dart to Mike. He’s unnerved now. Mike’s stripped off the Rivard security jacket and thrown it in the van, and now he’s zipping up the hoodie. “You, I recognize you. You’re a federal agent,” he says. “You can’t let him do this!”
“Which part?” Mike says. “The terrorism threat, the kidnapping, or the murder? First two are my problem. Last one’s all yours. Murder’s not a federal crime.”
Rivard’s lips are pale and compressed, and his eyes dart from one of us to the other. Starting to realize, I think, how deep the shit hole is.
“You’re Absalom,” Mike says. “The rest are just minions. You’re a bloated white spider getting fat off the dead. How long’s that been going on? Five years? Ten? I’m guessing before Melvin Royal strung up his first victim. Finding out how to use the dark web to find your customers and make your money must have been like tapping a river of pure gold.”
Rivard’s silent. If looks could kill, all of Atlanta would be a mushroom cloud. But I don’t care about finding out more about Absalom. “Gwen,” I say. “Talk. Now. Because I promise I’ll start shooting pieces off you. I’ll be nice. I’ll start with the ones you supposedly can’t feel anymore.” I move the gun to tap the barrel against his kneecap. His raised arms are shaking wildly now. Ready to drop. “Keep those hands up. I’m counting to five, and then you lose a leg.”
It’s almost a normal tone of voice, but there’s nothing right about the corrosive hate that’s churning inside of me. I thought that Melvin Royal was a monster, and he is, but this man . . . this man is the one who uses monsters to make money. And if I have to pull this trigger, I’m not going to care.
“She’s gone, Mr. Cade,” he says, then licks his pallid lips. His tongue looks like a worm crawling on a wound. “You already know where. Absalom told you, just as I ordered them to do.”
I don’t blink. I start counting. Because I don’t believe him. She isn’t in Wichita.
When I get to five, my finger tightens, and Rivard blurts out, “Stop! All right! If you want to know, I’ll tell you! But please, let me put my arms down!”
“Tell you what,” Mike says, taking out his handcuffs. “I’ll make it easier for you.”
The bitter rage that flashes over Rivard’s face confirms for me that he had a plan, and once Mike has his hands secured to the strap that keeps his chair in place, I search Rivard.
There’s a sleek, small gun in his breast pocket. Fully loaded. I toss it to Mike. “Engraved,” he says. “Only assholes put their initials on a gun. Go on. Shoot him.”
Rivard is sweating now. Everything he’s counted on is failing, and he has to know I’m serious. If he doesn’t, he’s going to find out when his kneecap hits the floor. “All right,” he says, in an oily tone that manages to be desperate at the same time. “Let’s just calm down. We’re all men of reason here. And I can be reasonable. You know the resources I have at my disposal. What exactly is it that you’d like me to do? Turn over some of our more creative suppliers? I’m happy to do that. I’m sure the FBI will find me very useful.”
“I’ll bet,” Mike says. “And you know what? We’re going to get it all without your help. Shoot him, Sam.”
“I can’t even feel my legs. Shooting me is just theater!”
“I think the sight of the inside of your knee might make an impression,” I tell him. “One, two—”
Rivard blurts out, “There’s a pay-per-view event at midnight!”
“And why the hell do we care?”
“It’s how we do things,” Rivard says. “For . . . premium content. A live event, a thousand virtual passes, fifty thousand dollars per pass.”
I already feel sickness boiling up. I can see the shape of this thing coming, and it’s a horror. “You have two seconds to tell me how this helps me find Gwen.”
“It’s her!” he blurts, and he flinches when he sees what crosses my expression. The loathing I feel is making me sick, it’s so intense. I want so badly to kill this man, so badly I can taste it. Murder has a sharp, metallic taste, like biting tinfoil. “Her and Melvin Royal. We wanted it recorded. It starts at midnight. We sell the recordings later, but the live event is—special.”
“Fuck you,” I say, and I come so close to pulling the trigger; the tidal wave of fury that’s breaking inside me nearly drowns my sanity. “Where is it?”
Somehow, impossibly, he smiles. It’s a sickly thing. Sweat glitters on his forehead. “You can buy a seat, Mr. Cade. It’s not quite sold out yet. I think we have five tickets left.”
Shoot him. Shoot this piece of rotten meat right now. I don’t know whose voice that is, but I think it’s my sister’s, and I might have done it if Mike hadn’t stepped in by the end of that awful little taunt and slammed his fist squarely into Rivard’s mouth. The surprise shocks me out of the urge to kill, and I think he just saved Rivard’s life. And mine. My skin feels like it’s going to burst, the container of a bomb that’s going off inside me with too much force to contain. I’ve never felt hate like this before, not even for Melvin Royal. Everything’s tinted with it, tastes of it.
Mike’s punch leaves Rivard rocked back in his chair, and his mouth is bloody. He looks shocked, and vulnerable, and all of a sudden, I see a pathetic old man.