“We’ll see.” I turned to Deutsch. “If he makes trouble-try not to kill him.”
“I can’t promise.”
I left them and made my way to the cabin. The place looked like a war zone. The charred cabin, Tomblin’s shot-up Navigator, his mangled body still inside it. It looked, and smelled, like death.
I popped the trunk on the Crown Vic, got what I needed, then headed back up to the clearing.
Roos was still where I’d left him. He was fixing me with a long scowl, his defiant attitude coming through loud and clear. The bastard was solid through and through, no question. Still, you didn’t need to be the Amazing Kreskin to know what he was thinking. A desolate place where no one would hear you, a guy hell-bent on revenge. If he had any sense, some very uncomfortable images had to be spooling through his mind right now. Especially since my left hand was holding a five-gallon jerrycan.
I set it down and stepped across to him. Then, without saying a word, I bent down and yanked his shoes off his feet.
He started kicking around. “Hey, what the-”
I punched him hard to calm him down. “Shut up!”
Then I got back to it. I pulled his socks off, undid his belt, and yanked his pants and his shorts off too, in one go. Then I pulled out the tactical knife and held it in front of me for a couple of seconds, visibly fuelling more uncertainty in Roos. His eyes were just locked on the drop point blade, his forehead now bursting with sweat beads despite the bitter cold.
“I was in California last summer,” I told him. “An ex-girlfriend of mine called me up, asking for help. She was ex-DEA. Some guys were after her. When I got there, I found out I had a kid. A four-year-old boy. Turned out they were really after him, and she died trying to keep him safe.” I jabbed the blade in his direction. “She died in my arms. Because of you.”
“I wasn’t part of that-”
I held up the knife to silence him. He piped down.
“I know. It wasn’t your deal. But it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t stepped in to make it happen. To do what you and your people-my money’s on Orford-did to my boy.”
I studied him for a moment, then I continued. “Still… the guy you were all after? Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t. He thought these bikers were dicking him around, so he came after them with his men. Shot them all up. All except their leader. What he did to get the truth out of him… I was there and I saw the result. It wasn’t pretty. He started with the fingers. After two of them, he got bored. So he moved on to somewhere different. The coroner said he bled out, and let me tell you, when you bleed out from that spot? Not the best way to go. But at least the cut was clean. One go. He had the benefit of using garden shears.”
I let that simmer for a moment while I tapped the blade on my open palm, then I added, “I don’t have any garden shears. But I have this.” I held up the knife. “It’ll have to do.”
I stopped talking for a moment, just staring him down, giving his imagination time to generate all kinds of horrific visions. Then, with Deutsch standing guard and aiming her M4 at him, I stepped forward.
He flinched and kicked back, like he thought I was going for it. I wasn’t. Instead, I used the knife to cut through his sleeves and the back of his jacket and a minute later he was totally naked.
In the snow.
With a light wind blowing.
I don’t care how fit he was. He was shivering now. Probably from a combination of cold and fear.
I moved back to join Deutsch.
“What?” he asked her, a disturbing leer on his face. “You see something you like?”
She ignored it as I glanced up at the sky, looked around the trees-then set my gaze back on him.
“I want to know everything. I want to know who the Janitors were. What they were. What they did. I know about Padley, Orford, and Siddle. I want to know about the others. I want to know what your role was in it, what Tomblin’s role was. I want to know who else knew about it. I want to know who you killed and who you had killed. I want to know who the guy was that you sent after me, the guy who killed Kirby and Nick. And I want to know about my dad.”
I stopped there, letting him process it for a moment. His eyes were locked on me, the defiance still there, but now I could see some cracks in it. He wasn’t going to break easy. I knew that going in. But we were getting there.
“You’re going to tell me everything I want to know,” I continued. “That’s a given. No way around that, trust me. I won’t kill you before I get what I’m after, and we both have enough training to know that it’s going to happen. The only question is what condition you’ll be in when we’re done. If you’re still in decent enough shape, I’ll hand you over to my friend here and she’ll take you in. I’ll need to make sure she doesn’t shoot you herself, because my partner, the one you had killed? That was her boyfriend. But we talked about it, and I think she’ll get more pleasure out of seeing you go through the humiliation of a trial before marching you into prison. Maybe. Or maybe you’re connected enough that your people will cut some kind of deal or find some kind of loophole and let you walk free. Me, I’d take prison. You wouldn’t want to be out here. Not with my friend and me here knowing what we do. So that’s option one. Option two is, you play hard-ass and I have to cut the truth out of you one piece at a time. In which case it’ll be hard for me to send you back without getting myself into trouble. Sensible move would then be to finish you off here and leave you for bear food. So it’s up to you, really. Crunch time. And just so you don’t feel rushed, I’m going to give you time to consider it. To think about what I said. To see if you reach the reasonable conclusion I hope you’ll reach. But, in the interest of speeding things up…”
I turned, picked up the jerrycan, and undid its top. Then I held it over him, watching him stare up at it in terror, shaking his head, mouthing, “No, don’t-” for me to stop, and I emptied its contents all over him, drenching him top to toe.
He went fetal and curled into himself defensively and shut his eyes tight and sputtered, then he stopped suddenly and shook it off his face and looked up at me with burning, angry surprise.
It wasn’t gasoline. It was just water.
Water, which, on naked skin, in snowy weather, would accelerate his hypothermia.
Dramatically.
“I think we’ve had some of the same training,” I told him. “I don’t know how much you remember about this stuff, but… I figure it’s about minus two or three out here, tops. And the wind is, what-ten, twelve miles per hour? Call it ten. Minus two degrees and a ten mile-per-hour wind gives us a wind-chill temperature of minus twelve degrees or so. Add the water and I’m betting you’re not feeling too comfortable right now.”
I stepped back and took in the sight of him there, tied to that tree. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in such a pathetic, vulnerable state. Normally, I’d be the guy charging in to save someone like that. Here, I was responsible for it.
“That shivering you’re doing?” I said. “That’s stage one. Mild hypothermia. Your body’s trying to generate more heat to warm itself up. Soon, your hands and feet will start feeling numb. You’ll feel tired, and even the smallest effort will feel difficult. Another couple of degrees and you’ll be in moderate hypothermia. You’ll experience violent shivering and a loss of coordination in your muscles until that shivering stops because there’s no energy left to keep it going, which will make your temperature drop even further until you lose consciousness at around thirty degrees and slip into stage three: profound hypothermia. Which is around the time frostbite should start setting in. I’d give it half an hour, tops.” I looked around again, taking in the conditions. I figured it wasn’t far past midday, but the sun was very low this time of year, making the setting feel even bleaker.