Page 5 of The Assassin
The blade sliced through the thick part of his bicep like it was butter. A quick twist and I pulled it out again.
The screams died down to panicked, panting moans. “I can’t—”
In front of him once more, I laid a quick slice along his untouched cheek. “You don’t want to do that.” Bending close, I let him look into my eyes, let him see his owndeath staring back at him. “Don’t lie to me. Youcantell me, and you will.”
I straightened. “The only question now is if your death will be slow or fast. That’s the only power you have here: one. Choice. Which will it be?”
Torture has stages, kind of like a workout. First there’s the warm-up. Then a gradual acceleration in intensity, higher, higher, higher. When you hit the peak, that’s whenmost of your intel gets spilled. If you’re captured, you hope to escape before you hit this point. And if your torturer has any mercy, when you finally spill your guts, he won’t spill yours. He’ll bring you down gradually from the high, allow you to settle down, let your heart rate return to normal. Maybe, eventually, he’ll set you free.
If he’s truly sadistic, he’ll take you to the peak overand over, emptying out your soul until there’s nothing left. And then he’ll put you out of your misery.
I’d done it both ways. Tonight, I didn’t care about finesse; all I cared about was time. The man lost consciousness twice, but within the hour I had him slobbering and blubbering out the information I wanted. An address on the dark Web. The location of the bank account where the first halfof his payment had already been made. That account should reflect some intel from the transaction initiator. Eli might be our resident tech expert, but I could backtrack from those two points, find what I needed to find. During one of the periods where my prisoner was out cold, I used the information he’d given me to do some careful digging.
There are places on the Web that the general populationdoesn’t know about and definitely doesn’t want to stumble onto. I used a back door to enter the address the man had given me. Places like these, there was no user history recorded, but it’s impossible to erase all traces entirely. Digging finally got me an IP address leading to a dozen consecutive servers around the globe. The mark, whoever he was, was good, I’d give him that. Knew how to coverhis tracks. Letting Eli’s specialized software continue the tracking, I turned my attention to the bank account. A sharp whistle left me at the balance. “You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?”
No response. I glanced up at the man to find him still unconscious. Too bad.
It was harder to hack a bank cold than it was to hack it if you already had access to the system. Luckily I did. Well, not luck.I worked for what I needed. My knife hand flexed on the mouse at the thought. There wasn’t a fucking thing we had that my brothers and I hadn’t worked for. We’d been on the streets since we were kids, alone, no one to rely on but each other. The three of us, always. And now Remi—
A groan came from the vicinity of the chair, cutting off that thought. I narrowed my eyes on the computer screen.
“Hey…” The chair squeaked as the man tried fruitlessly to struggle against his bonds. “Help. Somebody h-help.
We have now reached the delirium portion of the show.I’d put him out of his misery if I was certain I wouldn’t need any more information from him.
It took me longer than it would have Eli, but when I finally matched the IP intel to the banking information I’d dug up, traced back throughshell companies and accounts and fake identities, the name I came up with made me do a double take.
It shouldn’t. Politicians were the most hypocritical humans on the planet. Why would this politician come after us, though? And why now?
By midafternoon I had my answer.
I also had a dead body on my hands. As I arranged the scene the way I wanted it, I considered my options. Eli would have givenfalse IDs to the hospital and cops. Those IDs would check out—Eli was thorough—but the man hunting us wasn’t going by names or addresses. No, he was tracking other details. He might know the location of the meet. He could eventually discover the 911 call, track Remi down. Eli could make our brother’s records disappear, but not while they were active at the hospital, being constantly accessed.Full erasure only came when treatment stopped or the patient die—
“No!” I barked the word out loud, needing to hear it, needing to remind myself. Remi wasn’t going to die. I wouldn’t allow it.
Eli could do some mods to the records; that would give us time. A week, maybe. Our enemy might wait a couple of days before assuming his merc was dead, at least.
When all traces of me were erased fromthe room, I blew the pilot light on the gas stove in the small corner kitchenette and turned every eye on. The slightest spark would ignite the gas. A timer attached to a lamp in the corner gave me time to get gone.
One target down. The next would be much harder to take out, but I had a little time. I didn’t want to kill him first; I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted him stripped down, desperate.I wanted to make him beg and plead.
Only then would I kill the bastard. For Remi. For daring to come after my family. For breathing when my brother might not.
I wanted his blood on my hands. Needed it.
It was time to hunt.
