“There we go. That’s more like it.” I rip the duct tape from his mouth, and Julio draws in a ragged, pained breath that sounds like a broken vacuum cleaner, on its last legs.
“You…fucking….psycho!” He’s too mad to manage more than one word at a time. “You cut off my finger! You cut off my fucking finger!”
“I hope you’re not going to spend too long stating the obvious, man. I get bored very easily, and every wasted minute is another wasted finger. Once we’ve run out of digits, I’ll have to move onto other appendages, and trust me…that would really fucking suck. The last thing I want to do is pop your fly and go rooting to find your tiny, shrivelled up dick, Julio. Gross.”
Julio tries to sit up, to lean closer to me, but he only manages to heft his weight a mere inch or two from the bed. “You’re so fucking dead,” he hisses. “You’d better pray I can get that finger stitched back on, or I’m—”
“Or you’re what?” I tip my head to one side, arching an eyebrow. “You’re gonna have me killed? You’ll take your anger out on the Widow Makers? Go after Rebel? Do you honestly think you’re in a position to be making threats like that, Perez? Rebel’s given me the go-ahead to put you the fuck down. You’re only going to walk out of this room alive by my mercy, and I’m not feeling very merciful right now. That could change, depending on how you answer my questions, though.”
“Save your breath, cabron. I know why you’re here. I know what you want, and I can’t fucking help you.”
“Well, that really is a shame.” I locate my balisong again, flicking it open, perhaps with a little more show than is truly necessary. Julio eyes the blade with fear in his eyes.
“I can’t help you, because I don’t know where they took her. I don’t know where she’s been. I don’t know anything.”
“Where did the photo come from then, asshole? How did Rebel speak to her on your phone in that hotel room? He said she was alive.” I grab hold of his ring finger with my free hand, making a show of holding the blade to the base of it, and Julio starts shaking his head.
“Look, a guy came out to the compound one night. This big fucking hot shot. Stacks of money in briefcases. He wanted to spend the night with three girls. I said sure. Fine. Who would he prefer? He said he has this huge thing for redheads. He picked my own girl, Alaska. I would normally have told him to go fuck himself, but he paid a hundred grand for one night. The next morning, he comes to me. He offered me a trade. He wanted to keep Alaska. Showed me these profiles of a bunch of girls he had back in Chile or Columbia. I can’t remember where.”
I grind the edge of the blade into Julio’s skin. “This is a really long story, man. My attention is starting to wander.”
“Shit, Preston. Back up. I’m trying to tell you, ese!”
“Get on with it,” I growl.
“So she’s there. Your sister is there. I recognized her from the pictures Rebel showed to me a few years back. I took copies. I’ve been looking for her, too.”
“Why? Why the fuck would you be keeping an eye out for my sister?”
Julio squirms, a big, ugly grub on the end of a hook. “Why do you think, cabron? If Rebel wants something that badly, I am going to try and get it first.”
“So you said you’d trade Alaska for Laura?”
“Yes.”
I punch him as hard as I can in the throat. Julio makes a gurgling choking noise as I lean down, shoving my face into his. I am all he can see, hear or worry about. “That was a seriously shitty thing to do,” I tell him. “You should have called me. You should have called Rebel. Where the fuck is my sister now, Julio?”
“I told you, I don’t…know!” he chokes out. “He took Alaska when he left. He said he’d send three men back with your sister in a few weeks. He left another three hundred thousand as security. His men answered the phone when I was in that hotel room with Rebel, they let her speak to him, but that was the last time I heard from him. He never showed up with her, and he never came back for his money. He must have wanted to keep both of them.”
“Or you freaked him out when you put her on the phone with Rebel. You’re a stupid son of a bitch, Julio. Fuck, I should just kill you right now for being such a cunt.”
Julio opens his mouth, is about to say something else, but I clench my fist over his head, implying what will happen if he even dares to breathe one word. Whatever he was planning on saying dies on his lips.
“Who was he?” I demand. “This guy who showed up out of nowhere, wanting to fuck your girls?”
“I don’t know. I swear, I don’t fucking—”