I KNEW my time to interrogate was coming when the screaming had faded into an occasional dull whimper of pain. A few minutes later, Talon came striding out of the basement room in the old warehouse we’d stopped by, wiping his hands across a tan towel that had been stained red.
This was how we did interrogations. Talon broke the fuckers apart, and I pieced them back together just enough and in just the right way to get the answers we needed. If they hadn’t already spilled their guts to get Talon to stop. The odds were about fifty-fifty.
This guy was one of the more resilient ones.
Talon nodded to me. “He’s ready for you.”
I glanced behind me to where Dess sat beside Julius, leaning back in her chair and appearing unfazed by the entire situation as he finished bandaging her shoulder. Blaze eyed his laptop, trying and failing to find out exactly who had access to the camera within the factory. He swore at the computer under his breath.
“Gave you a tough time, did he?” I asked Talon with purposeful bravado. The man was fucking good at what he did, but that gave me an extra ego boost when it turned out my skills were the ones that’d get us what we needed.
“He’s stubborn, but he’s weak and out of it now,” the other man replied. “Threatening him only made him clam up more.”
That was useful to know. Some people coughed up the information we needed in the face of someone physically intimidating. Some responded better to psychological threats. Others needed a more nuanced approach. It sounded like this guy belonged to the last group.
As I stepped into the room, I was already formulating a strategy in my mind. I walked in with a slight slouch and a hesitant expression on my face, watching our captive’s reaction from the corner of my eyes. Sometimes after a battering, what an opponent responded best to was the chance to exert some kind of power over another person. That meant looking meek and nervous, but not so much that he couldn’t get any satisfaction out of lording it over me.
The man was slumped in the chair we’d tied him to. We’d bandaged the wound on his stomach, because we didn’t want him bleeding out before we were done with him, but little rivulets oozed from the shallower wound on his leg and other minor cuts that Talon had added to his collection, in between the mottling of bruises. A few fingers dangled limply, broken, and the guy’s lip was split.
He raised his head slowly, swaying, at the sight of me. When I let myself make eye contact, it was only for an instant before jerking my gaze away. At that show of uncertainty, he managed to draw his posture up a little straighter.
Ah ha. He thought I was someone he might be able to gain an advantage over, and he liked that idea. I’d just keep playing to that tune.
I wandered over to the torture table laid out with Talon’s instruments—mostly various types of blades, his favorite tools. “Always on clean-up duty,” I muttered to myself. “As if I want to be around all this blood and crap.”
I sighed and turned to look at the man again, as if I were sizing him up. At the same time, I shrank in on myself a little. But I spoke, making it sound like I was forcing out the offer despite my nerves. “It doesn’t have to be that way, you know. We could both get something out of this.”
The man studied me warily. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice rasping.
I twisted my mouth at an uncertain angle. “This doesn’t have to end with them killing you. If I could show I got something out of you—something they want to know—then they’d see that I can be more of a part of their stupid crew. And I’d make sure you get the chance to escape.”
The man scoffed weakly, but a glimmer of hope lit in his face at the same time. I’d presented him with a picture of a man who didn’t like killing and hungered for more recognition, and he’d lapped it up. “I’m supposed to believe that?” he asked anyway.
I shrugged, walking around him but careful to move closer to the weapons than to him—to show that I didn’t want to be near him and risk myself. I didn’t want him to think I was outright afraid, but I certainly didn’t want him to believe I was fully comfortable, either.
“I don’t have any interest in cleaning up another corpse,” I said, with a shudder I didn’t have to fake. The gore of our killings did actually make me a little queasy, even if I stomached it for the sake of the job. “So really, it’s all a favor to me. But I can’t let you go if you don’t give me anything. Then they’ll kill me.”
The man blinked at me, his eyes going momentarily bleary. Talon had left him in quite a state. He couldn’t focus or think clearly, and I knew that if I pushed the right buttons, he’d slip up and give something away.
He shifted against his restraints. “I can’t tell you anything, man. I’m at the bottom of the information chain. No one even told me why we were going after you and the girl.”
“I guess you could start by telling me who this ‘we’ is? What group are you with? Who sent you on the job?”
When he hesitated, I grabbed one of the short, serrated blades off the table and walked toward him. His mouth flattened and his nose flared, and I could tell Talon was right. He wouldn’t say a word if I was threatening him with a weapon.
That was fine. I hadn’t picked it up to do that.
