Page 94 of Locke 2

He shot me a suspicious look as he drove the car down the street a little further down. He pulled up in front of a nice little house. “In there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“That’s okay. You can just chill here. I might be a bit.”

His eyes narrowed on me. “Alright. I’ll be right here. But, Kali, keep in mind she might not say anything.”

I nodded. “I know, but it’s a small town, and everyone’s really friendly here.”

The notion of that made Jem scowl. “If it doesn’t go your way, we can visit the doctor after hours, if you catch my drift.”

Oh, my God. “It won’t come to that.”

But his dark smirk said otherwise.

I swallowed back a curse and gestured to a store across the street. “They sell your favourite ice cream drumsticks there. Go out and buy one. Have a relax.”

Before he could say anything else, I jumped out of the car and hurried into the doctor’s office.

Forty

Locke

They had been questioning the jolly old fuck for a while now. In a secluded place. It wasn’t easy to arrange this. To catch the old man unaware as they snatched him from his spacious, four poster bed in his jolly blue and white striped pajamas of his surprisingly humble abode. He even wore those pajamas hats with the little ball at the end. No fucking word a lie, this was Santa off the clock.

Locke and Conor needed to be brutal. As such, they left their morals at the door. It was just the two them and jolly Ambrose. Getting into character meant shedding all forms of distractions, including their phones and wallets. Conor didn’t need to glance at the pictures of his kids and Charlotte when he pummelled the old man after they strapped him to the steel chair.

“I’m telling you,” Ambrose kept going. “I don’t know anything about a boy!”

They had to get…creative.

“I just want to make people happy!” he continued to cry out as blood trailed down his nose. “I’m a good man.”

On and on they went.

Hour after hour.

Locke’s jaw locked. He thought of Kali. Of Jem. Of the little boy Lenny…

“New rule,” said Locke after the third hour. “Every time you lie, we’re going to break one of your fat little fingers, Ambrose.”

“Oh, my God,” Ambrose screamed. “Not my fingers! Please, I play guitar at the preschool on Fridays once a month! I need my fingers.”

“Why do you hang around the kids so much, Arty?” asked Conor.

“They touch my soul! That’s all! There’s nothing nefarious about it.”

They broke a finger.

The pinky one first.

“You can still play guitar without your pinky, right?” Locke asked.

Ambrose nodded. “I can, yes, please, no more!”

But there was plenty more.

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