Page 93 of Absinthe Dreams
I called back, “Yeah, I got her. She’s alive but unconscious.”
He came down the back steps and looked down at her.
“It was just her and him. We got him in the living room.”
“Inside or outside?” I asked.
“Inside,” LaCroix called from deeper back behind in the darkness of the old house.
Bennie helped me drag her ass up the steps and into the house, tossing her down in front of the couch next to her man and leaning her up against it.
“Midnight? Baby? Shit, what have they done to you?”
“No worse than you sent your boys out to do to our women,” I reminded him.
The interrogation took a while. Axe was up, and got ol’ Rebel singing like a canary. Bennie and Saint went through the place and removed all kinds of books, files, and ledgers out of it. We cleared out the safe, took their cache of weapons, and shot ol’ boy in the face like Ruth had done Cy.
Midnight screamed and screamed. We took our time with her next, demanding answers, trying to get anything we could out of her that Rebel may have been reluctant to tell her.
She begged us not to kill her, but LaCroix made it swift. He double-tapped her – twice in the head and twice through the heart.
We debated dragging them out into the grass before torching the place, but ultimately decided we didn’t need to really be dramatic about the statement we were trying to make.
We set the place on fire and made sure it was a good roaring blaze that engulfed the entire place, before picking up and helping to carry the spoils back to the box truck waiting out there in the dark.
I sat in the back, Saint driving and Bennie riding shotgun with him. Back to the wall, we sat, LaCroix next to Axe, me across from them.
A battery-operated, cheap-ass kid’s camping lantern illuminated us dimly, a pile of paperwork, weapons, and some stacks of cash sitting in a pile between us.
“Think that’ll leave a mark,” LaCroix said, and I nodded.
“Sure as shit’ll get their attention,” Axe said and sniffed.
“Thinking we should drop a gear and disappear?” I asked. “Take the women someplace else?”
“Think they’ll go without a fight?” LaCroix demanded.
I shook my head. “Hell no.”
I looked to Axe. “Who is she?”
He sighed and said, “Was wondering when you’d get to grilling me about that.”
“Doesn’t matter,” LaCroix said. “She’s yours, and things are only going to get hotter around us.”
“Matters to me,” I said, and kicked Axe’s book, and he grinned.
“You stupid fucker. If I promise to tell you everything later, you promise to let it go?”
I thought about that. “Are you not wanting to say anything because if I don’t know and get caught up, then it’ll keep her out of it?” I asked.
“Pretty much exactly that,” he said, losing his smile.
“I can accept that,” I said with a sage nod.
“We did good tonight,” LaCroix said, and I nodded.
We had. We had plenty to run down and follow up on, and we also had knowledge that it was Ruthless, and we knew Ruthless’ playbook. Things were looking up for the Voodoo Bastards.
