Page 75 of Deadly Aloha
I paused. “Really? You fucker. I’m going to make you bleed for that too.” I put the tip of my blade to his nose. “Tell me where you sold the women from Hawai‘i! I know some went to Amsterdam. I am looking for the rest!”
“Don’t know! Don’t know!” He pressed himself further into the old cement wall, like that would put enough distance between my blade and his face to keep me from cutting him. It didn’t. Blood started to trickle out of the small cut I made on his nose. “Konstantin! He do contract. He take girls.” He gestured to the women my club brothers were releasing. “He handle all sales.”
There was such relief on his face. Like he honestly thought telling me that some man named Konstantin being in charge meant he was walking out of this alive. He was raping a woman when we walked in here, and the man was delusional enough to think I’d let that go?
“Who is Konstantin and where do I find him?” I asked.
“United States,” the man answered with confidence.
That was even less helpful than saying the man was in Russia. Did he not realize how big the United States was?
“Where?” I growled.
The twins stayedwith me while Tangaloa, Tommy, and Spirit took the women to the nearest hospital. We were going to meet back up at the airport, but first, I had some smiting to do.
We found some rope while searching the rest of the church for other people, either guard or victim. We found a few moreguards, but thankfully, no other women. In the chapel we’d entered the building through, there was a large cross hanging on the wall. It was fucking heavy, but we were able to get it off the wall and then use the ropes to create a pulley system with the ceiling beams overhead.
A nail gun would have been faster, but Baranov didn’t have any that we could find and I was done with that fucking dictionary. We ended up using our daggers to nail Baranov to the cross. We didn’t hoist him up far, mostly because the fat bastard was heavy to lift. But enough where he wasn’t touching the ground. He certainly wasn’t upright either, so his entire body weight was trying to pull him back down to the floor but the blades through his wrists and ankles kept him secured in place.
The twins had pulled the curtains down from the windows and made a pile in the middle of the room under where Baranov hung. Then I held a match to my English to Russian dictionary, tossed it on top, and watched the place light up. The building was old, and went up in seconds despite the lack of accelerant. Baranov’s screams of agony increased the higher the flames grew, but they fell on deaf ears as the man was cooked alive.
“Let’s go,” I told the twins. I was still suspicious about their shoulders. What the fuck was up with that?
“Where to?” they asked in unison.
“Fucking Los Angeles,” I grumbled.
I called Lu while on the plane. She wasn’t sleeping well. I tried to assure her that I was fine and I would be bringing Nishi home soon, but it didn’t help as much as I hoped. I didn’t know what we would find in Los Angeles. From Baranov’s broken English, I gathered that Konstantin was a matchmaker of sorts. Baranov had the women and Konstantin had the buyers.
For Konstantin’s sake, he better pray he spoke better English than Baranov did.
It tookus almost three days to track down Konstantin. The loss of time was frustrating, but I was not giving up until I had foundsomethingon Nishi. Lu was counting on me, and I refused to let her down when we finally had a lead after all this time of nothing.
We found Konstantin outside the worst place possible for a man like him: a fucking preschool. He had binoculars, candy bars, and duct tape on the front seat of his car when Tangaloa and I hopped into the back seat.
“What the?—”
Tangaloa flashed him his gun as I said, “Drive. Both hands on the wheel. And if you try anything, then your son in London gets a visit from some of my friends.” Neo had been able to find Konstantin’s teenage son went to a private school in London. My threat was vague for a reason. We would never hurt his kid—but he didn’t need to know that.
Konstantin looked like a typical B-rated movie thug. Black hair, black beard, black sunglasses, black hat, black shirt, black pants. I couldn’t see his slippahs, but I was betting they were black too. While Los Angeles, California, was certainly warmer than bumfuck Russia, it wasn’t as warm as home. Both Tangaloa and I were in shorts, boots, and t-shirts. I still felt like I was wrapped up in more cloth than a fucking mummy.
Like a quickdraw from the old west, the man reached for his gun in his shoulder holster, but I was faster. Over the console, I slipped between the driver and passenger seats, slamming one of my daggers onto the man’s thigh. It was close to the artery, but not quite. That would be too quick a death for the likes of him.
As the man screamed in pain, his gun dropped between his door and seat. Tangaloa reached into the small space and plucked it back.
“I’m curious,” I said over the man’s screams. “Are the kids for you or for a client?” I did not bother hiding the venom in my voice.
The man glared down at me, but he did not speak nor did he move. He likely knew just how close I was to his femoral artery. One twist of my wrist, and it would be lights out.
“I realize we’re strangers and you don’t know me from Adam, but I don’t like to give orders twice. I saiddrive. If I have to say it a third time, pieces of you will start being thrown out the window.”
I stared unblinking at him until he nodded slowly and put his hands back on the wheel.
“Good boy,” I said condescendingly. Then I ripped the blade from his leg. It took him a moment to start driving.
“Did you have to do his right leg?” Tangaloa asked as I sat back.
I wiped my blade clean on the passenger headrest. “Would you rather I had taken his ear?”
