“Tape his mouth,” Bram told me.
He wasn’t angry. This was just business.
I picked up the roll of duct tape while Bram perused the instruments.
Our prisoner’s eyes were wide, focused on Bram as he chose a set of sharp metal pliers. “No… please…”
I tore off a piece of tape and slapped it over his mouth. “Don’t worry, you’ll have nine more chances after this to get it right.”
I didn’t have to tell him what would happen after that.
He knew.
He started thrashing in the chair as Bram stalked back over, the pliers in one hand, the rubber tourniquet in the other. The chair tipped over and the man fell to the barn’s dirt floor with a thud.
Bram righted the chair with one hand and held the pliers in his mouth while he worked the tourniquet around the guy’s forearm. “Adults want to pump shit into their veins, it’s none of my business.” His words were garbled around the pliers. “But only a fucking animal sells to kids. And we’re not animals.”
He was wrong, of course. We were animals. We’d chased Maeve through the tunnels, had all but forced her to live with us after we’d caught her, had done it before with countless girls.
But there were animals and there wereanimals, and we weren’t the kind of animals who got kids hooked on drugs.
The tourniquet in place, Bram reached for Brick’s left hand.
He thrashed again and the chair hopped on the ground before Bram called me over. “Hold this fucker still.”
I walked over, planning to put my boot down on the chair’s stabilizer bar, but I misjudged the distance and ended up crashing into him instead.
The chair fell again and the guy screamed behind the tape covering his mouth.
“Sorry.” I put the chair back on its legs.
I was pretty sure the guy was swearing at me, but it was hard to tell with the tape on his mouth.
I stepped on the stabilizer bar to hold him steady.
“They say a cat has nine lives,” Bram said, opening the pliers around the man’s left pinky. “You get ten.”
“Lucky you,” I said as Bram clamped down on the guy’s finger.
Blood arced onto the dirt floor, and a muffled scream tore from the back of the guy’s throat.
But it was nothing to worry about. That was the whole point of the barn.
No one to hear him scream.
44
MAEVE
I wokeup Saturday and got ready for work even though Hannah was covering my shift. I wore the same kinds of clothes I wore to Lushberry — high-waisted jeans and a silky crop top that skimmed the waistband — even though it might not have been super practical. I added my shoulder harness, slipped Rose inside, and added a leather jacket to hide her.
Then I stuffed my boots in my bag and headed downstairs.
“Morning,” I said, entering the kitchen.
“Hot breakfast?” Poe asked hopefully. His dark hair was damp from the shower, curling around the back of his neck and around his ears, and he was wearing boxer briefs and nothing else.
What a surprise.
