Jericho rose from where he sat, taking the drill from Atticus, pushing the button down and watching it roar to life. “I’ve never used one of these on a knee before.”
“Feel for the softest part on the sides of the kneecap. Then you want to go in at a fifteen to forty-five degree angle, ensuring it will tear through the meniscus, the popliteal tendon, and the cruciate ligament. In addition to hobbling him, it’s going to make him wish you’d just hacked his leg off above the knee.”
Jericho leaned over and gave him a chaste kiss. “Thanks, Freckles.” He turned back to Bryan. “What do you say? If you’re not going to talk anyway, let’s play a little game of operation. Think I can avoid hitting any bones or major arteries?”
“If you go too slowly, he might go into cardiac arrest from the pain,” Atticus warned, bored.
“Huh,” Jericho mused. “Hear that, Bryan? Think you’ll be lucky to just have a heart attack and die before I lose interest in torturing you to death?”
Jericho got within a quarter inch of Bryan’s kneecap before he screamed, “Wait. Wait. Wait!” Jericho took his hand off the trigger, gazing up at Bryan expectantly. The man looked miserable. “What the fuck do you want from me, man? If I tell you anything, they will murder my family.”
“They?”
Bryan jutted his jaw forward, furious and terrified. “What the fuck, man.”
Atticus sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the table. “I can keep your family safe, but I’m going to need more than just your friend’s name and location for that.”
“Man, Scar is the least of your problems. It’s who he works for you should be worried about.”
Atticus flicked his gaze to Jericho and then back to Bryan. “Well, let’s start with Scar’s real name.”
When Bryan hesitated, Jericho pressed the trigger on the drill again, moving it back into position.
Once more, Bryan began to scream, “Wait. Wait. Wait.”
“Last chance, Bryan,” Atticus warned. “Name. Now.”
“Carlos.”
“Carlos what?” Jericho prompted, voice cold.
He hesitated only a second, eyes fixated on the drill. “Perez. Carlos Perez.”
“See? Was that so hard?” Jericho asked.
“Where can we find this Carlos guy?” Atticus asked.
Bryan snorted. “You don’t. He finds you, and you best hope he don’t. You two have no fucking idea who or what you’re messing with.”
“Well, then why don’t you enlighten us, Bryan?” Atticus asked.
Jericho once again took a seat straddling the back of the chair. “You’re dead either way, kid. Might as well go out not screaming in pain.”
“Look, Scar…Carlos…used to hang with us. He took over running my crew when I got popped for pimping some whores out of The Orchid. But by the time I got out, he was running with some much scarier fucking dudes.”
“Like a rival gang?” Atticus asked.
“Nah, man. No rival gang. You think my boys don’t know how to handle our fucking people? This wasn’t a fucking terf war. These people are fucking…sinister, man. They got money. They got connections. And they been operating in our territory for a decade and nobody even knows they’re there. They’re fucking ghosts.”
Jericho exchanged a look with Atticus as they both processed Bryan’s information. “What do you mean?” Atticus asked. “Ghosts, how?”
Bryan shook his head, staring over Jericho’s shoulder out the window. “They pretend they’re going to help, ya know? They’re the ones you don’t expect. The white knights, the ones who carry crosses and say they can fix everything.”
“You sound like you’re talking about a klan rally. Just tell us where we can find Carlos.”
“Man, that’s what I’m telling you. You don’t. His boss will never let you get close enough to question him. He’s just their enforcer. Their recruiter. Carlos will cut his own tongue out before he ever talks.”
Jericho looked back at Atticus, appearing equally confused. He pulled his wallet free and shoved a picture in front of Bryan. “Do you know this girl?”
