Embers & Echoes by Karsten Knight Page B

together). She passed the wall of cigars for sale on her way toward the passageway in the back, which was cloaked with a single drape. The curtain was backlit with a neon blue glow, and Ash prayed that the kidnappers weren’t working for the fiery blue-eyed Cloak.
    Ash lowered herself onto her belly and crawled forward until her head poked under the curtain’s other side.
    In the spacious room beyond, a series of circular velvet booths lined the wall to the left. But the real attraction was on the right side of the room. It was a humidor, a special room with controlled humidity and temperature designed to store and preserve cigars, which Ash knew about only because her father was an aficionado (a habit her mother loathed). This one in particular had two glass walls and a glass door that was open a pinch.
    Presumably the humidor’s other two walls were lined with cedar and housed a high-end cigar collection, but Ash couldn’t tell, because she was too distracted by the scene happening inside.
    The prisoner dangled from the middle of the room, upside down. The chains around his feet had been strapped to a hook on the vaulted ceiling, and he swung helplessly back and forth.
    The three thugs stood at attention in the corners of the room, and the man in the suit was pacing circles around the prisoner. But most interesting of all, Ash finally discovered the source of the buzzing and the blue light. They had set up a network of ultraviolet lamps around the humidor, all facing up and onto the prisoner to spotlight various levels of his body.
    The man in the suit knelt down, loosened the bag over the prisoner’s head, and tugged it off.
    The prisoner—the giant—was a teenage boy. It was hard to tell in the eerie UV light, but Ash approximated him to be close to her own age and possibly of Mexicandescent. He had long shaggy hair that formed a floating mane around his upside-down head. Even though his life was clearly in jeopardy, there was something about the two-tiered dimples to either side of his mouth that made him perpetually look as though he were about to laugh.
    The suited man slapped the prisoner’s face lightly. “Oye, amigo,” the man said gently. “We know that you and your little friend have been very curiously looking into our employer’s affairs for the last month.” He gestured around at the tanning lamps. “We even clearly know your weaknesses. All I want to know is why you were snooping around Mrs. Vanderbilt’s boat like a little bloodhound before we caught you.”
    “Mrs. Vanderbilt’s boat?” the boy said with mock surprise. “Shit, I thought I’d climbed aboard a Disney cruise.”
    His interrogator actually laughed. “You’re a funny man, stranger.” He slipped on a pair of brass knuckles that he’d taken from his pocket. “It almost pains me to have to knock some seriousness into you.”
    He turned fast and slammed his armored fist into the prisoner’s stomach. With a spasm of pain the boy’s body convulsed upward into a macaroni shape before gravity ironed him back out into a straight line.
    “Okay, okay . . . but first . . .” The boy wheezed between breaths. “Just . . . answer me . . . one question.”
    The man leaned closer so he could hear the boy.
    The boy cocked his head upward. “How long . . . did it take you . . . to grow . . . that mustache?”
    This time the man struck him across the face. The prisoner’s head twisted ninety degrees, and when it came back to the front, blood dribbled out onto the floor.
    The man took off his jacket and draped it casually over one of the back tables. “You know,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves, “I really have no pressing engagements to go to. Mi esposa is giving me headaches about choosing a high school for the kids, so between you and me, I’d much rather be here than at home . . . and I don’t mind working on my tan under these lights.”
    Ash knew she had to intervene somehow, and soon. She