Page 48 of Dirty Tricks

Our prey stumbles, falling to one knee and taking an age to regain his footing. My hand reaches out for him, brushing against the back of his collar. Enough for him to yelp, flail behind him to knock me away, stumbling forward again, breaking into his last shambolic bid for freedom.

And I slow. Deliberately letting him gain some ground, Xander in perfect alignment with my thoughts as he always is, his pace measured to mine.

We move wider apart, then angle together as the trees become sparser, as we near a large clearing.

From here, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to the road.

If our prey makes it there, he’ll have a chance at escape.

But the man stumbles again, falling, his head making such a loud thump as it cracks against a fallen tree trunk I wince in sympathy, but that’s the only sympathy our victim will get from me tonight.

I reach for his collar, lifting him, dragging him onto his knees while he cries and babbles in the darkness, blood pouring down his head from his latest injury, begging and pleading and crying.

All of it mildly amusing from our side of the game.

“I can get you money,” he tries as a final ploy. “So much money. Hundreds of thousands, millions even. Just please”—he joins his hands together in prayer—“please let me go.”

“Isaac Frederick Hallman.” Xanders voice booms like a loudspeaker in the still night. “You have one chance to confess.”

“I’ll confess,” he shrieks, not bothering to wait for the rules. A man so used to getting exactly what he wants from life he doesn’t understand patience.

Or the word no.

“She said she was nineteen,” he says, words tumbling over each other in his hurry to spill his guts, to defend his indefensible side. “I didn’t know. She was begging for it, believe me. I wouldn’t have—”

“Begging to be hit?”

I clamp my lips shut a moment too late but sometimes my incredulity overwhelms me. Even after my long acquaintance with self-deluded arseholes, their utter lack of remorse, accountability, or contrition still takes me by surprise.

It’s like there’s one group of people who try to follow the rules, even when it’s hard, and another group who doesn’t realise there are rules at all. Or, if they do, they think breaking them is a game, a privileged honour. That they’re somehow cleverer for doing all the things society dictates they shouldn’t.

Tonight, we get to teach yet another one that he’s not smarter than the folks who toe the line… he’s an idiot.

An idiot who needs to be purged.

“She likes it rough. That’s what she said.” The whites of his eyes gleam in the darkness, trying to catch my gaze like anything I see in them could drag out my empathy.

But I save empathy for my fellow humans. Not pieces of garbage like him.

“We’ve heard your confession and we sentence you…” I glance over to Xander, who shrugs, passing the honour of the declaration back to me. “To death.”

“No. But—”

Too late, the stupid shit realises we’re not in the business of leniency. He tries to get to his feet again but a quick slice through both his Achilles tendons puts paid to that, leaving his shrieking in pain, trying to grab at his wounded ankles, then turning, his fingertips digging into the grass, scrabbling at the hardened dirt as he attempts to crawl away.

A few stamps on his fingers with the steel heels of my boots have him whimpering over a new injury. He’s barely coherent, the pain overwhelming him like it’s his first time in physical distress.

Maybe it is.

Maybe his daddy’s millions meant he grew up in a thick coat of cotton wool.

Any pity for his harsh awakening is overrun with impatience. I grab him by the throat, slippery with the spit and slobber and tears and snot that have run down his chin.

I pull my knife from my belt, stare at Xander, then give a nod. He thrusts a knife deep into the man’s crotch while I hold him as steady as I can, making sure he has time to feel it, the utter indignity of being injured when no one around you cares. Then I stab my blade into the side of his throat.

A twist as I pull it out keeps the carotid artery from snapping shut. A geyser of blood spurts into the air, a heavy rain that smells like vengeance.

As it sprays again, I release my hold and step back, letting him fall to the ground. He writhes for a second, the last of his consciousness wasted in agony, then he’s gone, body still living but brain disconnecting, seeking the warm comfort of the never-ending dark.

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