Page 31 of Bulletproof Baby
"I can't. He'll kill me," Asshole One replies.
Armande tips his head to the side. "You do understand where you are, right? Look around you, buddy. You think this plastic wrap was rolling out the red carpet for you? The fucking welcome mat? Why did you try to kidnap the woman tonight?"
"I swear. I don't know anything." Asshole One is trying his best to put up a fight, but my impatience grows.
Armande Is just as impatient as he pulls the gun from behind his waistband. He drags the clip out, slides it into place, makes sure a bullet is in the chamber, and shoots Asshole One through his forearm. The scream rips around the room. I watch the other two hanging beside him. Their reactions tell me a lot.
The second intruder, Asshole Two, forces out a heavy exhale, gluing his eyes to the ceiling. The third, on the other hand, Asshole Three, pisses himself and begins sobbing from behind his duct tape. He's going to tell me everything. I nod my head toward him after I snap my fingers to catch Armande's attention.
Armande moves behind Asshole One, blood dripping down his arm as it still hangs above his head. Asshole One's screams shift into intense growls to control the pain. The bullet blew out a nickel-sized chunk of flesh with a few bone bits. Blood trickles out of the wound like a dripping faucet. Armande does Asshole One a favor and puts him out of his misery.
The sound of Armande's gun firing silences the noises of the dying intruder as the bullet pierces his skull. Splatters of blood spurt onto the plastic tarp, spraying out like a Pollock painting and making me take a step back.
Asshole Two continues to stare at the ceiling while Asshole Three is visibly panicking. Asshole Three’s eyes go wide as he desperately shouts from behind his duct-taped mouth. I have no doubt that he'll tell me everything I need to know, and probably some things I don't.
Armande lowers both Asshole Two and Three to the point of kneeling like their dead ring leader. We don't waste time with the second. The gunshot to the back of Asshole Two's head echoes as the third captive melts into tears. He's inconsolable, which makes me wonder why he's here. This isn't the kind of man you send to kidnap someone.
Armande walks closer to Asshole Three, who's trembling and begins wiggling like a fish on a hook. Even if he manages to break free, where does he think he's going? The plastic tarp scrunches under his feet as he continues trying to escape. Blood smears and trickles closer to his flailing body. With his arms in the air above him, he can't find his footing and his feet fail to grip the ground out of his kneeling position.
I sigh, wondering how long it's going to take him to calm down to extract the information I need. When Armande snatches the tape off his mouth, the third captive blubbers through his words.
"Please. Please. I didn't know what we were doing. I didn't know. Please," he cries. Sweat plasters dark brown strands of hair to his forehead. He's skinny, with sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. Desperation spills out of his pores.
"If you didn't know what you were doing, why did you attack me?" I ask him.
"Please." His eyes dart back and forth between me and Armande. The guy can barely keep his composure. "I had to do it. Jimmy said he was going to kill me if I didn't. I owe him money. I didn't have a choice."
"There's always a choice," Armande huffs from behind our sniveling captive. It makes the guy shrink away from Armande.
"Please don't kill me. I was told to drive the van and help them. As soon as we got the chick, she's supposed to read and record the message."
"What message?" I ask him.
"It's on the phone. The phone's in the van," he says.
I look at Armande. "What did we do with the van?"
"It's at a chop shop, but we cleaned it up before dropping it off," Armande says as he walks over to the Barrone family soldier who pulls a device from his pocket. Armande brings the phone over to me before walking over to the guy. He grabs the rope suspending Asshole Three's arms above him, and yanks it off the hook. Relief washes over the captive's face as he's finally able to put his arms down.
"Show me," I tell him, but I also issue a warning. "Don't do anything stupid either."
He doesn't know that he's going to die, anyway. There's no way he should be allowed to get away with attempting to kidnap any woman, let alone one that belongs to me.
With his wrists still bound in rope, the guy swipes across the screen before pointing a few things out to Armande. When Armande comes back toward me, he hands me the phone and shows the instructions in a note app. There aren't any texts, phone calls, or any identifying information stored on the device. Just instructions on a sticky note-looking screen.
"If you want me safely returned, unharmed and untouched, you know what you must do. Tell the CEO to check his mailbox for the invoice. Once it's paid, you'll get instructions on where to pick me up," I murmur the words.
My gut tells me this is Saul's handiwork, but I need concrete evidence if I'm going to take it to the heads of La Familia before I put Saul in the ground. I glare at the guy with disgust. "What happens after she reads this, it gets to her parents, I assume, and everything is paid?"
"We, um, were supposed to wait for Jimmy to call. Jimmy would come grab her and drop her off."
"Jimmy who?" I ask him.
He shrugs. "I don't fucking know the asshole's last name. He runs the gambling book out of Canarsie."
Armande growls and taps the barrel of his gun against Asshole Three's head. "That can be fucking anybody. Who the fuck still uses bookies, anyway? There are apps for that."
Asshole Three shrugs, his gaze still shifting between me and Armande, but landing on me. I don't know what about my energy says that I'm the more lenient between us, but he's not getting any sympathy from me. I raise an eyebrow, asking him, "You want us to find a guy named Jimmy in Brooklyn. What is he? White, Black, Armenian, Asian? What?"