“I can show you I mean what I’m offering,” I said, coaxing just a hint of a quaver into my voice. Bending down, I sawed through the rope that bound his left wrist. With a few quick jerks, the cord fell away. I jumped back, out of range of his reach.
The man turned his hand over, staring at it in disbelief. He swayed again and sucked in a ragged breath.
“I told you I don’t want you dead,” I said in a pleading tone. “Just tell me what you know.”
I set the knife back on the table, but at the edge as if I anticipated needing it soon to finish releasing him. The man considered it and then me. His jaw worked.
“This won’t do you any good, you know,” he said. “No matter what you hear from me, you’re all going down. We were just the first, because we’ve got the direct connection. A call went out, wide, with quite the bounty on your heads. Every mercenary group in the country will be eager to bring in your heads.”
A gleam had sparked in his eyes. He was relishing the idea of intimidating me.
I let him have a minor victory, wincing and hunching my shoulders a little more. “Why would they care so much about us?”
He shook his head, a hint of a grin crossing his lips, weary though it was. “Like I said, I don’t know. I just know you’re dead meat.”
Big talk for a man who didn’t currently look like much more than meat himself. I kept that observation silent and prodded in a different direction, letting a hint of panic color my words. “Fuck, I knew we were screwed. Who put out the call? Who’s got it in for us?”
“A man you’re going to regret you ever crossed,” our captive said darkly, and then sputtered several wet-sounding coughs. I suspected there was some internal bleeding going on.
I switched tactics just a tad to prompt him to spill more. “The guys I work for are the most powerful crew out there. That isn’t possible.”
The man managed a feeble-sounding snort. “They might like to think so, but they’re nothing compared to the real kings of the criminal world.”
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe the Chaos Crew wasn’t anywhere near as big as various mafia-style organizations, and we didn’t have as wide a reach as those, but we weren’t aiming to be some kind of syndicate. We could have taken down any of those trumped-up pricks any time we wanted. But I guessed they liked to think that wasn’t true.
“Some kind of mafioso, huh?” I said doubtfully. “We’ve tangled with the Russian mob and the Italians, even the Chinese. Sounds like you’re just bluffing.”
The man just sneered at me with so much confidence that I found my own was shaken. Was there someone higher up than the mafias who had it out for us? Just how well connected were the people who’d run Dess’s household?
They had managed to nearly get the better of us at the old meat factory. That didn’t bode well.
“Please,” I said, going back into meek mode. “If we can’t get out of this shit situation, at least give me something so I can protect myself. I’ll make a run for it after I cut you loose and let the others deal with this fucking problem.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t even know his name. Just that when he says jump, you’d better jump. And a whole lot of mercs are doing that right now.”
I sensed that I’d gotten everything I could out of that line of questioning, as much as it frustrated me. But now that I had him feeling superior to me, it was the perfect time to throw a spanner into the works and see what came out of him when I took him by surprise.
I sucked in a breath and frowned at him. “How does this all connect to Damien Malik?”
The guy stiffened too quickly for him to hide his reaction. He forced his body to relax a moment later, but I’d already marked his response. He knew something about Malik—something that related to this powerful criminal figure he’d been taunting me with.
Was Malik on this master criminal’s payroll too? Had the guy been lying and he happened to know that Malik was the master criminal?
I stepped toward him. “We know he’s mixed up in this somehow. You obviously do too. Do we have to watch out for him?”
The guy’s eyes narrowed. His walls were going up again. “I’d say we all have to watch out for that fucker.”
“What do you mean? What’s he been doing?”
The anxiety I showed didn’t get me anywhere this time. The man had turned even cagier. He simply shot me a tight smirk and sat in silence.
This information could be the key to everything—to the attack on us, to Dess’s kidnapping and training—all the mysteries we’d been working so hard to unravel. I released my cautious demeanor just a little, framing my eagerness as desperation. “Come on, man. Just give me this one thing, and I’ll cut you loose right now.”
The man just kept giving me a crooked but mocking smile even as his head started to droop again, and a prickle of real frustration shot through my chest. I was so close, and this asshole decided to balk now?
“Look at you,” I said, moving close enough to give his chair a little shove. “You’re halfway free already. Help yourself, you idiot!”
He chuckled, but it was a hopeless sound that knotted my stomach. If a person started feeling they had nothing left to lose, you had no more leverage.
“Your boys will kill me anyway,” he said in an even raspier voice than before. His eyelids quivered as a swell of pain must have washed over him. “And if somehow you got me out of here, he’d kill me because he’d assume I’d talked. There’s no fucking way out. Just give it up.”
