“Just hold on. Mike’s house is just another ten minutes away.”
“So now Mike is gonna be in the same fucked up boat as the rest of us? Owing his life to that twisted freak!”
“There’s no avoiding it. It’s the only thing we can do.”
“I’m sorry. This is all my fault,” Mohammed said. “I shouldn’t have brought Emily in there. We should have gone in there with proper back-up. I should have never gotten you guys involved.”
Malloy looked in the rearview mirror, remembering that Emily was still back there and wondering why she wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t asking any questions. The Emily he knew would have been interrupting every minute to ask them what they were talking about and where they were going. But Emily was silent. She was leaning forward with one hand reaching over the front seat and resting on Mohammed’s shoulder. Mohammed held it, giving her hand an occasional squeeze that she barely seemed to notice. She was staring out the window.
Malloy looked over at the two of them. Something Mohammed said about Delilah screaming after drinking Emily’s blood kept replaying in his head.
What had she taken out of Emily that made her scream?
The priestess had presumably absorbed the negative emotions of her entire congregation on a regular basis.
Why was taking whatever Emily had inside her too much for her?
Malloy looked in the rearview mirror at Torres, and he was clearly gone. He was no longer breathing. Everyone was too preoccupied with their own thoughts to notice.
They reached Torres’s house, and Trina reached into his pocket for his keys.
“He’s gone,” she said, her voice hitching and choking up.
“I know.”
“You sure we should do this?”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“What are we going to say when we take him to the hospital afterward and they see that he’s unharmed? That guy was firing a Desert Eagle .50 caliber loaded with Black Talons. The bullets went right through the vest. Isn’t it going to look weird when he walks in without a scratch on him?”
Malloy shrugged. “So it looks weird then. I don’t give a fuck how it looks. This whole night’s going to look weird as hell on a report. We’ll throw the vest away so no one sees it. Let’s just get him inside.”
Mohammed got out of the car and walked around to the back to help Malloy, and together they lifted Torres out and carried him to the front door. Trina unlocked the door.
“He said Dale was in the basement.”
They carried Torres through the living room and into the kitchen.
“How the hell did he get a house with a basement in Vegas?” Malloy asked.
“It’s custom built. He designed it himself and his dad and his brother’s drew up the plans and hired all the contractors to build it. His whole family is in construction. He’s the only cop in the family. They built all the houses in this cul-de-sac. They had their own company until the economy went under and they went bankrupt.” Trina said.
They found the basement door, and Trina took some time figuring out which of the many keys on Torres’s keychain fit which of the three deadbolts.
“This was supposed to be his safe room. You know, in case of a home invasion. He used to keep all his guns and stuff down here.”
Finally she got the door open. A light was on downstairs and they heard someone stand, someone who was obviously chained to something judging by the unmistakable tinkling of metal links when he stood. Trina led the way with her gun drawn and Malloy and Mohammed followed, carrying Torres’s lifeless body between them. They reached the bottom of the stairs where Dale McCarthy stood staring with that ridiculous grin.
He looked exactly as he had the last time Malloy had seen him in that house in North Las Vegas over Harry and Trina’s mutilated corpses, with Torres’s gun to his head. His scrawny body, oversized Adam’s apple, concave chest, and bowed shoulders made him look more like a victim than a perpetrator, but his nervous, shifty eyes sparkled with malevolence and his grin was one of cynical superiority, despite the fact that he was the one wearing shackles on his wrists and ankles and locked in a basement with no windows.
He looked from Trina to Malloy and Mohammed to Torres’s corpse.
“You’re going to fix him. Do you hear me? You’re going to bring him back.”
“Only if you let me go. He’s the one keeping me locked up down here. Why should I bring him back? I didn’t kill him,” Dale said, and Trina swatted him across the mouth with the butt of her pistol, knocking him to the floor and spraying blood and teeth onto the wall beside him. She kicked him in the stomach and then the side of the head. She lifted her foot above his face, preparing to stomp.
“Okay! Okay! I’ll do it!”
Trina backed up, still aiming the pistol at his head as Dale climbed back to his feet, spitting blood and jagged chips of shattered teeth.
He took a few steps toward Malloy and Mohammed then paused. He looked at everyone again, recognition dawning on his face. His smile returned, coated in blood and missing three of his front teeth.
“I know you, don’t I? Yeah, I remember you.”
“That’s because you fucking tortured me, you piece of shit! And if you don’t bring Mike back, with the Lord as my witness, I will damn well return the favor. Happily!” Trina shouted.
Dale shook his head. “I’m sure you would. But I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to her!”
He pointed behind them.
They all turned to see Emily standing on the stairs looking like she’d seen a ghost.
Table of Contents