Page 166 of The Thief
"You don't get to talk about her."
"Why not? She's the whole point of this exercise."
"Explain that."
Maverick's had enough of the conversation. His knife finds Trace's shoulder, sliding deep into muscle. Trace's back arches, tendons standing out in his neck as he fights the pain.
"You think this was about Ava?" Trace manages between gasps. "About revenge? This was about proving that Henry Gallagher wasn't untouchable. That his precious family could be taken apart piece by piece."
"And now?"
"Now he's dead. Now his granddaughter knows what it feels like to lose someone she loves. Now all of you understand that your strength was an illusion."
The madness in his voice is getting stronger, his words running together. But underneath it, I can hear the truth. This was never about justice or even revenge. This was about a broken man trying to prove he mattered, that he could hurt people who had what he wanted.
Maverick pulls the knife out of Trace's shoulder and examines the blood on the blade. "How many others?" he asks. "How many people are you planning to kill?"
"All of you. Every last Gallagher, every last Houlihan. I want your entire bloodline wiped from the earth."
"That's not going to happen."
"Isn't it? You think Henry was the only target? You think killing me stops what's coming?"
The knife finds his thigh this time, pushing through muscle until it hits bone. Trace's scream is inhuman, animal, echoing off the warehouse walls like the cry of something being torn apart.
"What's coming?" I ask.
Trace laughs through the pain, the sound completely unhinged now. Blood bubbles at the corners of his mouth. "Insurance policies. Dead man's switches. Men who know what to do if I don't check in regularly."
"What men?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
Maverick twists the knife in Trace's leg. The scream that follows makes my teeth ache. It’s raw and broken and desperate.
"What men?" I repeat.
"Men who understand that sometimes you have to burn everything down to build something better."
"Names."
"Go fuck yourself."
This time, Maverick doesn't use the knife. He grabs Trace's broken nose and twists. The sound is wet, crunching, and Trace's resulting shriek is barely human.
"You can't break me," he gasps when the pain subsides enough for speech. "I'm already broken. Have been for years."
"Then why keep fighting?"
"Because it's all I have left. Because if I can't have what I want, I'll make sure no one else can either."
He's completely gone now, I realize. Whatever sanity he had left has snapped under the pressure and pain. We're not interrogating a man anymore; we're torturing a rabid animal.
"The psychiatric hospitals," I say. "They were right about you."
"Were they? Because from where I'm sitting, I'm the only one who sees the world clearly."
"You see enemies that don't exist."
