Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville Read Free Book Online

dim glow burned within. He peered through the frosted pane, looking for hazy shapes that might pass for human. He could make nothing out but variations in light and darkness. Keeping his eyes to the glass, he rapped the door with his fat knuckles.
    One of the dark shapes moved.
    “I see you,” he said in English. “Open the door.”
    He knocked again, harder.
    “Just a minute,” a voice called. Herkus recognized it as the high whine of Clifford Collins.
    “Open now,” Herkus said.
    A shadow approached the other side of the glass. Locks snapped, and a chain jangled. The door opened four inches, Clifford peeping out through the gap.
    “Tomas is here?” Herkus asked.
    “No,” Clifford said. “I haven’t seen him since the weekend.” The little man’s voice quivered as he spoke, but his eyes said he was truthful. And relieved.
    Why would he be relieved? Perhaps Herkus had asked the wrong question.
    “Darius is here,” Herkus said. This time, it was a statement of fact, not a query.
    Clifford shook his head from side to side, his mouth slack as he scrambled for the correct answer. Eventually he said, “No,” and the lie was plain to see.
    Herkus didn’t hesitate. He took one step back and kicked the wood, his full weight behind it. Clifford squealed and backed away. The chain held. Herkus kicked again, then once more, and the door swung inward.
    “Stay there,” Herkus said to Clifford as he entered.
    Clifford nodded and sat at a table.
    There at the back, huddled in a booth, Darius and one of the two moronic Irish brothers who ran whores from that flat toward Bangor. He believed this one went by the name of Sam.
    But no Tomas.
    Sam kept his hands on the table, his face pale, sweat glistening on his forehead. He looked very much like a man in fear.
    Herkus spoke to Darius in Lithuanian. “Where is he?”
    Darius stared at the granite tabletop. “Who?”
    Herkus approached the table. “You know who.”
    Darius gave a strained laugh. “You mean Tomas?”
    Sam flinched at the name.
    “Yes,” Herkus said. “I mean Tomas.”
    “I don’t know,” Darius said.
    “Look at me,” Herkus said, leaning over him. He smelled whiskey and terror.
    Darius raised his eyes to meet Herkus’s.
    “Where is he?”
    Darius shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know. I’m not his babysitter.”
    “Yes you are,” Herkus said. He kept his voice calm and even, lest Sam realize the gravity of the situation. “I left him with you. You’re responsible. I’ll ask you once more. Don’t lie to me. Where is Tomas?”
    “I took him to the flat in Bangor,” Darius said. “He wanted to try out the new girl. He decided to take her out somewhere. I don’t know where. That was around eleven. I haven’t seen him or her since.”
    Herkus placed a hand on Darius’s shoulder. The muscles tensed beneath the leather. “You’re lying to me. I’ll have to call Arturas. He’ll be angry. You know how much he cares for his brother.”
    Darius held his hands up. They betrayed the panic boiling beneath the forced calm. “That’s what happened. He took the girl. That’s all there is to it. What do you want me to say?”
    “The truth,” Herkus said. “And you will. Eventually.”
    He turned his attention to Sam, noticed the grazing and dirt on his hands, as if he’d taken a fall.
    “You,” he said in English. He spoke it better than Darius. “Where is Tomas?”
    The moron looked up at him with drink-heavy eyes. He sneered. “Fucked if I know.”
    Herkus grabbed as much cropped hair as he could and slammed the moron’s face into the tabletop. He felt more than heard the satisfying cracking of teeth.
    Sam spat blood and tiny chips of enamel on the granite, lurched to his feet, and reached for something at the small of his back. Was the idiot going for a knife?
    “Don’t,” Darius said.
    The anger on Sam’s face turned to terror as he seemed to realize whatever he sought in his waistband was no longer there. He turned to look