Headhunter (With Me in Seattle Mafia #2) - Kristen Proby Page 0,4

that this asshole seems to enjoy handing out.

I don’t know where I am. After he plunged the needle into my arm at the clinic, I blacked out. This room is dark, with no windows. And I’m sitting in a chair, my hands tied behind my back, just like the James Bond movies.

“You’re going to tell me,” he says. His voice has remained calm the entire time. How long has it been? It feels like weeks.

“I’ve told you over and over again, I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.” His lips spread into a thin line. “My associates and I will be very disappointed if you don’t tell me where he hid the money. And they’ll be here soon.”

“My father couldn’t keep a dollar in his pocket,” I reply. “He spent money, his or anyone else’s, as soon as it landed in his hand. If he had your money, I’m sure he spent it long before he died and went to hell.”

His eyes narrow. “You didn’t like your father.”

“Of course, I didn’t. He was a pitiful excuse for a human being, and I ran away the first opportunity I got. And let me just say, at fifteen, it wasn’t like I could hide easily. But he also never came looking, so there was no love lost, was there?”

I firm my lips and blink the tears from my eyes. Not from crying. No, this asshole isn’t going to make me blubber like a baby. The water is from that last slap.

The man has a hell of a right arm.

He sighs and shakes his head.

“It’s too much money for you not to know where it is,” he insists. “So, we’re going to have to get a little rougher.”

He reaches over to a table and retrieves a pair of needle-nose pliers and bolt cutters.

“It would be a shame to start removing fingers from those dainty little hands.”

“I. Don’t. Know. Anything.”

“I. Don’t. Fucking. Believe. You.”

He leans in and almost touches my nose with his. I can see light flecks of gold in his green eyes. And something starts to spread through me.

Not just anger. Not just fear and frustration.

Determination.

“I’m going to take off your fingers and then your toes. And if that still doesn’t make you talk, I’m going to poke those pretty blue eyes out.”

“There’s one thing you didn’t think of,” I reply evenly. His eyes narrow just a bit, and I smile widely. “You forgot to tie my feet.”

And with that, I pull my knees to my chest and kick out with all my might, plowing the soles of my feet right into this asshole’s gut, sending him flying backward.

His arms flail, and he trips on a broken floorboard.

And then, as if in slow motion, he hits his head on the corner of a table and falls to the ground, blood gushing from his head.

His eyes are empty.

He’s not breathing.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, staring at him in horror. “Oh, shit. Shit shit shit. I killed him.”

I look around at the plain walls and the single door behind me that must lead to the outside.

But I can’t move. My hands are not tied to the chair, they’re tethered to the floor, the rope through a metal ring. So it’s not even like I can scooch my way over to the door and make noise.

I’m stuck.

I knew I was going to die in this room. Even if I’d told him what he wanted to know, even if I could, he would have killed me as soon as I did. I knew I wasn’t leaving here alive.

But now I have to die by starvation and without water? I would have rather he put a bullet in my head.

I sigh and stare at the man. I don’t know him. I have no idea what his name is, or how he knew my father. Obviously, my father double-crossed him on some deal. He mentioned his colleagues.

Who are they?

I don’t even know how long my father’s been dead. When this guy told me that he couldn’t make my dad pay before he died, it was the first I’d heard of his demise.

I’m not surprised. He would have only been in his mid-to-late fifties, but he’d lived a hard, dangerous life.

For me, he died when I was fifteen, and I ran out of that horrible place in New York.

“I’m going to have to sit here and watch him decompose,” I whisper in horror. “He’s going to smell and get disgusting. Jesus, why do I have to be so clumsy? Leave