Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

beside her, holding her firmly by the arm.
    “I had no idea you liked them so young, Mac,” Jean-Marc said.
    My heart froze, then began to pound furiously.
    “Are you okay?” I said to Tina
    She nodded once, fast. She was frightened but looked unharmed. Her expression was a mix of confusion and alarm.
    I thought quickly of what Augie had told me about the machete gang having killed Tina’s mother in front of her.
    “What do you want?” I said to Jean-Marc.
    “It’s easy, MacManus. I want my sister.”
    “I have no idea where she is.”
    Jean-Marc nodded, then sighed as if approaching a tedious task. He removed a long-barreled semiautomatic pistol from his belt. It was identical to the gun he and Long had given me. He pulled Tina close and pressed the muzzle into her neck. He had cotton work gloves on, gardener gloves.
    Tina winced at the sight of the gun and tightened suddenly, drawing a sharp breath. Her own reaction seemed to startle her as much as her captor’s aggression. She rose up to her toes, as if to get away from the gun. She was unable to speak, her gray eyes wild and unfocused.
    “It can be easy or it can be hard, Mac. That’s all up to you.”
    “She’s not a part of this, Jean-Marc.”
    “Fine, hard it is,” he said. He nodded toward Searls, who moved in beside me fast and slapped a handcuff around my right wrist. There was nothing I could do. Then he attached the other cuff to his own left wrist. I heard the mechanism inside click. My heart slumped.
    With his right hand, Searls tossed a small pair of keys to Jean-Marc, who snatched them out of the air and stuffed them into his jeans pocket. Grabbing Tina’s arm again, Jean-Marc pulled her even closer, pressing the muzzle deeper into her neck. She rose higher onto her toes, as high as she could go. I knew now she was trying to escape the pain of the metal jamming into her thin neck.
    Searls went straight for the Spyderco knife clipped in my hip pocket. As he removed it, his face entered my line of vision. I focused on it. I saw slit-eyes and pock-marked skin and scars. I could feel his breath, I could smell him. He smiled at me, his face turning even uglier. I saw that a tooth was missing.
    “Fifteen years as a boxer,” he hissed, “and I never got a tooth knocked out.” He pointed to the empty space. “This was you. Remember?” He held my eyes for a moment, then leaned back and slid my knife into his own pocket. “You and me are going to have some fun,” he said, tugging on the cuffs for emphasis. “You belong to me now. We’re practically engaged.”
    I ignored that, and once Searls was clear of my line of vision, I looked again at Jean-Marc and Tina. The sight of his hand tight around Tina’s upper arm angered me. But I did what I could to hide that from him.
    “As much as your new friend here would like the opportunity to persuade you to tell me what I want to know,” Jean-Marc said, “I don’t have time for that. I had a tap put on your friend’s phone, the one you called from Montauk. That’s how we knew to come here. Your other friend, the paranoid PI you work for, he uses the same pay phone on the corner of Main Street and Cameron every time he wants to make one of his secret calls, so that was easy enough. I heard your conversation with him this morning, so I know you were with my sister, and I know she’s with you now. I know exactly what you two are up to. But it’s not going to happen, do you understand me? I don’t want it to happen, so it’s not going to. It’s as simple as that.”
    “You’re too late, Jean-Marc. She’s already gone. I put her on a train in Bridgehampton a half hour ago. If you hurry, maybe you and your buddy might be able to catch her at one of the dozen stops between here and the city.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “Good. The more time you waste here, the farther away she gets.”
    “Just tell me where my sister is, Mac.”
    “You think I’m stupid enough to bring her back here. Let the girl go and we’ll talk.”
    “I don’t like to be fucked with.”
    “I know what you like, Jean-Marc.”
    “She’s unwell, Mac. She talks, makes thing up. Do yourself a favor and don’t pay too much attention to what she says.”
    “Looking at you right now, it’s kind of hard not to believe her.”
    “This is a pretty simple dilemma before you, Mac. Or at least it should be. Who’s worth more to you? My sister or this little plaything of yours.”
    He pressed the muzzle