“Here’s my problem though, Miles. It seems to me that you’re very chatty for a man in your profession. If you are who you say you are, I’d expect a bit more discretion. And balls.”
She points the cattle prod between my legs and I flinch just like she wants me to.
I say, “You mean I should encourage you to torture me? When I can tell you already know the answers to most of those questions? No thanks. I’m not getting my teeth kicked in for that.”
“I should ask you harder questions?”
“You should untie me and I’ll spring for drinks at Chateau Marmont. Short of that, yeah. Ask me something fucking real.”
“What’s the address you are going to?”
“I don’t know. The driver did.” I turn around and shout at the guys behind me. “He could have told you, but one of these assholes shot him.”
She shocks me in the ribs and I turn back around. I’m starting not to like her.
“Focus on me, Miles.”
“I don’t know the address. It was in Westwood.”
“Was it a bank? A person? A café?”
“A law office.”
“All right. That’s something. And you say it’s just financial papers?” she says.
“That’s what they told me.”
She holds the cattle prod about an inch from my face.
“Do you know who we are?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“Who?”
“You’re the faction. The other Wormwood.”
She moves the cattle prod like she’s going for my eye and this time when I fli
nch, it’s 100 percent real. Seeing that, she smiles.
“You’re wrong. We’re the only Wormwood. The Wormwood you work for is sick. A bloated tick full of diseased blood.”
“And who are you, the Salvation Army? You bring down companies like the other Wormwood. You fuck people over when they’re alive and you make money on their damnation when they die. I don’t see much difference between you two.”
She opens her hands wide.
“Because you’re part of the old system. All you see is the method. You don’t consider the reasons. The outcome.”
“Okay. Convince me. What makes you so special?”
She taps the prod against the palm of one hand like a teacher tapping a ruler.
“If the old, diseased Wormwood gets its way, you’ll barely notice a ripple in the world. They want power, money, and influence in the afterlife. We, on the other hand, will overturn existence. When we’re through, this world and the next will be clean and pure. All the old, corrupt systems washed away.”
I lean back.
“Is that supposed to impress me? You sound like every supervillain in every comic book ever written.”