The Gentlemen's Hour

137

They’d tortured him.

Blasingame is duct-taped to a chair by the wrists and ankles. The fingers of his neatly severed hands, laying on the floor, are all broken. So are the bones in his feet.

His dead eyes are wide with horror and pain.

Johnny can’t tell if they’d stuffed the dirt in his mouth before or after planting the two bullets in his forehead, but maybe the ME will be able to establish that.

Two victims shot in the forehead, he thinks. Unusual for a pro, who would usually shoot his marks in the back of the head. But this one was no crime of passion, it was a professional job. So maybe this pro is a sicko—likes to see the look on the victim’s face before he dies.

The dirt is odd, though. He’s seen the severed-hands bit before—a Mexican drug cartel punishment for someone who got greedy and put his hands where they shouldn’t be. They broke his fingers first to get information, then punished him as a lesson to others, then finished him off.

But the dirt?

What is that about?

Like he got greedy and built Paradise Homes on bad dirt, and certain people are going to lose a lot of money, so they decided to make him accountable?

Fucking Boone, Johnny thinks.