Witch Lights Read Online Free PDF Page B

psycho pricks. The diaperhead tied to the chair had been through the wringer over the past few days—twenty-four hours of Motörhead blasting while he was locked in a cell with a strobe light in his face, then paraded naked in front of two female soldiers, his dick shriveled so small it was almost invisible. One of the women had wiped a tampon covered in fake blood on his face, but the fucker still wouldn’t talk. And then Steve had applied all the pressure points to his muscles and tendons until the bastard had screamed himself hoarse, vomited, and passed out.
    He wouldn’t confess. He kept insisting he knew nothing, that he was just a cab driver, not a jihadist. That the guns found in his trunk had been put there by someone else. The usual bullshit.
    Steve was getting more than a little sick of the lying bastard and his frightened, pleading rabbit eyes. Of his nonstop whimpering beneath duct-taped lips and the yellow snot that leaked from his hooked nose.
    The behavioral science consultation team had told Steve what needed to be done. After the injection—probably the hallucinogenic antimalarial that was their current favorite lip loosener—it was all up to him. One last chance. Steve opened the door and another MP led the boy into the room. He was about six or seven. William’s age. Eyes wide, streaks all down his dirty face from his tears, lower lip trembling.
    The fucker started screaming and writhing around in his restraints when he saw his son. Finally.
    Steve led the boy in front of his father. The kid was crying now, the father jerking like the guy before him who’d had the car battery attached to his balls with jumper cables.
    The fucked-up shrinks knew what they were doing. He’d talk now.
    Steve put on rubber gloves.
    —
    And then it was over, and he was looking into Lily’s huge eyes, and what the holy hell had just happened?
    “Are you okay, Steve?” she asked.
    He shook his head. Had he been flashing back? Christ. Not again—not in front of her. Not when so much was at stake.
    “Steve?”
    It all vanished. Whatever it had been, it was over. “I’m okay. Just a little lightheaded.” He’d switched to a newer antidepressant a week ago. That was probably it. It gave him weird little zings like that.
    Lily took her hand from his, and it felt like a connection had broken. The room came back into sharper focus. She was smiling now. “You know, Steve…I think we might have more in common than I suspected.”
    —
    Four days later Steve climbed out of Lily’s hired car and boarded a private jet to Mexico City.
    —
    The damn bugs were everywhere. Ray sat against a tree, sweating, itching, and swatting at himself. Mosquitos were the least of the things biting him. The whole jungle seemed to want to eat him alive. He slapped at his neck and felt an insect’s shell crack against his wet palm. He wiped off its sticky innards, cursing. Never again would he set foot off a paved surface.
    He’d been alternately sitting and pacing for hours, and the sky was starting to turn a bruised purple. The sun would be coming up soon. He didn’t know how long it would take, but if they didn’t get to him soon he wasn’t sure he could maintain even his last fragile bit of sanity.
    And the questions kept tormenting him. Why had they taken Ellen and William and not him? If Lily was behind their abduction it didn’t make any sense for her to take them and leave him. And Lily had to be behind it, because who would kidnap Ellen and William—and for what? But what if it wasn’t her doing? He’d heard stories of
gringos
getting kidnapped and held for ransom in Guatemala City. Rumors of white women suspected of stealing Guatemalan children being mobbed and beaten. It wasn’t like those things never happened.
    But whoever it was, it was a
him
who had orchestrated it. And he had enough power and money to employ a team of henchmen and to fly Ellen and William somewhere. To do what, though?
    None of it made sense, and it