Page 30 of Dangerous Command
My stomach sank even further. Axe was good at torture; he didn’t have much of a heart for guilt.
I turned and faced Derek, my hands on my hips. “You don’t know for sure what he’s up to,” I said.
“Neither do you,” Derek said.
I huffed out a breath. “Give him a chance.”
“No.”
“He’s your family.”
“Maddie,” he said, in a warning voice. Not Mads.Maddie. “He’s not my brother or my mother.”
“I’m not questioning your methods. What I’m doing is telling you that you need to give him a chance to explain his side of the story. His GPS locations are not the full picture.” My throat closed up. “Hell, if Axe were tracking me, he’d see that I was going to Brackston with you, and back to Pebble Garden too.”
“And why do you go back to Pebble Garden?” Derek asked, standing up. He looked down at me. “What’s so important that you commute every few days?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Checking on my house.”
“You don’t own a house.”
“My apartment.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “This is how you earnmytrust, Derek. The family business may dictate that you don’t give anyone a second chance, but what about being a good leader? Hearing the whole story objectively before making your decisions. I want to hear what he has to say.” I nodded at the two brothers. “You don’t have to listen. But I want to.”
Derek shifted toward Axe, who gave nothing in response. Axe wasn’t a decision-maker; Derek was.
“My trust in you matters too,” I added. “Without mutual trust in both directions, there is no such thing as loyalty. And I need to trust that you’re a fair leader.”
“I never claimed to be fair.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. That may have been true, but I wasn’t going to budge on this.
“As long as you can listen to him for a few minutes, I don’t care about fairness.”
Derek stared at me for a moment, carefully considering my words.
“The interrogation is yours,” he finally said. “Let’s go.”
Interrogation? My heart leaped into my chest. The three of them stood, and I knew Derek was serious. He expected me to torture the information out of Uncle Ray myself. I closed my fist, my fingernails digging into my palms. I scolded myself—thiswas why I wasn’t supposed to be around the Adlers anymore.
But then again, I didn’t have to torture Uncle Ray; I just had to get him to talk.
We headed through the house to the backyard, then traveled a short distance through the woods to Axe’s workroom. It was a structure that had been hidden behind trees and covered in vines, making it look nearly invisible against the rest of the forest. Though I had always known the workroom was in the woods, I had never been in there myself. Axe preferred to keep it completely private.
Axe nodded at the guards, then unlocked the door. A light flickered on. There were knives and tools hanging from hooks and magnetic strips on the walls, a toilet, a sink, cages, boxes, and cabinets. Uncle Ray was slumped down, trying to rest against the bars of a standing cage, but clearly unable to find a comfortable position. His eyes were blank when he saw me and Demi, but when Derek and Axe came into view, he hid behind his hands.
I stood against the wall. Axe went to the back of the room and found a folding chair for Demi. Derek gestured toward the cage.
“The floor is all yours,” he said. I raised a brow. “You wanted to listen to him. Make him talk.”
There was a long metal table in the middle of the room with cuffs on each end. I turned to Axe. He was standing behind Demi, his hands resting on her shoulders.
“Can you bolt him to the table?” I asked.
Axe unlocked the cage and Uncle Ray fell forward as soon as the door opened. Axe heaved him over to the side, then buckled Uncle Ray’s wrists down to the table, leaving him to crouch, his thighs shaking.
“He needs a chair,” I said.
Without a word, Axe got another folding chair. This was supposed to be an interrogation, but that didn’t mean that Uncle Ray couldn’t be comfortable.
