Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) by J.A. Konrath Page A

word.
    Fading? Losing interest?
    Going mad?
    When they’d first arrived at the compound, over a year ago, Lucy had felt like a dysfunctional kid in a candy store. She’d always been a nomad, and took her fix on the road when she could find it. That meant passing up a lot of potential opportunities for safety’s sake. Killing in public required a certain situational awareness. She could never truly lose herself in a messy death while worrying if the cops were around the next corner. And in a day and age where everyone had a cell phone with a high resolution camera, it had become almost impossible to indulge in her particular tastes while remaining invisible.
    South of Mexicali, in this blood-soaked sanctuary known as La Juntita, there were no such worries. Lucy could take her time, really enjoy the moment. Not only were they safe, but they were being protected
and
getting paid for their skills.
    Those early times in the compound had been fun. She and K had done everything—imaginable and unimaginable—to cause human beings pain. Highlights included:
    Building a working iron maiden.
    Frying a mother, father, and their two children in a giant pot of lard.
    Ling Chi
, also known as the death of a thousand cuts (actually, it took a thousand two hundred and four.)
    A pair of iron boots that could be locked onto feet, with holes for molten lead to be poured inside.
    Strappado, mazzatello, flaying, even a blood eagle (the back slashed open, ribs broken off the spine, and the lungs pulled out to resemble bird wings.)
    And her all-time favorite; the blowtorch toilet, which worked pretty much like it sounded.
    Those were in the playroom. In the arena, they’d come up with many other wicked forms of execution that paying spectators could wager on.
    Drawn and quartered by ATVs, betting on which limb would detach first.
    Crucifixions.
    Impalings on long, steel rods.
    The living necklace (four men with a thick rope threaded through their bellies, playing a disemboweling game of tug o’ war.)
    A naked footrace over hot coals.
    It had been glorious.
    Lately, things hadn’t been so glorious. K’s last attempt at a spectacular death was a man locked in a cage with a hundred rats. In that case, the crowd had almost died… of boredom. The rats had ignored the man, and he eventually died of exposure or thirst or something equally boring.
    And K’s current method of punishing the cartel’s enemies was a Columbian necktie; slitting the throat and pulling the tongue out of the hole. Not very bloody, not very painful, and over much too quickly.
    Luther Kite used to terrify Lucy, with his nature and with his legend.
    But the man she called K…
    K was a crippled, pale image of his former self.
    Where was the bloodlust? Where was the creativity?
    Lucy remembered when D…
    D.
    Donaldson.
    There was a serial murderer who died at the top of his game. A killer’s killer. D kept his edge to the very end.
    Lucy had been born without the ability to care about anything other than herself. But sometimes she found herself missing the old fella. They’d been through a lot together. And they’d shared a bond closer than anything she’d ever shared with Luther.
    Lucy could hear someone wailing in pain; they were nearing the playroom. But it didn’t excite her like it should have.
    She was too busy thinking about D. Maybe, someday, she’d see him again.
    But only if hell really existed.



DONALDSON
Phoenix
    H ell was real, and it was called Arizona.
    The oversized red hoodie was like wearing a sauna in the hundred-plus heat, and it attracted almost as much attention from passerby as Donaldson’s exaggerated limp.
    But not as much attention as he would have gotten if the hoodie was off.
    As usual, he was in constant pain. The parts of him that hadn’t been scraped bare, burned, stabbed, or whittled down to bone, had been shot. But he hadn’t been identified during his extended hospital stay, even though he’d talked to countless cops about the