Ignacio jerked, the sweat rolling off him waves now.
“Try again,” I instructed Sinclair.
“You don’t?—”
Another glance at Lunchbox. Another swing. Another scream.
When the man’s sobs slowed, I cocked my head to the side. “Let me correct a misapprehension you seem to be suffering from.” I raised one finger. “I ask a question. You tell us the truth. If you fail to answer or try to prevaricate, then you suffer. We have the rest of the day and all of the night, Sinclair. Think about that before you answer my next question. We’ll start with, do you understand?”
“Yes,” came out broken and weepy.
“Excellent. Are you prepared to answer my questions now?”
Another ragged breath. “Yes.”
“Good.” I didn’t even blink. “What was Amorette investigating that got her on their radar?”
“Nothing,” the man said, but it came out a garbled confession. That was what I had thought. This man seemed to be incapable of the truth.
“Then how did she get on their radar?”
His gasps for air made the words come out on a choking sound. “I told them.” Even as the words left his lips, he braced, expecting another blow. It didn’t come.
“Good,” I said. Now we were getting somewhere. “Next question.”
From there, we kept going. He made it to a third question before he tried to lie again. Every lie got a blow. Every truth bought him a few seconds of recovery.
The panic spiked so high the room vibrated with it. Ignacio shook so violently the collar jangled. Sinclair hiccupped sobs between words, his voice dissolving into a slurry of fear.
Finally, he choked out a string of numbers. “T-They—they switch codes every time—the last one was—was six-three-blackbird—two-four-seven—rhinestone—oh God—oh God?—”
Alphabet was already typing, dissecting, cross-referencing. “Good. Keep going.”
Sinclair nodded frantically, drool mixing with tears on his chin. “I—I’m doing it—I’m doing it, please—don’t hurt me?—”
I leaned in.
“You’re still breathing,” I said. “That’s more than your victims got.”
He curled inward, shoulders heaving.
“Let’s continue…” I fired off the next wave of questions. Some got straightforward answers, others got whimpered“I don’t knows”accompanied by waves of begging and the stench of sweat and fear.
Some of the answers he really didn’t have. But the most disgusting one of all was the fact that Amorette Black had been targeted for one reason and one reason alone.
She overheard this shitstain on a phone call and Sinclair wasn’t sure how much she overheard.
“She—she was always such a crusader. If she understood—once she figured it out—she wouldn’t let it go?—”
“But you don’t know what she knew or didn’t, do you?” I had the answer, that was just more of my disgust showing. “You dropped her into human trafficking to cover your own ass.”
Unsurprising and yet the man’s cowardice turned my stomach.
“I had to protect myself.”
Protect. Himself.
“And Grace?”
