Sean grunted and pushed past us into the room, stopping beside the bed where Elais Beckett was tied down on.
“How did you do this all without attracting the attention of the cops?” I asked, horror lacing my words.
Ronan had always been inventive when it came to his punishments when I was younger, but had I known that he was capable of this, I might’ve been way more scared of him than I was.
“Jesus Christ.”
That was Silas, who came to stand beside me, looking down on the bed with so much awe and a fair bit of disgust that he wasn’t sure which emotion to feel.
“Do you think he cries more when his dick is pulled, or when his tongue is?” Ghost rumbled from my other side.
It was a good question.
Not only was Beckett tied by his ankles and wrists to fucking eye bolts, Ronan had drilled into the hotel’s freakin’ walls, but he was also attached to the ceiling by a rope.
Both of them were threaded through his body parts like a goddamned fish.
Ronan had cut a hole, likely with his own pocket knife, into both appendages, and then threaded a piece of braided brown, abrasive twine through each hole and then tied it into a knot. Then he’d attached it to another eye bolt that hung from the ceiling.
His eyes were wild, and he was crying.
But I couldn’t find a goddamned reason in the world to feel sorry for him.
“Beckett?” I said to him when his gaze caught mine. His eyes widened, and I said two words. “Check mate.”
The blood pooling under Beckett’s body was drawing my eyes, and I finally pulled the plug on the horror show.
“Get him an ambulance, Sean,” I ordered. “We can’t have him dying on us. Plus, I’d like to make sure his life isn’t as easy as dying would be.”
Sean disappeared out of the hotel room, and it didn’t take long for the sirens to be heard.
I waited there, long after the other men left the room to avoid being seen, and watched as paramedics, cops, and firefighters arrived on scene.
All of whom I knew personally.
“Whoa,” said a large, muscular, African-American police officer who went by the name of Tough. He was the nicest man I’d ever had the pleasure of working with…until you pissed him off. Then he was meanest, most vindictive man you would ever have the displeasure of meeting.
It was something that luckily didn’t happen very often, and I’d never been on the receiving end of it, thank God.
I’d seen him go off on one of his best friends once when said friend had made an offensive comment about his woman. His woman was a tiny Asian girl with the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen and about half of Tough’s height. Tough felt the need to protect her as if she couldn’t easily take care of herself. God help you if you made a derogatory comment toward her.
“What the hell is that through his dick?”
That was from another officer, McClain.
“From what I can tell, it’s twine,” I finally said once the men got a closer look.
“Back away, please,” a haughty paramedic/firefighter ordered in a low, husky voice.
I turned and shuffled to get out of the woman’s way, and wondered if she saw the way the other firefighters looked at her.
They were staring at her like she was an incompetent newbie who was about to get wigged out over the gory state of Elais Beckett’s body.
But much to my surprise, and the other firefighters, the little woman went right up to the bloody mass that was Beckett and started working on him instantly.
My brows went up at the nearest firefighter, and he mouthed a ‘later’ at me before waving me out of his way.
I moved completely out of the room, unsurprised when McClain and Tough followed me out.
“What in the goat fuck was that?” Tough asked in derision.
“That,” I said slowly. “Was the man who took a shot at my woman with a sniper rifle this morning while she was driving my car and missed her head by two inches.”
Tough’s eyes widened.
“You did that?”
I shook my head, about to reply, when Big Papa sidled up to one side, and Aaron moved up on the other.
“We got an anonymous tip that he was here,” Big Papa rumbled.
That was partially the truth, right? Giving up the man responsible would be cruel and unusual punishment.
I knew for certain that they weren’t going to give Ronan up…or weren’t going to until Ronan turned himself in.
“I was the one who did it,” Ronan said.
We all turned to find him standing behind our small group huddle, and Tough tilted his head to the side.
“You did what?” Tough asked.
It wasn’t every day that a man came up to you and admitted to the gruesome torture of someone.
“You heard me correctly,” Ronan confirmed. “Now, arrest me before I try to run.”
He looked like the kind of person that wouldn’t, and didn’t run. He was big, blocky, and in dress shoes. There was no way in hell he would get away from Tough on a bad day, let alone a good one.
Ronan wouldn’t try. He knew how to read people just like I did.
Tough, however, was still confused.
“You’re saying that you did all that?”
Ronan, upon first glance, didn’t ever strike anyone as the type of man who would do anything violent. He looked like a fuckin’ teddy bear and was always smiling.
It was the smile that got you. It’d gotten me quite a few times.
I’d never known he was mad until he’d struck.
“I’m saying that that little fucker killed my best friend,” Ronan said with his Irish lilt thickening. “I’m also saying that I killed him for killing my friend and his wife. I have a tape of the confession. Though, that came first. The rest came after he admitted all the awful things he’s done since he was released early from prison.”
Tough pulled out a set of handcuffs.
“Well then, I suppose it’s my duty to take you into the station and get this sorted out.”
With that, Tough led a handcuffed Ronan away, leaving me standing in the middle of chaos wondering if I was lucky enough for it all to be over.
Ronan stopped about halfway to the car, and turned.
Tough, not really thinking correctly at the moment, let him.
“The gun he used to shoot your woman is in the trunk of the car over there,” he nodded his head in the direction of a black sedan about halfway across the small parking lot. “And I found the spent shell casing, too.”
Exhilaration filled me.
“Thanks, Ronan,” I called to him.
He winked, causing my heart to warm.
My grandfather and grandmother, and I supposed Kenneth, now had retribution.
I hadn’t wanted them to die, but now we’d at least have attempted murder pinned on the man responsible.
The rest would soon follow.
Chapter 23
You know that moment when you close a cabinet door and you hear something fall? Yeah, that’s someone else’s problem.
-Fact of Life
Truth
Two hours later at the same hospital that Verity was in, I had a throw down with my president.