Limitless (8 page)

“I got nuffing to tell you,” Angus said, his Adam’s apple bobbing from where he sat tied to a steel chair. It had a nice aesthetic, Philip had thought when he’d bought it. It wouldn’t look out of place in a modern flat.

Or here, bolted to a concrete floor, with a shuddering, naked, fat-arsed man attached to it via steel handcuffs.

“I don’t need you to tell me anything, Angus,” Philip said, giving him a thin smile.

“Oh?” Angus looked from him to Antonio, who stood in the corner in the shadows, arms folded as he leaned against the wall. The bomb maker looked thoroughly bored, as if he might keel over from the tedium right there. “Then why are you bothering with me?”

Philip took a breath as a way to measure his response. Then he took another. Fear was created in those moments between words, in that heady silence that came before Angus saw something that would take his own breath away.

Like now.

Liliana pulled the old man along on the chains suspended from the ceiling. He was hooked upside down, still, long strips of skin still missing and the muscle beneath exposed under a thin layer of blood. He hung, well, just a lump like the sides of beef and pork that had probably been suspended in this very warehouse when it was open for operation. It was handy, having the ceiling tracks so they could pull someone along like that.

The rattle of the chains drew Angus’s head around just in time to see Liliana dragging the old man into his view. Angus’s face drained of the slight color it had possessed before, and he was left smacking his lips together. “What is this?”

“This is your future,” Philip said, not letting even a hint of a smile creep out. “Though I daresay yours is perhaps not as long, torturous or even robust as his.”

Angus’s lips pursed together hard and Philip enjoyed the sight of it. The bigger man was clearly fighting for courage. But there wasn’t much courage to be had here. After all, courage sprouted from hope—hope that one could accomplish something, hope that maybe he would be able to hold out for rescue.

There wasn’t any of that here.

And Philip was going to enjoy every minute of watching Angus come to that very realization himself.

“Is that…?” Angus’s voice sounded small at first, then gained in strength. “Is that you, Janus?”

The old man made a feeble croak. “Yessss…”

“Good God, what have you done to him?” Angus’s look went to a more deeply horrified place.

“Flayed him,” Liliana said in that dead tone. It caused Angus to look over at her, as though he were taking notice for the very first time that she was even here.

“You bastards,” Angus said, which was unexpected. Philip almost snorted a laugh, to see this little pig try and stand up on its hind legs in defiance. “You’re all a bunch of right bastards.” He spat at Philip. “You’re an arse.” He looked to Liliana. “You’re a twat.” He turned his gaze to Antonio in the corner. “And you’re a prick.”

Antonio came off the wall slightly, a perplexed look crossing his dark features as he turned to Liliana. “What’s the difference between a twat and a prick?”

“It is no great surprise to me…” Janus said from where he hung upside down, bleeding to the floor, “… that you would not know the answer to that.”

Antonio started toward the old man, but Philip stopped him with a simple motion of the hand. “His future is not that bright,” Philip said. “Let him bask in the pain.” He snapped a finger at Liliana and she produced a knife, which she stabbed into the old man’s thigh. A high-pitched scream cut the air. She ran the blade down through the meat, and the agonizing noise continued.

But now Angus added to it with a sound of his own—feverish, heavy, high-pitched breaths drawn all too quickly.

Ah. There was the fear.

Philip watched as Liliana pulled her blade from Janus, and with a nod he beckoned her on to Angus. The little piggy did better than he would have expected, lasting almost a full thirty seconds before he let loose his first scream.

After that, he did not stop until it was over.

Chapter 15

It was a simple brick house with a lovely yard—I think they call them gardens over here—and a white picket fence ringing the whole thing. If the sun had been shining instead of grey clouding out the twilight, it would have been idyllic. We parked on the street and got out, still wordless, Webster having fallen into a deep hole of reticence after we got in the car at New Scotland Yard.

I suspected he was afraid of the same thing all big, strong, proud men were afraid of.

That his mommy was going to tell me embarrassing stories about him. Or show me pictures of his naked butt from childhood. Which I didn’t care about. Because I was more interested in his naked butt as an adult.

That didn’t need to be said, though.

