1
CHARLIE
My fist collided with his jaw, the blood splattering like a Jackson Pollock painting across the wall. Six hours in and he still wasn’t talking.
“Is that the best you got?” he said, spitting out a blood-covered tooth. I didn’t know the man’s name. I never asked for names, didn’t need them. They all bled the same regardless. What mattered was what the man said. He’d pissed off the wrong people so he got to play with me.
Lucky guy.
I liked to warm them up, make them think that all I was gonna do was hit them. Crack a few ribs. Break a few bones. They got comfortable that way. They got cocky. They started to spit out insults and gibes, thinking they could handle me and my blows. Because what’s a few broken bones?
Then they saw what I could really do and their smiles cracked. Their will broke and they sung like canaries.
I stepped around the chair he was tied to, hiding myself from view. The limp from my prosthetic was nearly invisible now. I’d worked hard to hide my weakness, but it still showed. It would probably always show, despite how hard I had worked to conceal it. In my profession, any weakness could mean death. I was missing a limb; that’s about as fucking weak as you can get.
“Too afraid to look me in the eye when you hit me?” The man gloated. “Just like your employer. Doesn’t even do his own dirty work, instead hires some cripple to do it.” I folded my arms, keeping silent at the slur. There was nothing he could do or say to rile me up. I’d heard it all.
I wasn’t born a cripple, but I was born a poor kid to an alcoholic mother in the rich part of California. You learn to adapt quick. Either grow some thick skin or get out. I did both. I breathed through my nose at the memory and glared down at the lucky bastard in the chair. He shimmied in his restraints, trying to look at me.
Something about silence makes a person want to fill it. In some cases, silence was more effective than my fists. Keeping myself out of their eye line made them uncomfortable, and people always talk when they’re uncomfortable. Case in point:
“Your boss is a fucking idiot. He thinks this is the only time I stole from him? I’ve been stealing for years!” The man laughed, a rough sound like dust caught in a chimney, which alerted me to the fact that he probably had fluid in his lungs. Blood, maybe. “I’m not the only one neither. But does that matter? No. Fucker only cares about how he looks.”
Bingo.
I walked back around the chair, my face betraying nothing. Through swollen, puffy eyes, he watched me expectantly. Waiting. Maybe this guy would be easy. At first when I’d started working on him, I thought he’d be tougher to crack. They all crack, but some take longer than others. Now it appeared he might be easier than I’d thought. Tough, but stupid. I could work with stupid.
The thing about tough guys is that they’ll hold out until their last breath. It’s not about integrity; it’s about pride. Above all else, pride is my biggest enemy. Pride keeps tongues tied and mouths shut. Pride is the hardest thing to break.
People will trade their integrity for the slightest hope of freedom. They will sell their first born if it means life. But pride? That’ll keep the engine running long after the car has stopped.
When I first started working on the guy he’d shown himself to be tough. That worried me; I didn’t want to spend the next couple of days in a dirty as fuck warehouse. Was it so much to ask that my employer spring for air conditioning?
Then the guy went and opened his yaw and out tumbled information. Maybe I’d get out of there at a reasonable hour. Discovering stupidity was like striking gold. I rubbed the stubble on my chin, another reminder that I’d spent too much time on the guy already, and evaluated the best course of action to take. Just as I reached for the pliers, my phone went off.
* * *
“What?” I barked into the phone, not pleased with being interrupted. Only a few people had my number, and even fewer that I actually gave a shit about.
“It’s Vic. I need a favor.” Vic Wall. I’d only worked with Vic on a few assignments, but that was all it took for me to owe the fucker big. It had been my third—and last—assignment for GEM. We were in some bum fuck desert out in the Mid East doing some shit assery, when a bomb exploded and tore off my leg.
Vic is recon, meaning he isn’t in the shit. It was a three-man job: me, Vic, and a green kid who didn’t know his ass from an AR-15. The intel was bad. At that time GEM was going through their own shit, some kind of hostile takeover or something, and us guys on the ground paid for it.
There’s not much you can do when the intel is bad, except pray to whatever god you believe in that there aren’t more bombs. Vic is the best recon man I know, and even he got fucked by GEM and their intel.
There aren’t many guys out there that would do what Vic did, not in our business anyway. To date, I’d only met six others. Still, with those six, once they saved your life your debt would be greater than death. They called them The Boogiemen for a reason.
Vic saw what happened, came running, and saved my life. Couldn’t save the leg, though, as that had been blown to bits. That green kid? He ran off to fuck knows where. Probably died. Would serve him right.
“You sure about that?” I said into the phone. “Last I checked you only got one favor, and you needed it bad.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Charlie.” Vic growled.
I laughed, the feeling like acid against my throat. “Who’s got your testicles in a vice grip?”
“There’s a girl. She’s gone missing.”
“And?” I thumbed the fabric of my shirt, stained with the man’s blood. “Girls go missing all the time.” The man I had tied up gave a small whimpering sound.
I kicked him in the leg. He yelped at the impact, but at least he shut up. Nothing like whimpering to distract you while you’re on the phone with an old…acquaintance.
“She’s important. Need her back.” Vic was never one for long conversations. Then again, neither was I.
“What’s her name?” I asked, curious as to who was so important that Vic would cash in his one favor.
“I’ve sent all relevant information to your burner email.”
“You sure you want to do this?” Vic hung up, not bothering to answer my question. I shrugged, sliding my phone back into my pocket. If he wanted to cash in his favor for some missing chick, be my guest. Made no difference to me.
Blood crusted around my knuckles but I couldn’t tell you if it was mine or the man’s. I squinted down at the bloody mess crumpled against the stainless steel chair. A few more hours with me and he would be singing louder than a church boy. They always cracked. I didn’t have time to spend wailing on him any more, though. Vic had cashed in his favor and that came first. I flicked a piece of dried blood from my hand and smiled at him.
“It’s your lucky day.” He sagged at my words, relief visible in every muscle. I pulled out my .45 and it was over before he could register thought. The bullet flew through his eye, cut through his brain, and lodged into the cement behind him.
I stuffed the gun back into its holster and dialed for cleanup. As I left the warehouse, I glanced back at the limp body. A quick, clean death. Couldn’t get much luckier than that.
2
VERA
“I will kill you Cruz Zeros.”
“You’d have to get off your knees to do it, bitch.” It was moments like these, starin’ up at the sickly, deranged face of Cruz Zeros, that I couldn’t help but think how I’d ended up here. Once upon a time I’d been a normal, small-town Louisiana girl. I’d had friends and family, and I’d been happy.
Sure, we were poor. We couldn’t afford many nice things. Mama had to work two jobs just to keep the double-wide over our head, but we’d been happy. When Mama had the rare day off, we’d spend it bakin’ cookies or brownies and drinkin’ sweet tea. It was bliss.
School wasn’t real important where I came from, but Mama made sure I stuck in it. It was hard to care when everyone was out partyin’ and dancin’ on Friday nights and I was stuck inside, readin’ ‘bout people who were long since dead.
Maybe I was here ‘cause finishin’ high school in that small town didn’t ever translate to anything. Maybe I was here ‘cause my daddy took off when I was two, leavin’ me with some clear abandonment issues. I really didn’t know.
When it was clear that I wasn’t goin’ to suck his cock (I’d sooner bite his dick off than suck him off), Cruz grabbed me by the neck and threw me to the dirty mattress in the corner of the room. We’d been playin’ this game for over a week, ever since he’d come and stolen me out of my nice apartment in California.