Page 6 of Butcher

CHAPTER 3

Butcher

Toxic smacked me in the gut with the back of his hand, making me grunt, and focus back on the conversation. Everyone was staring at me with their brows up. Shit. What had I missed?

Toxic cleared his throat. “Yeah, Prez, we definitely want to handle the torture of this guy.”

I nodded, trying to keep up with what was going on. We had the would-be assassin tied up in the locker room area of our gym. The showers in there were the only place with a drain in the floor. We couldn’t just torture this guy for information out back behind the compound because any of the women or children could come along. They didn’t need to see that. Although knowing Priest’s little hellions, they might want to.

“We’ll handle it,” I added.

“What’s wrong with you?” Toxic huffed as soon as our brothers started filing out of the room.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t torture properly, they just didn’t seem to know how to enjoy themselves. It was all business. What a waste. Whatever. They knew we’d come back to them and tell them anything we learned.

“Sorry. Mind was someone else. I’m back.”

He studied me. “You love torture.” It was true. I did. “What could have distracted you from one of the things you love most?” He stopped dead in his tracks. “Someone? Not somewhere?

Was that what I’d said? Well, hell. I gave him a look that said he was the crazy one losing his hearing, not that I’d slipped up.

The fact that he knew me so well wasn’t surprising anymore. It was the fact that he didn’t give a shit that I was crazy. Most people cared about that kind of thing. Not Toxic. He accepted it as though it was some mundane piece of information about me, like I enjoyed vanilla ice cream. I didn’t, of course. Who would like plain vanilla ice cream? It was so fucking boring.

I sighed when he continued staring. “I saw a woman at the taco truck.”

Toxic paused as he was about to pick up a knife. “A woman?”

“Yeah.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I don’t know. She just seemed familiar.”

He grabbed the knife and turned to face me. “You’re distracted over a woman?” He made a dramatic sniffing sound. “I’m so proud.”

Shaking my head with a grin, I flipped him off before I grabbed my blow torch.

“Where do you know her from?”

“I don’t actuallyknowher,” I admitted.

We walked over and stopped in front of the guy who was sitting there, looking back and forth at us with panic in his eyes. He had a gag in his mouth for now. I didn’t want to listen to the begging just yet. It was the screaming I enjoyed anyway.

“So why the fascination?”

“Fuck,” I muttered. “I don’tknow. Okay?”

“Okay. Shit, you’re fucking pissy today.” He looked over at the guy. “Look. This torture shit isn’t my deal. All the blood and screaming, itmakes me queasy. So understand that I really don’t want to be here.” The man nodded enthusiastically, hope glimmering in his eyes. “But this guy, torture makes him so horny I bet he’s walking a tripod right now,” Toxic continued, pointing at me.

The man looked over at me and I gave him a wide grin, flashing teeth. The hope vanished and panic set in.

“And since he’s the one you were trying to kill, he’s a bit eager to get at you.”

I started up the blow torch and sighed as a tear slid down the guy’s face. Damn. If he was already crying, then this wasn’t going to be much fun. He was going to end up spilling his guts the minute we took the gag out and I wasn’t going to get to play at all. I was pretty sure what I told Lock before was right. Whoever was sending these guys after me must be running out of good assassins. Or they weren’t paying them enough to come after me, because this guy seemed way too fucking soft to be a professional killer.

That made me pause. They better be running out of professionals. If they’re too cheap to pay the pros I was going to fucking lose it. I deserved the best, damn it.

“Here’s the deal,” Toxic continued, “you tell us everything you know, and I’ll make sure you’re dead before he starts cutting you up.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Believe me it’s much more preferable than what he’ll do to you while you’re still alive.”

It wasn’t fun to cut them up after they were dead. Except that one time, but I was just sending a message to the assholes who’d hired an assassin to kill Cliff and Ralph. Even then, the first head came off a dead guy. I told the second guy I was going to staple his head to the other corpse. That had really freaked him out.

Usually, I only cut them up if I needed them to fit someplace small. I might be a psycho, but I wasn’t a weirdo. I didn’t bathe in the blood of my victims or any stupid shit like that.

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