Ehric manhandled the deadweight with admirable aplomb, given that Benloise was unclothed and limp, a piece of luggage that had no handles, as it were.
The drug wholesaler returned to consciousness just as he was mounted against the icy cold contours of the Rover, and the jerk that announced his wake up was carried through to all his limbs, his arms and legs jangling like those of a puppet.
The cousins pinned the man against the SUV—and the great Ricardo Benloise no longer seemed powerful at all: He’d always looked commanding in his fancy suits, but without benefit of those carefully constructed jackets and slacks, he was just a compilation of shrunken hollows, his ribs standing out in sharp relief, his soft belly protruding over bony hips, his knees wider than his thighs and his calves.
“Let us not waste time,” Assail said in a low tone. “Tell me where she is.”
No response. Benloise’s body might have been weak, but his mind, his eyes were sharp as ever: Though he was at a mortal disadvantage, his will was unbending.
That was not going to last.
Assail drew his arm across his own torso and cuffed the man with the back of his hand. “Where is she!”
Benloise’s head ripped to the side as the slapping sound rang out, blood speckling Ehric’s jacket.
“Where is she!” Assail hit the wholesaler again, his knuckles clapping hard enough to sting on the follow-through. “Where is she!”
The cousins hitched their prisoner up higher as he began to sag.
Assail snapped a hold onto the man’s throat and helped in the effort until Benloise’s feet dangled six inches off the snow. “I will kill you. Here and now. If you do not tell me where she is.”
Benloise’s eyes rolled around, but eventually met Assail’s. And yet he said absolutely nothing.
Assail tightened his grip until the airway compressed. “Marisol. You tell me where you have taken her.”
Benloise’s mouth cranked open as he fought for oxygen, his thin arms pulling against what held them, his legs kicking so his heels pinged into the quarter panel.
“Marisol. Where is she.”
Those eyes never left Assail’s—to the point where, under different circumstances, one might have respected the man’s obstinacy. Now it was a lightning rod for frustration.
“Where is she!”
With his free hand, Assail reached in between the man’s legs and twisted the balls that had tucked in tight to the torso.
The scream that rose up was caught at the throat, Assail’s hold silencing the sound. And he wanted to do so much more, but he couldn’t kill the bastard. Not yet. Ordering his hand to release the airway, it was a moment before the digits obeyed.
Benloise coughed and gasped, blood from his split lip falling upon his naked chest.
“Where is she!”
Not one word came in manner of reply.
The bastard was not going to break. Not this way, at any rate—and as Assail’s palm itched for his dagger, he didn’t trust himself with that sharp blade.
Gutting the motherfucker was not what he ultimately wanted.
Assail moved in close. “I want you to pay careful attention now. Are you with me?”
Benloise’s head lolled, but his eyes did stay open—so Assail went around to the back of the SUV. Popping the hatch, he lifted out the bound and gagged man they had kidnapped before going to the gallery.
Benloise’s brother put up no fight at all. Then again, Ehric had snuck behind Eduardo in his home and punched a syringe full of heroin into a thick vein in his neck. The man was now also naked, and the far fitter condition of his body suggested that he was both younger and more vain—he had a spray tan over some measure of muscular development.
Assail threw him at Benloise’s feet.
He didn’t expect the surprise to sway things. But what was coming next would.
While the elder Benloise watched, Assail rolled the unconscious man onto his back, removed the gag, and took out a second syringe. In its fragile belly, Naloxone, the antidote used commonly in emergency rooms to combat opiate overdoses, was a clear liquid—and as he jabbed the needle into Eduardo’s arm vein, it wasn’t long before the pilot light came on again.
Eduardo woke up in a rush, torso jerking off the snow.
Assail took the man’s jaw in a hard grip. Wrenching the head around, he growled, “Say hello to your brother—let us be polite.”
Eyes popping wide, Eduardo immediately started speaking in Spanish, and Assail cured him of the impulse by taking out his dagger and pointing it in his face.
“Your brother has a place where he takes people to kill them. Where is it?”
“I do not know what you are—”
Assail straddled the man and grabbed the hair on the top of his head—as Eduardo used a great deal of product, it was a greasy mess, but he managed to get a passable hold. Putting the blade under the man’s chin, he made sure to speak nice and slow.
“Where does he take people. I know there is a place, private and secure. Not at his house. Not downtown.”
The elder Benloise brother finally spoke in a rush, the words to his brother guttural and punctuated with ragged breaths. In response, Eduardo’s eyes became even larger, and one didn’t need to know Spanish to catch the drift: You say anything and I will kill you myself.
Assail put his body between the two and got down eye-to-eye with Eduardo. “I’m going to hurt you now.”
Pick a place, anyplace.
Assail decided to start with the shoulders. With a quick stab, he thrust the blade deep into the flesh below the collarbone—painful, but not fatal by a long stretch.
As his ears rang from the screaming, he kept the dagger in place. And his grip on the hilt.
“Where is it?” When he didn’t get an immediate reply, he twisted the knife. “Where does he take them?”
More twisting. More screaming.
Which was when Ricardo spoke up again, his voice cutting through the drama to reinforce his message. Agony was going to win, however—Assail would make sure of that.
Backing off and giving dear boy Eddie a moment to rest and recover, he watched the hilt of the dagger move up and down in time to tortured respiration.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Eduardo was always the nattily dressed financial controller. But here he was, hair a mess, eyes bloodshot, snow smudged all over his naked skin.
Assail regarded him with all the compassion one would bring to still-thrashing roadkill. “Don’t listen to him. If you do, I will kill you slowly. The only way to save yourself is to tell me what I need to know.”