Page 35 of Ryder
“She just wanted someone, but he picked me.He made the choice,” she whispered, tears starting to trickle down her cheeks. I didn’t soften at her apparent fear, because she could so easily be playing us. Some women were good at turning on the tears, when they thought they needed a way out.
“She?” Reacher growled, leaning closer to her.
She trembled again. “Yes. She pays me to pick someone, drug him, and deliver him to her. That’s it. I swear.”
What?I pushed away from the wall, approaching them in their deadly holding pattern.
“She who? I want a fucking name!” I snapped, reaching out to grab her chin, dragging her face to mine, as Reacher moved back, and Stitch lowered the knife a touch.
“I… I don’t know her name. She pays me well enough that I don’t ask. I find her a man, and she disappears with him, and I never hear about him again.”
“You were in trouble before, but now there’s a dead guy, this is more serious than ever,” Reacher muttered, and her eyes shot to his, her chin jerking out of my grip.
“What? What dead guy? There’s no dead guy. She just has sex with them.”
I grabbed her chin again. “Calling it ‘sex’ suggests that he gets a fucking choice.”
She swallowed hard again, her eyes darting from mine to Reacher’s.
“I just bring her the ones who hit on me. She does the rest, I swear.”
Reacher looked behind me, and suddenly arms were dragging me away again, while he took back control of the situation.
He nodded at Stitch, who grabbed her by the hair once more, but the knife was held away from her for now.
“How do you make contact with her?” He asked her, leaning on her wrists again. She let out a shaky breath.
“She contacts me when…” She glanced my way. “When she’s ready for another.”
“How many fucking times has she done this?” I demanded, shrugging off Torch’s grip.
Reacher shot a glare in my direction.
“Quiet!” He looked at her again. “How? How does she contact you?”
She shuddered. “Text messages.”
Fuck. That gave us nothing. She’d been texting me too, and we couldn’t find her then. Dammit!
“This is useless! We already knew her fucking number!”
Torch dragged me back, and practically slammed me against the wall, his arm across my throat as he leaned close.
“Will you shut the fuck up!”
I shook myself free of him, watching the interrogation avidly. I thought we had found her, and found an end to this. This couldn’t all be for fucking nothing!
“I…she’s expecting one tonight,” the woman finally whispered to him, and suddenly there was the lifeline we needed.
“Tell me everything,” Reacher demanded, and I sagged against that wall, as she explained their well-planned routine. Kidnap, rape, the whole nine yards.
Tonight. Tonight we’d find her.
But of course wedidn’t, because we set a trap, but guess who never showed? The bitch. The bitch we’d laid in wait for.
“Maybe the dead guy fucked her up more than we thought.”
Then why would she make arrangements for a new victim? It didn’t make sense. We waited out of sight for another hour, and our unwilling accomplice even messaged her to say she was ready, asking where she was, but she just never replied.
