Page 41 of Brother's Keeper

A pinch of my thumb and forefinger snapped her wrist, and she stumbled back, yelping like a kicked dog. I stood.

My battered face complained at my rise from the ground. It was hard to keep both of them in my sights with only one working eye, but I had my mental hooks deep in York, placing tethers around his chest and ratcheting down until his breaths came in wheezes.

I pinned Jette to the opposite wall with a lasso of thought that hooked under her jaw, forcing her onto tiptoes while she cradled her broken hand.

“Tricky bastard,” Jette hissed. “I should’ve bashed your fucking face in.”

“Should’ve,” I agreed. “But bad decisions abound. Your whole plan is shit. Killing Hex members? You think Grimm’s gonna be happy you’re mercing his best men?”

“Best men?” Jette sneered. Her drawn-on eyebrows made every expression that much more dramatic. “More like his problem children. We’re cleaning house. Taking out the trash.”

I chuckled darkly, then curled a finger on the hand aimed toward York. The tall man howled in agony that remained a mystery to Jette while I dealt damage beneaththe surface. The mohawked woman looked concerned but didn’t question before I explained.

“Your boy here’s got twenty-four ribs. That was one.”

Her bold, black brows drew down. “You sadistic fuck.”

I grinned, flashing my teeth. “Let’s keep it going, shall we? Might get a little boring for me, buthe’sgonna have a hell of a time.” I twitched another digit, and York cried out as a bone flexed inside his chest.

“Wait, wait!” Jette rushed to interrupt. “What do you want?”

I was surprised she cared so much and so quickly. It made me wonder which of the Bloody Hex members would stand up for me in the same situation. That thought came and went with a scoffing snort. I would get no sympathy from those fuckers. If anything, they would join in the torment for the chance to hear me scream.

“For one, I feel a little deceived,” I told Jette. “Thought I was coming to visit my buddy. I think you know him. You have his phone. Instead, I get you jackoffs. So, mostly I wanna know, where’s my poisonous friend?”

Disgust crinkled her face. “As if we’d tell you.”

“Fair, fair.” I nodded. “All right.”

With a dull crunch, another of York’s ribs splintered. He cried out pitifully.

“Stop it!” Jette shrieked. Her face flushed deep red.

“Twenty-two to go.” I stared her down. “Gonna be a long night.”

I only needed one of them to survive this interrogation. If Jette numbed to the sting of watching her partner in crime suffer, she had bones to break, as well. With my brother’s safety on the line, I was willing to take this as far as it needed to go. And, unlike what happened at the Capitol holding cell earlier, no goody two shoes investigator would stop me.

“Where is Ripley?” I asked.

When I drew my next breath, it gurgled. Blood? Maybe I was more injured than I realized. I coughed, trying to clear the fluid as it seemed to build. It filled my lungs, limiting me to wet, shallow gasps. My concentration wavered, and I knuckled down, channeling focus to my grip on York and Jette. If I lost hold, she might get a second chance to make good on her desire to bash my face in.

My next hacking gag was more productive, but what I spat out wasn’t blood or sputum. It was clear and thin. Water. Fear made me breathe faster, feeling like I was face first in a faucet, unable to draw a dry breath.

Drowning.

Realization struck as I whipped around to where York was secured. His dark skin shimmered with beads of moisture. Fishy, he’d looked to me in Thorngate, with deep blue eyes and the bright idea to waterboard me in the shower. I guessed because he couldn’t make his own water, he used theirs. Here, though, he wasn’t limited.

My concentration shattered as water leaked from my nose and eyes, dripping onto my shirt. Wet splatters pasted my clothes to my skin and defined the shape of the tiny glass marble resting against my sternum.

Jette, abruptly freed, launched herself at me as I stuck my hand down the collar of my shirt. I grabbed the vial, blinking one waterlogged eye and holding my breath while my chest ached from the strain. A frantic yank snapped the leather cord and the marble laid loose in my palm. Jette collided with me as I clapped my hands together.

Glass shattered, more sensation than sound with my ears stopped up, followed by the feeling of falling. I thought it was the woman dragging me to the floor, but I kept going through it, into an empty space that seemed to belong nowhere. Everything went dark, and I flailed in the openness, alternating holding my stomach and my throat and nearly desperate enough to rip a hole and let all the fluid out.

Lights blurred past as I descended from the ceiling of somewhere familiar. I collided with a hard, flat surface, knocking every bone from my heels to my head in a jarring stop.

Muffled voices clamored, and bodies beside me lurched up and back.

Pained and panicked, I grappled for anything tangible. I tried to sit but found the surface narrower than expected, and I tumbled off, falling again for a far shorter stretch of time. In another flailing collapse, I landed in a heap on the anti-slip mats behind the counter of the Bitters’ End.

---