Page 50 of Deadly Aloha
Motorcycles lined the grass that would soon become a parking lot. With only being two months in since joining Jameson’s motley crew, we’d done a lot, but there was still so much that needed to be completed. I needed to double my efforts into finding Nishi, and not just so Lu would marry me sooner. I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t been staying on top of it as much as I should. No doubt Neo was, and I was of no help when it came to a computer, but I should still be able to dosomething.
Rory’s news that there were Bloody Scorpions on Maui was good news, though he would no longer be part of the mission to find out where they were holed up like rats. I would still be sending Spirit, but he would need different backup now.
The closer we got to the back of the barn, the quieter things became. I exchanged a look with Bacon and Tangaloa. Others were lining the hallway looking in on the room that would one day become our interrogation space, though Lu kept calling it the Torture Area. It was a more literal translation.
I heard whimpering from within, and assumed the twins were doing something to Rory because they were the only members not present outside the room. As soon as I turned the corner, though, I froze in my tracks.
The twins were inside all right, but they were not the ones causing Rory to whimper.
They were standing in identical relaxed postures, watching asHollystood over Rory with a knife to his throat. The man was nearly a foot taller than her, yet he was unbound and completely at her mercy.
Bacon chuckled low from behind me. “Little Owl.”
Holly did not look up at her man. “He touched her without her permission, Sir!”
It wasn’t hatred in Holly’s voice as I expected, butpain. I recalled Bacon telling me the night I’d asked him to watch Kensi and Nadia that he’d murdered the man who’d hurt Holly in unimaginable ways. I could imagine. I chose not to because it wasn’t my business. But that pain? It was confirmation of what I had already guessed.
Holly had been raped, and Bacon had made the man pay the ultimate penance.
Holly pressed the knife deeper into Rory’s throat. “No woman should ever have to know the fear of a man’s touch, Sir!”
Bacon stepped forward carefully. “You’re right,” he said gently, coaxing. “But Lu’s fine, and Paniolo is here to make Rory pay for what he did. You need to allow him that honor. You got your revenge, let him have his.”
Holly looked up at me, but there weren’t tears in her eyes. It was more like cool calculation. Finally, she removed the blade from Rory’s throat and kicked him forward. He fell limp to the ground, making me wonder how else she’d hurt him.
She walked past Bacon and came right up to me. Flipping the blade around, she offered it to me. “They say he didn’t hurt her. Only touched her. I’m grateful she’s okay but that shouldn’t lessen his punishment.”
I glanced at Bacon to see his reaction of his woman speaking to me so, but the fucker just looked amused. Looking back down at Holly, I accepted the knife from her. “Trust me, it won’t.”
Holly nodded once, before lowering her eyes, ducking her head, and walking out of the room. The others parted like the Red Sea in her wake.
Bacon went to follow. I wouldn’t make him stay for this, not when his woman clearly needed him. But I did stop him on his way out.
“The man who hurt her,” I asked, “did you make him suffer?”
“Men,” he informed me. “And I only got one of them.Shegot the rest.”
My eyebrows flew up. Well, I’ll be damned. I did not expect that answer, but it also explained a lot about Holly. I let go of his arm. “Good. Go see to your woman.”
Bacon glanced behind himself as Rory struggled to get to his feet. “Are you sure you don’t need me here?”
“The others need to see this. You don’t. Holly needs you right now.”
He nodded his thanks before heading out.
As Rory got upright, I noticed he was in only his boxers. His face was swollen and black and blue from my beating earlier. He was also missing a front tooth.
“Grab him,” I told the twins.
They moved in unison, one going to the right side and the other going left. They pinned Rory’s arms behind his back.
I looked to Tangaloa. “I need a tree stump, two U-clamps, screws, and a drill.”
He nodded once before hurrying off to get my shopping list. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to find everything, especially in a construction zone.
“Lu already told me everything, and I know what I saw,” I told Rory. “Now you tell me your side.”
Instead, he gathered up a wad of bloody spit and hocked it at my bare feet. “She deserves better than you,” he gasped out in such a way that it made me think I’d broken a rib.