He went through a sequence of emotions as we walked up to the front door. They played out on his face one by one, and the common theme undergirding them all was fear. I knew because when it came to mothers, I was deeply familiar with fear. I knew all about it.

“Listen,” he said, pausing on the step just outside. The hesitation was a force of its own, his lower lip jutting slightly. It was kinda cute. “My mum…”

“Is she some kind of heinous villain who’s going to cut me off at the knees?” I asked.

“No, nothing like that,” he said with a shake of the head. “Besides, you’ve already had that happen once today.”

“Is she cruel? Will she lock me in the basement and never let me out?”

“What? No,” he said, mildly horrified.

“Then we’re fine,” I said and knocked on the door for him. He looked a little jarred as I did it but swallowed his pride and knocked himself, a little louder, as though I hadn’t just done it.

“Just a minute!” came a high voice from inside, muffled by the doors and walls between us. I could hear someone bustling across wood floors in a hurry. When the door swung open, we were faced with a delightful, matronly lady who stood partially obscured behind the door. Her hair was tinged with red, making it a light auburn. She already wore a smile before she even saw Webster, but it brightened immediately once she laid eyes on him.

“Matthew!” she cried out in joy and had him in a great hug a second later. She crossed over the threshold without even taking notice of me, and she buried her head on his chest. She was shorter than him by a head or more and looked to be an inch or two taller than me, if that. She carried with her a faint scent of sweet perfume that reminded me of grandmothers I had passed in various stores.

After a solid minute of hugging him, she came off and saw me. “Oh, and who is this?” She asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “Matthew, have you brought a—”

“She’s working with me, Mum,” Webster said before she could finish her thought. “Sienna Nealon, this is my mum, Marjorie. Mum, this is Sienna Nealon.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, dear,” she said and hugged me, too. I felt her arms envelop me and was utterly powerless to stop her. She was warm and sweet, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged.

Then I remembered and felt a lump in my throat.

“Oh, let me look at you,” she said, breaking off. “Any friend of Matthew’s is welcome in this house, of course.” She hurried back inside. “I wish you’d called, though!” She disappeared through the door. “I haven’t had a chance to straighten anything at all, the place is a dreadful mess.”

Webster gestured for me to enter, and I did. I found myself in a hallway that led past a narrow staircase. To the right was a sitting room that opened into a small kitchen. Overstuffed couches filled the sitting room, and bookshelves filled with books lined the walls. Each shelf was neatly arranged from tallest to shortest book. There were two perfectly folded blankets on the back of each couch.

My eyes fell to a table just to my right in the entry; it had freshly cut flowers from the garden, bright yellow and red ones, and when I let my finger run idly across the surface of the table, it came back completely free of dust.

Clearly, Ma Webster and I had differing ideas about what constituted a “dreadful mess.”

“I’ve got Lancashire hotpot on,” she called from in the kitchen. “The kettle’s almost boiling as well, if you’d care for some tea.” Her head popped around the entry to the sitting room. “Sienna, was it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

“Mum,” Webster called as he shut the door and locked it, “Sienna’s come over from the States. She’s uh… in need of a place to stay for the night.”

I heard something clatter in the kitchen. “An American, dear?” Her head poked out again and she still wore a genuine smile. “Any friend of Matthew’s is welcome here, of course.” She straightened. “Oh, but the spare bedroom is in a terrible state, I’ll need to clean it immediately—” She froze. “Oh, the hotpot!” She disappeared back into the kitchen.

I glanced at Webster. “Yeah, your mom is a real terror. I see why you warned me about her.”

He cringed. “She’s a lovely person, really. She just… maybe tries a bit too hard.”

“To what?” I asked, bereft of a clue. “To please others? God, what a failing that is.”

“It can be a bit awkward,” he said, clearly a little embarrassed.

“Oh, how you have suffered,” I said, “having a mother who endears herself to other people.”

“It’s harder than you think,” he said. “Every one of my friends liked her more than me. She always had biscuits for them, always had extra dinner—and apparently she continues the tradition, even years after I got my own flat—I can’t even count the number of my former girlfriends she keeps in touch with in spite of me being done with them for years and years.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, yeah? Are there are lot of those?”

