Page 62 of A Lion's Heart
CHAPTER 15
“You think you know everything,” Ewen Mackey said with a smirk hours later. “You have no idea.”
Decan sat at the other end of the nine-foot table looking the evil bastard directly in the eye. They were back at Oasis, in a room with reinforced steel walls and automatic locked doors. The room had only this one table and four chairs. A smaller room connected by a narrow doorway held a mattress where Mackey would be sleeping for the foreseeable future. The man wore slacks and a button front white shirt, both of which were dirty and wet from the storm and the way Decan had been sure to drag him across the ground until tossing him into the trunk of the vehicle they’d traveled in. A few miles before entering into the forested area that would lead them back to an Oasis entrance, Mackey had been blindfolded and gagged and for good measure, Decan had knocked him unconscious with one punch. Nisa had frowned and called that overkill, but the fact that Gold was lying on the third row of the vehicle bleeding profusely from a wound Lial had inflicted with that fucking knife was motive enough for him.
“Then, please, fill us in,” Amelia asked, her dark hair pushed behind her ears as she sat in the chair to Mackey’s right.
She was closer to him as Jace had insisted she do the questioning instead of Decan. He probably thought that she would be more diplomatic than Decan who had made no effort to hide his rage toward the man when they arrived at the Central Zone Headquarters. Rome, Kalina and Nick, who had now delayed their trip back to Assembly Headquarters, were with Jace at the medical center where Ary was leading the curanderos in examining Cole Linden. Nisa was in the room with Decan, Amelia and the bastard. She stood by the door listening.
“Not a chance,” Mackey said with a sick grin. “I don’t answer to animals.”
“You won’t leave without providing some answers,” Amelia said in that cool, professional tone she always used.
Mackey tossed his head back, strands of his frosty white hair were sticking up giving him a crazed and delirious look.
“You don’t scare me. None of you!” he yelled.
Decan stood abruptly then, pushing the table until it pressed into Mackey’s chest, sending his chair sliding back until the man was trapped between the wall and the table.
“Why are you paying Lial to kill for you? And how long has he been working for you?” Decan asked, his tone anything but professional.
Mackey sobered as he tilted his head and glared at Decan. His beady little blue/green eyes usually hid behind wire-rimmed glasses. Tonight, the glasses were long gone and his eyes were clear as they focused on Decan. His lips pulled back from his perfect—too perfect to be real—bright white teeth and he slammed his fists onto the table before coughing.
“I swear I should’ve killed your ass when I had the opportunity! The moment that hooker you were screwing reported you, I should have had them cut your fucking head off!”
Decan pushed the table again, until this time Mackey coughed, gasped, and his face reddened.
“We want him alive, Decan,” Amelia said from where she now stood to the side of the table.
“Why?” Decan asked, whipping his head around to stare at her. “He’s never gonna tell us anything useful and even if he does, it’ll probably be all lies. You can’t trust him. He’s killing his own people as well as shifters!”
“You want me to tell you something?” Mackey asked in a wheezing voice.
Not giving a damn that he sounded like he might keel over at any moment, Decan only glared at Mackey in response.
“I’ll tell you that this dirty bastard you’ve got here is a liar and a cheater!” Mackey spat.
“Why do you say that?” Nisa asked as she stepped closer. “Because he hates you?”
“Noooo,” Mackey replied drawing the word out as he shook his head. “This isn’t about me, is it Decan? It’s never been about me?”
Decan’s fists clenched at his words. Nisa’s confusion was palpable. He did not turn so that he could look at her, but he did not need to. The questions were already running through her mind, ready to roll off her lips at any moment now. But Decan was more worried about the answers, the ones that might finally send her running.
“You know him personally?” Amelia asked before Nisa could speak.
Mackey laughed. “Oh yeah. Decan and I go way back. Don’t we Decan?”
“If you mean back to the five years you held me and thousands of other shifters captive in one of your killing camps, yeah, I guess so. Why don’t we talk about that?”
Decan knew it wasn’t going to work, the moment he said it. Mackey had latched on to his leverage and was more than ready to play his hand. He also knew what Mackey was going to say and hated like hell that this was going to play out in front of other people, instead of when he and Nisa could be alone.
“No, I think this little lady here would rather hear about how that hooker’s blood is on your hands and about how many had died since then because you and your friends wanted to play renegade.”
He chuckled as he looked at Nisa. Decan was about to push the table again, this time hard enough to crush that sorry bastard’s insides. But Nisa was faster. She moved around him, going to stand right next to where Mackey was pressed against the wall.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
“Nisa, he’s our prisoner,” Amelia began after tossing an irritated look at Decan. “We need to find out where Lial is now and who else might die because of the work he’s doing for the Ruling Cabinet.”
