coming here, but there was nothing to be done about it. He’d had his men bring Easton Reed, certifiable genius, to one of his safe houses, drug him, and try to loosen him up.
Because this was the kind of individual he couldn’t use brute force with, couldn’t torture. Unfortunately. Not when he needed what was inside Easton’s head. Soon he’d move him to a designated work space, but he needed Reed dependent on him, to want the drugs he was slowly pumping him full of.
One of his guards was outside the bedroom and simply nodded as he approached.
He stepped into the room, saw the genius lying on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. And when Easton looked over at him, his eyes were glassy, unfocused.
He stepped back out into the hallway. “I thought you were pulling back on the doses.” They’d overestimated the first couple, and the man had gotten sick.
“I did, but he’s refusing to eat unless I force him. And you were very clear that we can’t use force with him,” the guard said quietly. The man was a former Ranger, dishonorably discharged, and seemed to get off on causing others pain. But he knew how to follow orders, so Reed wasn’t truly being injured.
Maybe drugging him was the wrong move. Henry hadn’t planned to take the man originally, but things had changed recently.
“That still stands. Dose him again to knock him out, then move him. I think we’re handling this the wrong way.” Something he hated to admit, but he hadn’t gotten to where he was by not being able to pivot—despite what some people thought.
Easton Reed was a man used to his lab, a clean, pristine living space. Maybe if he put him in a work environment, gave him food and clothing, he’d be more compliant, even without drugs. Because the only flaw in his plan to drug Reed was that it could affect him neurologically. And he needed the man’s brain.
Reed was a nerd at his core and lived and breathed science. Maybe he simply needed to be in a familiar environment.
Getting someone to do what you wanted always took finesse. For some, torture or even the threat of pain was enough. For others, blackmail was the best option. It caused fear, and people almost always acted in their best interests when they didn’t want the world privy to their dirty little secrets.
And he had so much dirt on people—another reason he was where he was. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to get anything on Reed. The man lived like a monk. He’d had his people start working on building a fake trail of money online to cast a dark shadow around Easton, but he needed what was in the man’s head before he killed him.
Because knowledge was the ultimate power.
Henry simply had to play this right. Especially since the Feds were involved now. The local cops couldn’t find their asses with both hands. But the FBI was a different story. And he wanted to know who the hell that woman who’d broken into Easton’s place had been. He’d had one of his guys sitting on the man’s apartment just in case, and he’d seen some random woman breaking in through the window. From the sixth floor. Unfortunately, he didn’t even have a picture of her so he couldn’t run her ID.
Then his guy had gone and gotten himself arrested by the Feds. At least the idiot wasn’t talking anyway.
As Henry headed out of the safe house, he frowned at an incoming text, then froze for a moment before getting into his car. He’d parked in the garage so no one would see him. Before leaving, he read the incoming texts again, digested everything.
Someone had broken into multiple warehouses owned by his business partner. The places were empty so it wasn’t as if the individuals breaking in had taken anything. It was the fact that three separate places had been broken into all around the same time.
A targeted effort.
They used the places as fronts, usually to funnel R&D money into their own pockets, but no one should know anything about them. Not when they went to great lengths to keep their business private. He definitely had to, considering his job.
If he was being investigated by the FBI, he should have heard something about it by now, especially considering the man who worked for him.
His fixer.
Annoyed now, he angrily called the man who solved all his problems so he didn’t have to get his hands dirty. “I think we have an issue.”