That sap would beat a riding crop any day. Maybe the guy got spooked by Henrich’s bluff about the cops coming?

Heinrich got the impression that his opponent didn’t get spooked by much.

So no, it wasn’t the thing about the cops.

Maybe he fled because he had already finished the job.

Oh, crap.

Heinrich rushed back up the stairs, giving the old lady a nod as she took the opportunity to screech at him again. This time she held a phone in her hand.

When he got back to the dominatrix studio, the first thing he did was retrieve his gun from where it had slid under the partition.

The muffled grunt continued, more persistent this time.

Heinrich followed the noise through a couple more of the little partitioned rooms until he stopped short. On the bare concrete floor knelt a naked man. He was bound hand and foot, his hands tied behind his back and his forehead pressed against the floor. Several leather straps wound around him kept him totally immobile. A complex arrangement of straps around his head obviously had some sort of gag attached, because all he could do was grunt. He was blindfolded. His bald head and bare butt made for a bizarre symmetry.

Heinrich would have laughed but another sight killed any humor in this scene. A female leg poked out from behind a large bureau stocked with various whips and restraining devices.

Sighing, he went around the bureau to find what he expected—a dead body.

Wanda the Whip wore a black corset, fishnet stockings, and stiletto heels. The stilettos had fallen off in the struggle. Her feet were unusually small, giving her a girlish look. Livid marks around her neck showed that she had been strangled. Her face wore an expression of surprise.

Heinrich felt for a pulse on her still-warm wrist and found none.

CHAPTER THREE

 

“Wait! You can’t go in there!”

Heinrich ignored the front desk attendant as he burst through the inner doors of Firestarter Systems, Inc., his client’s Internet startup. He stalked through a medium-sized room with long tables and beanbag chairs where kids who looked fresh out of college tapped away on their laptops. Most didn’t even notice him. A couple looked away from their screens long enough to give him a confused and disapproving stare. He was the oldest person in the room by at least fifteen years.

A glass-enclosed meeting room with half a dozen people around a table, looking at a PowerPoint presentation, showed him where to go. Brixton Murphy stood at the front, gesturing at something on the screen.

Heinrich opened the door. “Meeting over, kids. Get out,” he ordered the group. Then he jabbed a finger at Brixton. “You and I need to talk.”

Some idiot with dreadlocks sitting by Brixton spoke up. “Look, man, you can’t just—”

“Kiss your boss’s ass later. Or are you going to try to kick me out, beta male?”

Mr. Dreadlocks curled his lip but didn’t reply.

Brixton raised his hands. “It’s all right, everyone. Sorry for the interruption. This is important. If you could all—”

“Get your asses moving,” Heinrich said.

Everyone filed out.