“How would I know if you’re telling the truth, Avery?” Savage asked. “You’re an admitted liar.” He swung the whip with expert precision and again, using maximum strength.
Avery screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore, until he was choking and gasping for breath. Savage stopped. “Again, Avery, who is the collector?”
Avery was sobbing, the sounds of numerous children rising from his memories to join with him. He couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t get them out of his mind. He’d enjoyed wrecking them. Wrecking their bodies. It had been such delicious fun. Now . . . he just wanted everything to stop.
“I swear I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. I don’t know him at all.” He was babbling, but he couldn’t stop. He begged Savage to stop. He’d do anything if Savage would stop.
He’s telling the truth, Absinthe said.
Czar swore. They needed the name. If Terrance Marshal was the only one who knew the man for certain, they were in trouble. They wouldn’t find him soon. He had to know by now someone was coming for him. He’d be in hiding. They’d get him, because they’d never give up, but this wasn’t going to end in the way they’d hoped.
Savage and Ice spent another hour with Avery Charles. He didn’t know the name of the Russian. He didn’t know much of anything worthwhile. They got two more names of men in the pedophile ring, but that was it.
Kill him, Czar said. We can’t take a chance this time. We came in as clean as we could, but there might be sweat or something else left behind. We’ll burn this place down. Remove everything from any safe you’ve found, and don’t forget the one in the basement. Take the pictures off the wall and leave them out where they can be found. We don’t want anyone thinking Avery, Harold, Jay or David were good men.
It took another hour to sift through evidence and decide what to leave for the authorities to find. Mechanic and Transporter wired the house to blow, starting in the basement and going room by room so there would be no recovering from the damage. It was a place of horror, and they didn’t want it restored so someone else could create evil in it.
The wind blowing in from the ocean felt fresh and clean on their faces and bodies as they rode home. They took the back roads, riding to try to push away the memories of the children they hadn’t saved, both in Russia and here, so close to where they had their homes. There was no way for the wind to clear the demons of their childhood from their minds.
TWENTY
Ice turned his head to look for his wife. He didn’t like being without her for very long. Standing on their back patio, dealing with the grill that wouldn’t seem to get clean, he was already missing her. She was in the house, saying her last good-byes to the others. As always, the women were lingering. Their men stood around watching them, little half smiles on their faces. He knew they’d give them a few minutes and then one of them would get antsy, usually Reaper, and he’d make his move to collect his woman and go.
Ice could see Soleil through the glass talking to Anya. The two were laughing and then Breezy, holding what looked like a photograph album on her lap, put a hand over her mouth and began fanning herself with the other one. Immediately, Soleil looked at the book, gasped and took it from her, closing it quickly. The women burst out laughing.
He fucking loved that. His world came right just watching Soleil enjoying herself. She wanted a family, and he’d provided that for her. Brothers. Sisters. A husband. He wasn’t an easy man to live with, but she didn’t seem to mind. She laughed a lot now. She seemed happy and confident, nearly all the time.
She looked up suddenly, her eyes meeting his through the glass, and his heart twisted hard in his chest. She could do that to him, cause a physical reaction that sometimes bordered on pain. He never wanted to be without her. If she was unhappy, his world wasn’t right, which meant he had to be careful that she didn’t realize he would do anything for her. Any damn thing at all. She blew him a kiss and turned her attention back to the women, and he went back to tackling the maintenance on the grill from hell.
He’d put the thing together with a little help from Storm. First time using it and the wheel had come off, nearly dumping all the chicken he’d been grilling—okay, not him. Absinthe had been grilling. He was certain that Storm had worked on that side of the grill until the upper rack had collapsed onto the lower one. That had to be Storm’s work.
It might have been a disaster, but Soleil had been laughing so hard, nothing else mattered to him, and immediately, Absinthe had saved the dinner for everyone by cooking it over the firepit. Ice didn’t mind the ribbing; he was used to it when it came to cooking. Clearly, he was never going to be the best at grilling, but screw the barbecues, he could live without having them at his home. He’d have parties and bring food in.
The evening turned into night and laughter continued, but Ice had reached the point where he wanted to be alone with his woman. She was a little bit tipsy. She never really seemed to get drunk, just like she said, but tipsy sex sounded good to him. More than good. Evidently, he wasn’t alone in deciding tipsy sex was a major perk. Reaper caught up his woman, Anya, tossed her over his shoulder, as he often did when he was ready to leave and she wasn’t cooperating, and strode off with her.
Reaper was generally the first to go and rapidly, the others followed. Steele and Breezy said their good-byes and made their way to his bike, hand in hand. Ice almost envied Steele in that he could walk out and ride away while he was stuck with the grill that kept having parts fall off of it. He was still working on it, trying to figure out why the bolts didn’t line up properly, when the last member of Torpedo Ink was gone, and Soleil wandered out onto the patio.
“This thing is defective, Soleil. Completely, utterly, defective. I should write to the company and complain. Or at least get our money back.” He gave the stupid thing a kick. The wheel wobbled. He cursed. She giggled.
She wrapped her arm around his waist and looked up at him, her smile lighting his world. “Just leave it, honey. You haven’t seen that second little wedding album. Alena brought it with her tonight. She and Lana had it made up for us.”
“We actually have another wedding album?” He liked the first one just fine.
Ice abandoned the grill, leaving it lurched to one side, the top rack lying partially on the bottom one.
Soleil looked back at it and immediately started laughing. “Look, Ice, it’s drunk.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and the damn grill really did look a little drunk. He couldn’t help but laugh, although it was more that she was laughing than how the grill looked that made him want to smile. He wouldn’t have minded shoving the grill into the ocean.
“I think you’re a little drunk yourself, baby,” he teased.
She nodded. “A little. Just enough for a buzz.”