No. I didn’t give in that easily, and neither should this halfwit. I shoved his chair again, distantly aware that my cringing front was falling away and not particularly caring. I had to shock something out of this asshole before he slipped from my grasp completely. Julius was counting on me—Dess was counting on me—
The chair skidded a few inches to the side, its legs grating against the concrete floor. I recognized my mistake a split-second too late.
I’d jostled the guy toward the torture table. His free arm whipped out, and his fingers closed around the handle of the knife I’d left on the edge.
If he’d slashed it at me, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I’d have dodged with maybe some split skin for Julius to stitch up. But instead the captive let out one last, hollow laugh and plunged the blade into his own throat.
Blood gushed forth, soaking him and spraying me in an instant. I jerked back with a noise of strangled horror—both at the sudden, stinking mess and the fact that I’d allowed it to happen.
Our victim had found an escape route after all, and it was one where I couldn’t chase after him. His body was already crumpling in the chair, the life draining out of it. I knew without feeling for a pulse that he was a goner. He sure as hell wasn’t talking any more with a knife in his throat.
Shit. Shit.
I paced from one end of the room to the other as the blood formed a thick puddle beneath the chair. My hands balled into fists at my sides. I had to go up and tell Julius about my fuck-up. I’d found out a few things, but it was all too vague to be really useful—and I’d screwed up when I could have gotten so much more.
How could I have let myself get so impatient? For fuck’s sake, I knew better.
I dragged a breath through my clenched teeth, and the door eased open. The most likely source of my frayed control peered inside. My jaw tightened even more.
“What happened?” Dess asked, staring at the scene.
“What does it look like?” I snapped. “I pushed him too far, and he found a way to jump right over the edge.”
Her gaze slid to me, and something softened in her expression. Somehow that made me even more pissed off. How dare she sympathize when half the reason I’d screwed up was that I hadn’t felt totally like myself since she’d come barging into our lives?
“I’m sure you were doing your best,” she said. “It’s not like torture is an exact science.”
“I still should have done better than letting him off himself. Why don’t you get out of here and let me clean up my own mess?”
Dess knit her brow. Her voice came out terser. “I’m trying to help. It’s not like there’s anyone in the world who doesn’t make mistakes.”
I sputtered a laugh. “This is more than just a mistake. I don’t need you sugar-coating it. I can face my fuckups like a man.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Then maybe you should act like a man now and stop bitching about this. Stop acting like I’m the enemy. I don’t know what the hell your problem with me is, but I’m getting sick of you treating me like I either don’t exist or like I’m garbage.”
I winced inwardly but contained my reaction. I couldn’t afford to let her see how much she affected me. No fucking way.
“I’m not going to cater to your every whim just because—” I started, and just then, Julius stormed into view behind her.
“What the hell is this all about?” he demanded.
Part of me wanted to shrink back like I’d been pretending to do around our captive. I forced my chin up and my shoulders back. “I screwed up. He got too close to a knife and offed himself.”
Julius swept his hand through the air. “I’m not talking about the interrogation. We were going to kill him anyway. I’m asking why the hell you two are fighting after all the shit we’ve just been through?”
Dess stiffened. “I was just telling Garrison to stop acting like such an ass all the time.”
Julius gave her a stern look. “Garrison is how he is. But he can learn to watch his mouth when the situation calls for it.” He glowered at me next. “We’ve got enough people attacking us without going at each other.”
Annoyance started to flare in me again, but Dess lowered her head. The slant of her mouth and the slight deflating of her posture gave more of an answer than any words could have.
She wasn’t angry with me. She was hurt. I’d been pushing her away ever since we’d hooked up, and… and it genuinely bothered her.
She wanted more of a connection with me, more comradery and warmth, and I’d been shutting her out. Even though if I let myself think about it instead of giving in to my kneejerk reaction to push her away, I knew I wanted the same thing.
Julius kept studying both of us. “I was hoping the two of you could collaborate on the next steps we need to take from here. Is that going to be a problem?”
I shook my head quickly. “No. We can work together. It wasn’t Dess’s fault. I was frustrated with the interrogation, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on her.”
Julius nodded and turned to Dess. She tipped her head in acknowledgment of what I’d said, but her expression was a little more skeptical than his was.
I guessed I couldn’t blame her. Whatever connection had already formed between us, I must have hammered a lot of cracks into it over the past few days.
This wasn’t how I wanted things to go, not really. I’d better figure out my bullshit before it got in my way again.