He grunted and looked a little flushed. “The point is, it’s not easy to live in her shadow.”

“I’ve got some biscuits before dinner,” Marjorie said, appearing from the kitchen with a tray of cookies. A pot of tea sat in the middle of it, and three cups with saucers were arranged around the tray. She made her way to the overstuffed couches and bid us enter with a wave as she set it upon the table in the middle of the room. “Well, come on, then. The tea will get cold.”

“Truly, I know no one with a burden as great as yours,” I muttered to Webster as I came into the sitting room.

“One lump or two, dear?” Marjorie asked.

“Two, I guess.” I didn’t really do tea, so I didn’t know what was better. I liked my coffee sweet, though.

“And one for Matthew—” Marjorie started.

“None for Matthew,” he corrected.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said and rapped her knuckles against the wooden table’s edge. “I forget that you’re watching your weight. Good heavens, though, Matthew, I do worry that you’re not eating enough. You’re a growing lad—”

“All my upward growing is done, Mum,” he said as he seated himself on the sofa next to her. “Now it’s all horizontal growth.”

“Of course,” she said, almost resigned. “But I’ve always maintained that a girl likes to be with a man who has a healthy appetite and a reasonable waistline.” She looked at me. “What do you think, Sienna dear?”

I had a hot cup of tea about two inches from my mouth when she asked. “Uh… sure.”

She beamed at me and picked up the plate that had the cookies on it. “Biscuit, dear?”

Chapter 16

Angus was dead. Philip had watched it happen, oh so slowly. It was really a joy to watch, especially knowing what Angus had represented. What he’d been a part of.

“Messy,” Antonio opined. He didn’t usually stay to watch, preferring to spend his time in the office mucking about with his toys. He’d stayed for this one, though. It was as though being called a prick had awakened a primal desire within the man to see some suffering.

Well, there had been plenty of that.

“Where’s the next target?” Liliana asked. Her arms were bathed in red from elbow to fingertips. Philip wondered if part of that was her ability, causing the blood to cling to her. He glanced at the corpse of Angus Waterman, then looked back to Liliana. No, it was probably just the nature of what had happened that caused her to be so soaked.

“We have a wide open field,” Philip said, his arms crossed in front of him. He’d kept his distance so as to keep his suit free from the bodily fluids that had spattered throughout the chamber. “I have a clear line to each of them.”

“Are you concerned that the police will find them?” Antonio asked.

“No,” Philip said. “It’s a very slight possibility, not likely at all.” He dealt in possibilities, in the chances that the things he saw coming would reach fruition. It was a very segmented way of looking at life, he knew, but it was his advantage. It was what made him unique.

It was what made him invincible.

“No,” Philip said again. “They’ll keep. What we need to do now is take this trail that we’ve been so neatly laying for the Metropolitan Police—and now Ms. Nealon—to follow and introduce a red herring for them to chase before we carry out tomorrow’s business.” He tapped his chin, giving a slight nod of acknowledgment to Antonio. Liliana had an idea about how to do that. “Something that will… shall we say… up the chaos quotient? Make our ultimate goal a bit easier to achieve by taking their attention away…” He glanced at Liliana. “I believe you might know someone who fits that description.”

She was not smiling, but it was apparent in her bearing that she had something in mind. “Chaos?” she asked in that dark, satisfied voice. “I think I know someone whose bloody death will cause more than a little chaos…”

Chapter 17

I’d never had Lancashire hotpot before, and I ate like I’d never eaten anything before in my life. Like I hadn’t had ten of those biscuits Marjorie had offered me. And two cups of warm, sugary tea.

“Gracious, dear, slow down,” Marjorie said to me with a smile. “There’s plenty enough for you, and if it’s not enough I can make you something else—”

“It’s plenty, Mum,” Webster said. “There’s still half the pot left, and I’m done.”

I glanced at Marjorie’s plate. She had what I would consider a half portion, and she’d had barely three bites of it. She had a nervous energy about her, like she was ready to get up and start bustling about, cleaning something or making something else. She stayed seated, though, shooting a reassuring smile at Webster before cutting a slice of potato no bigger than my thumb in half and gingerly chewing it.