Infinite Loop - Chapter 26

I Can Kill Them Real Quick

Warren remained too busy trying to breathe to notice Amber. The woman refused to look at the beating occurring in front of her. Instead, she stared down at the open notebook, nearly crushed in her hand.

After Warren recovered enough to catch a breath, he felt his head jerked up by his hair.

“Where’s the statues, queenie?” Harry asked as his foul breath hit his prisoner’s face.

Warren barely shook his head, and he felt two more quick punches in his abdomen. Even if he wanted to talk, Warren didn’t have enough air left in him. All the prisoner could do was groan at each blow from the gorilla’s fist. Through the waves of pain, Warren thought he heard ribs crack. He desperately sought air as the bitter bile rose in the back of his throat. Blood mixed with dripping sweat in his mouth, Warren suddenly believed his fate was to die this way. It would be another ironic end for him to remember when he awoke again in another film role.

Warren saw the next blow coming, and he feebly pushed away from his tormentor with his feet. Harry’s punch caught Warren in the jaw, and the momentum sent the chair over, falling to the floor. Warren’s head struck the wood. When he opened his eyes, he saw the black pumps worn by Mary just above him. Amid the dizziness, he recognized a familiar picture on Amber’s ankle as she moved her legs away from the bleeding man.

“I’m dying at your feet again,” Warren spit the words out with bloody saliva and a tooth.

Amber stared down in frozen horror as she remembered her nightmare from the early morning. She grimaced as Harry gleefully kicked the bound man in the groin, causing the prisoner to retch.

“Stop it, I need him alive,” Amber yelled at Mary.

Trying to improvise a way to halt the beating, she remembered an item written in the notebook.

“Listen to me, he’s not going to talk, and if you beat him to death, you’re on the hook for murder,” she frantically told Mary.

“Look at him. He’s already talking crazy. I tell you he was yelling at the sky and saying crazy things, just like I said earlier.”

She forced the notebook into the other woman’s face.

“Look at this! I think I’ve figured this out. Right here in this notebook.”

Mary told her accomplice to stop as Harry was reaching down to pick up Warren from the floor.

“Alright, sugar, let me see whatcha’ got?” She asked.

“First, we make a deal, and then I tell you.” Amber pulled the notebook back.

Mary scowled at her.

“Don’t make me have Harry take it from you,” she warned.

“You’re wasting time,” Amber warned. “I don’t know anything about those statues you want. But I figured out enough to know you don’t have much time before that ship leaves Boston. Once it leaves, that’s it. The ship has your clue to finding the statues. Now, do you want to deal or not?”

Harry stepped toward Amber, smiled grimly.

“I’ll beat it out of her,” he grunted.

“Hold it, Harry,” Mary told him. “Alright, sugar, what’s your deal?”

“Tell me what my father thinks Baker has on him. Give me the truth, and I give Warren Baker to my dad,” she said. “You get those statues with no string attached. I can’t say a word to my father about them because it will just muddy things up. Think about it. This guy’s got two murders pinned on him. Nobody will believe a thing he says.”

Mary stared at the woman for a long moment as Amber felt sweat trickling down her spine.

“I don’t get your angle on this, sugar. You don’t care about this guy, do you?” She asked.

Amber shook her head.

“Of course not. He’s been nothing but trouble. But I care about my dad. I have to protect him,” she said. “If Warren Baker gets killed, that means my father is still at risk. But if he’s captured, there’s nothing he can do.”

“I don’t trust her,” Harry growled his warning.

“I don’t either,” his partner agreed. “But I know something she doesn’t. Ok, you have a deal. First, tell me what you have?”