“I would prefer you didn’t do that,” Jonathan said.
“But if I did?”
“We’d be lucky if they got here in an hour,” LeBron said.
Jonathan smiled, but otherwise ignored him. “I think you’re asking me if the police would know if we were here,” he said. “The answer to that would be no. And if you called the FBI, that answer would be no, as well. You may take from that whatever you wish.”
“What are the chances that LeBron or Georgie or me will get in trouble with the law for any of this?”
Jonathan was impressed with the way this young woman thought. She was a wife, a mother, and a caring sister-in-law. Her first priority was to make sure that no harm would come to the people she loved. Jonathan had nothing but admiration for people who put family first.
“Let me put it to you this way,” Jonathan said. “If you don’t call them, the Detroit Police — and the FBI and the CIA and every other three-letter agency you can think of — will never know that we set foot in your lovely home. The only way that word could possibly leak out is if you or LeBron or Georgie leak it.”
“So it’s your plan to rescue the boy and the girl?” Dawn asked.
“It is,” Jonathan said.
“Oh, come on, Scorpion,” Boxers complained. “Just a little secret-keeping? You know, for old time’s sake?”
Boxers had always been the OpSec purist, but Jonathan sensed that he was laying it on extra thick tonight to enhance Jonathan’s aura as a good cop in his negotiation with Dawn. Jonathan looked at her and shrugged. “There’s no way I can make you comfortable with all that is happening, but I hope this convinces you that you and yours getting hurt is nowhere in the plan.” He waited till he had eye contact. “In fact, I promise that I will kill and I will die to protect you.”
He knew that Boxers was going to bust his balls later for the melodrama. He saw Big Guy swivel his head to make eye contact, but he ignored him. This encounter was about selling Dawn on the mission.
“So, what are we supposed to do tomorrow?” she asked.
Jonathan cocked his head.
“Just looking at all the equipment you brought, I’m guessing that tomorrow morning the factory across the road is going to look a lot different,” she said. “It’s gonna have holes in it, and it’s gonna have dead bodies in it. Am I right?”
Jonathan sensed all the heads turning to await his answer, so he turned to stone. There was simply nothing for him to say in response.
Dawn seemed to get that. “Okay,” she pressed. “Let’s just say I’m right. For all I know, you might be one of the bodies in there. But whatever happens, people are going to find out, and people are going to start asking questions. What do I tell them?”
“Whatever you think is appropriate,” Jonathan said. “You can repeat every word of this conversation, if that’s what you think is necessary. But by way of full disclosure, I have to warn you that that particular route will prove very frustrating for all concerned.” He wiggled his gloved fingers, as if to wave to a child. “We’ve left no fingerprints, and even if we did, they would be untraceable. You know us as Scorpion and Big Guy, and you know we communicate with someone named Mother Hen. Pretend you’re a cop and run that story through your head. How do you think that will go?”
Dawn looked at the floor. She got it.
Everyone always got it. The money he threw around didn’t hurt, but that wasn’t the deciding factor 99 percent of the time. Jonathan believed — and Boxers would fight him on this one — that people were inherently good. Many were assholes, and all of them lived every day primarily to advance their own agenda. But when the chips were down, the vast majority would endure significant risk for the benefit of a stranger. And if the stranger were a baby, as Dawn had referred to Graham, the willingness to take risks spiked dramatically.
“Hey, Boss,” Boxers said. “We need to do some planning.”
Jonathan kept his gaze on Dawn. “You know you’re the linchpin on all this, right?” he said. “I don’t mean to presume, but I sense that I’ve got LeBron and Georgie one hundred percent with me. I’ve got you pegged as about thirty-five percent. In relatively few minutes, Big Guy and I are going to step into the furnace. Can I count on you not to start another battle to our rear?”
Dawn started to answer, then stopped. “I’m not sure I know what that means, ‘start another battle.’ ”
Boxers snapped, “It means he doesn’t want you ratting us out to the cops who are run so ragged in this town that they’d shoot their Aunt Millie if she scratched her armpit, thinking she was going to draw down on them from a shoulder rig.”
LeBron laughed. “We actually have an Aunt Millie.”
“And if she reaches for her armpit, the smart move would be to shoot her.” The two brothers laughed together.
Dawn remained unamused. “Here’s what I promise you,” she said. “I pray that you save those people, and I don’t care what you have to do to make that happen.”
Jonathan smiled.
“Don’t be happy yet,” she said. “If anything happens to my family — if there’s so much as a scratch on my house — I will do everything I can to hunt you down and make you pay.”
Jonathan looked to LeBron. He’d married himself one hell of a woman. Jonathan admired the passion. “It’s a deal,” he said.
They shook on it, but he never took his glove off. He had no idea if that made the deal less binding.
Jolaine looked terrible. They arranged her so that she was straddling a tall sawhorse, still fully clothed. Her hands were tightly bound and the goons strung them to one of the meat hooks overhead. She’d clearly been beaten. Blood glistened from her nose to her chin, and her face was bruised purple. Her left eye was swollen shut.
Graham didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure that she was conscious, or if she was, that she knew that he was present. How could anyone do such a thing to her? A gorge of anger blossomed in his gut. Who the hell did these people think—
“I believe you two know each other,” Teddy said.
At the sound of the voice, Jolaine’s head rocked up. At first, she looked confused, but then she saw Graham and she smiled. One of her front teeth had been knocked out. “I’m sorry, Graham,” she said. With her mouth trauma, “sorry” sounded like “thorry.”
Graham’s vision blurred. Nothing was worth this level of suffering.
“Look at me, Graham,” Jolaine said.
They made eye contact.
“Give up nothing,” she said. One of the silent goons lifted her T-shirt to reveal bare flesh and touched it with a stick that made a snapping sound. Jolaine’s back arched and she screamed as she became rigid.
“That’s an electrical torture stick,” Teddy explained in his ear. “Some people call it a cattle prod in your country. It is certainly an attention-getter. Allow me to demonstrate.” Teddy lifted the front of Graham’s T-shirt and tucked the tail behind his head, effectively blinding him while exposing his entire torso. He felt contact high on his belly, just below his breastbone, and the world went purple.
A jolt of hot agony erupted from his core and shot from his teeth to his toes. The electric jolt seemed to pass through every cell in his body. He smelled blood in his sinuses, and as his knees sagged, a strong pair of arms grabbed him from behind and propped him up, but not before the noose tightened. He could still breathe, but he could feel pressure building in his head from the blood backing up.
“Impressive, don’t you think?” Teddy said. He pulled Graham’s T-shirt back down so that he could see. When he saw Graham’s face, he smiled. “Ah, so you learned two lessons,” he said, “not least of which was the wonder of the self-tightening knot.” He displayed the cattle prod so that Graham could see it better. “That was but one brief contact to a relatively insensitive part of your body. Imagine that against a very sensitive part of your body. Is this really the life you want to live? Do you really want to inflict this kind of pain against someone who is close to you?”