Page 29 of Redemption
With a few more taps, I have her address.
I turn the phone to face him. “You see this? This is how you get people killed. You’re a fucking idiot, Marchand. I would’ve thought Leo or the Old Man would’ve taught you better before they used you to start a war.”
“They didn’t! Don’t touch her. I’ll fucking kill you.” He wrestles against the tape, but there’s nothing he can do to get free.
“You feel pretty fucking helpless right now, don’t you? You made some very poor decisions today, kid. Decisions are what plot the map of your life. Life is like a game of Chutes and Ladders. One bad decision can have you sliding all the way down into a pile of your own entrails, where someone you love dies with you. Do you get what I’m saying, Remy? It was a bad fucking decision to try to kill me.”
His jaw tenses, and I have to give him at least a little credit. He’s not shooting his mouth off anymore. And he hasn’t pissed himself, which is admirable. Plenty of grown men would’ve by now if they were in his shoes.
“She didn’t do anything.” His tone is a lot rougher and less cocky now.
I smile as I tap around some more on the screen of his phone. “Your whole life is in here, kid. Rule number one of being an assassin: don’t bring anything to a job that can identify you or get people you love killed. I can’t believe they didn’t at least tell you that.”
“I’m not an assassin. No one sent me.”
I huff out a laugh as I find what I’m looking for—Uncle Leo’s contact information. “I believe you about the first—you’re a piss-poor shot, and you made every rookie mistake in the book. The second … I’m not so sure about yet. But I bet Uncle Leo is going to tell me the truth.” I glance at the kid’s face, watching it go pale. “At least if he wants to see you alive again.”
He swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.
“You can’t be more scared of Leo Marchand than you are of me.”
The kid looks down and to the side.
Well, that could help.
I pull a burner phone from my pocket and punch in Leo’s number. It’s one I could have easily gotten another way, but this was more fun. The kid has plenty of lessons yet to learn.
Before I initiate the call, I walk to the toolbox against the wall. Inside it are things no human ever wants to see while they’re duct-taped to a chair beneath a single bare light bulb. But instruments of death aren’t what I’m looking for.
Ahh, there we go. A pin. Using it, I pop the side slide on the kid’s phone and remove the SIM card. We don’t need Uncle Leo tracking him to my exact location.
I drop both the cell phone and the SIM card into a Faraday cage as a precaution, then turn back around to face Remy de Marchand.
“Smile,” I say as I snap a pic of him with my burner phone.
He looks a bit rougher than he did at the cemetery while shooting at me, but he’s alive, which makes today his lucky day.
I send the picture to Leo’s number first.
“Let’s hope your uncle keeps his phone on him.”
I have to give the kid some credit. He doesn’t say a word. I look at the clock mounted to the wall behind his head. The second hand ticks fifteen times before my burner phone rings.
“You’re going to regret this until your last breath, which won’t be long in coming,” a cultured voice says as soon as I answer the call.
“Why did you send your nephew to kill me?” I ask in response.
“What?” The shocked reply tells me everything I needed to know, even before he continues, “I’d never fucking send him to—who the fuck is this?”
“Ahh, Leo, I thought you’d never ask. You’re speaking to Lachlan Mount.”
“Merde,” he says in a hushed tone. “Mon Dieu. Fucking hell. No fucking way. I didn’t send him. Why the fuck would I do something so stupid? He’s a kid, Mount. A stupid fucking kid. Please, whatever he’s done?—”
I cut him off. “He unloaded an entire mag at me in a cemetery when I was trying to lay my best friend to rest. He nearly killed a priest as well.”
“Fucking hell!” He sputters something in French that I don’t catch. “I’m going to fucking kill him!”
“You’re going to have to get in line, Leo. I’m not real happy with the kid myself right now.”
