Page 5 of The Hangman's Rope
“Houston, we have a problem,” he said flatly, and his voice held the bitter tang of iron and displeasure.
“What’s that?” Hangman asked as the man stood atop the three steps leading down here, the door swinging idly behind him.
“She’s a special case,” he said. “A Jane Doe, set for cremation.”
“Fuck,” Hangman muttered.
“What does that mean?” I asked, staring across the big room at him.
“It means until we do some more digging, you’re staying right where you are,” he said, his dark gaze stormy where it settled on me.
“Please,” I said and I lunged, but Hangman was too fast. He wrapped his arms and legs around me and held me fast as I screamed and fought and cried, but all the dark-haired one he’d called Grim did was stand there with his arms crossed, wincing at the noise I made.
Not good.
Chapter Three
Hangman…
She worked herself up into a tizzy, shrieked and screamed, kicked, and even fucking bit me – but it was all for nothing. I wasn’t letting go and she wasn’t going anywhere. Not until we figured some shit out.
We couldn’t move her in broad daylight, and this time of year, the sun wasn’t setting until almost nine o’clock. It was just our fucking luck she’d come to in the afternoon. It wasn’t great, but it was better than keeping her held up all day.
Grim said to hold her and that he was calling Syn, which pretty much told me everything I needed to know. Lorelai, no last name given, no real clue if it was even her name to begin with, had done something or crossed someone in Savannah’s underworld or elite to wind up here.
Body disposal wasn’t something the club typically offered when it wasn’t a body that we’d personally dropped for monetary exchange, so there had to besomekind of trail to track backward where she was concerned. It was just about getting the ball rolling on that and deciding if she was more valuable to us deador alive. Never knew, her being here might provide us leverage in something. We weren’t above blackmail if it was lucrative enough.
I felt a little bad for her, but not much. I figured a few hours to a day or two and we’d know what was up and would make a decision as to what should be done with her.
She begged, she cried, she hyperventilated, but all of it was for naught.
I stayed down here with her and hoped like hell she didn’t try me again, because damn it, muscle fatigue was a real thing. I couldn’t keep this shit up forever and I really didn’t want to shoot her.
The high oblong windows started to dim with the setting of the sun and just before full dark, the president himself came through the double doors. He came down the steps and pulled a rolling stool over and dropped onto it, bracing his forearms onto his knees, and leaning in. He fixed Lorelai with an unreadable gaze from behind a pair of dark aviators.
“You’re a problem,” he said to her, point blank.
“I promise, I’m not—” I tightened my hold on her and she fell silent.
Synister smirked and nodded slowly. “No, you are,” he said. “Right now, you’re one great big pain in my ass that I don’t know what to fucking do with.”
“Just let me go,” she pleaded desperately.
“Can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “Not yet.”
“What’s the scoop?” I asked.
“In about an hour, shit should be dark enough. We’ll get some of the guys down here to help you get her into the crypt until we can figure out who she is, where she came from, and why the fuck she wound up here.”
With that alone, Syn told me everything that I needed to know.
Hedidn’t know, which meant that this was one big clusterfuck. There was no telling if she was important or not and we weren’t in the business of just arbitrarily killing a woman who was supposed to already be dead. Never could tell. She could be valuable to us. Still, it was dicey what he was suggesting. Keeping her, and in the crypt? Shit, she’d been through a lot and she was pretty, soft against me. With Reaper being a fucking pervert – I couldn’t believe I was going to say this – but I felt bad for what was about to happen.
“You got two options right now,” I growled in her ear when Syn was pulled away by Grim. “Option one, keep being a pain in the ass and I fucking bury you in a moldy-ass crypt where no one can hear you scream, and you cook in the tepid heat all day, in the pitch black, with only a bucket to piss in if you even have enough hydration in youtopiss.”
“Option two…” she said. “Option two has to be better.”
“Option two is me going out on a big fucking limb for you, but I promise you, it’s loads better than that.”
