Crouching in the footwell, her insides trembling, she eased up enough to see Bran run up behind the bald man, grab him by the back of the neck, and spin him around. A brief scuffle ensued, the sound of fists connecting and the bald man’s heavy grunts of pain. The next minute the man was sprawled on the ground, moaning.
Jessie opened the door and got out as Bran pulled a zip tie from the pocket of his bomber jacket. He bound the man’s wrists behind his back, used another tie to bind his ankles. Then Bran walked back to the pickup to secure the man who lay unconscious on the passenger side of the truck. Jessie caught a flash of light as he used his phone to snap the guy’s picture.
A few feet away, the bald man began squirming and shouting, trying to get free, his gaze furious in a face filled with hostility. “You’re gonna pay for this, you bitch!” A string of swear words followed, and fury burned through her.
“You think so?” Pulling the cashmere scarf from around her neck, she wound it around the bald man’s head several times, till his face was completely covered, his vulgar tirade reduced to a torrent of mumbled words.
Bran walked up grinning. “Nice work.”
Her gaze went from the bound man thrashing around on the ground, back to Bran. “Same goes.”
His smile faded as he knelt and rolled the man onto his back. “We need answers—and you’re going to give them to us.”
“Muff you!”
Bran just smiled. “You’ve got two choices. You can tell us who hired you, or I can shoot you and bury you right here. I really don’t care which you choose. If I kill you, your friend over there is going to realize he’s next and decide it’d be a good idea to cooperate. Either way, I’ll find out what I need to know.”
Bran pulled his Glock from the holster on his belt and pressed it against the side of the bald man’s head. “What’s it going to be?”
The guy stared up at him for several long seconds, pondering his fate. Reading the deadly threat in Bran’s eyes, he started nodding. “O-hay, o-hay.”
“I think you mean okay,” Bran said. His gaze went to Jessie. “It’s a pretty scarf. You can always wash it.”
She nodded. Her mouth was dry. She wasn’t sure if Bran would have pulled the trigger or not. It was a question she would never ask. She wasn’t sure she could handle the answer. Unwinding the strip of pale blue cashmere, she backed away.
Bran holstered his weapon, grabbed the bald man by the front of his shirt, and hauled him upright. “What’s your name?”
“Petrov. Vladimir Petrov.”
Bran dug into Petrov’s pockets but found no wallet. Never a good idea to carry ID when you were committing a crime.
Pulling out his cell, he took the man’s picture. Bran tipped his head toward the pickup, whose headlights streaked past sagebrush and desert, tunneling into the darkness. “What about your friend?”
“Harley Graves. We call him Digger.”
“Who hired you and Digger to kill Jessie Kegan?”
Petrov shook his head. “We didn’t have to kill her. We just had to convince her to quit sticking her nose into other people’s business.”
“And if you couldn’t convince her?”
Petrov shrugged his thick shoulders. “Then we’d have to do something that would.” He was built like a bull, and with that pale, scraggly beard, he was ugly.
“What? Like make her dead?” Bran pressed.
Petrov didn’t answer, just gave another shrug as if killing her was no big deal. Jessie shivered. She gasped when Bran drew back his fist and punched Petrov hard in the face, sending a spray of blood into the air and his body flying backward into the dirt.
“Bran, stop!” Jessie grabbed his bicep, which was bunched hard as steel, ready to deliver another brutal blow.
He shook his head, fighting for control. “He’s lucky I don’t kill him.” Instead, he jerked Petrov upright. “I need a name. Who hired you?”
Petrov spit out a wad of blood. “Weaver. That’s his name. Just Weaver.”
“How do I find him?”
More blood trickled from Petrov’s nose. The way it was swelling, by tomorrow both eyes would be black.
“I don’t know. He phones us on a burner, tells us what he needs, we call him back after the job’s done. Weaver tells us where to pick up our money. That’s the way it works.”
