“The guy with the scar on his face,” Jericho said, exasperated.
Understanding dawned. “Oh. Hanging from the lift. We gagged him ‘cause he wouldn’t stop threatening us.”
Jericho rolled his eyes. “Typical.”
Felix didn’t respond, just turned on his heel and retreated, presumably to grab Atticus’s gear.
Jericho smacked a kiss on his cheek. “You sew up Arsen and I’ll torture Carlos?” he said, as if they were divvying up household chores.
Atticus smiled. “Sure. Why not.”
They descended the stairs into absolute chaos. Arsen was lying on the pool table swearing in Russian, gesturing wildly towards the guy dangling from the lift. His once white shirt was now soaked with blood. Seven was sitting cross-legged beside him on the table, holding a clean towel to the wound.
Nico and Levi were attempting to secure Carlos’s legs, but he continued to kick, managing to land a blow to the side of Nico’s head. “If this motherfucker kicks me one more time, I’m going to shoot him in the dick.”
Levi managed to bind the man’s legs with duct tape. “We need to get some information from him first.” With Carlos secured by both wrists and ankles, the man began to shout at them behind his gag, flinging his body around like a fish out of water. They turned away from him, dismissing him to focus on Arsen.
Felix dropped the tackle box on the table, looking at Atticus with a quizzical expression.
“What’s up?” Atticus finally asked.
“You have, like…a whole arsenal in your Volvo.”
Atticus peeled the towel from Arsen’s wound. It was a good gash on his abdomen, about six inches, deep enough to need stitches or staples, but not deep enough to have damaged any major organs.
Atticus flicked his gaze back to Felix. “Was there a question in there?”
“Do you kill people often enough to need a mobile kill kit?” Felix asked.
Atticus opened his tackle box. “Yes.” He looked down at Arsen. “I can do this fast or I can do this pretty. Which do you prefer?”
Arsen blinked sweat from his eyes. “Fast. I’m already pretty.”
Atticus snorted but reached for the surgical staples instead of the curved needle he would need to stitch him up. He grabbed a syringe, pulling up lidocaine. “This is just a local so you won’t feel anything.”
Arsen looked at Felix, then to Atticus. “Fancy. Usually, we just use whiskey. Is nice having an on-call doctor,” he said, his accent thicker than it had been moments before.
Jericho came to stand by Atticus’s side as he placed a gloved hand on the boy’s belly. “How is he?”
“He’ll be fine,” he said, just as the boy unleashed a string of curses in Russian.
Jericho nodded, pushing the hair back off Arsen’s forehead. “You did good.” To Seven, he said, “Get the jumper cables, and turn up the stereo.”
“I want to play with him, too,” Arsen said sulkily.
Atticus pinched the edges of his incision together, deploying a staple to tack it closed before moving onto the next.
Jericho approached Carlos, using a box cutter to cut through his shirt. When the music swelled, he pulled the gag from Carlos, who immediately shouted, “Do you know who I am?”
“So original,” Atticus muttered.
“Yeah, Carlos. I know exactly who you are,” Jericho said. That seemed to stop the other man in his tracks. “Carlos Perez, briefly headed the 4Loco crew before moving on to threatening and murdering people for Helping Hearts.”
If Jericho was looking to rattle the guy, he’d clearly done it. He sucked his teeth. “Man, you don’t know shit.”
“But that’s exactly why you’re here, Carlos,” Jericho said as Seven handed him the jumper cables, sparks flying as he tapped them together. “I have to say, I appreciate you coming to us. You saved us so much legwork. But I gotta ask, how did you find us?”
Carlos deliberately turned his eyes away from Jericho. Atticus looked down to place another staple just as the man began to make an inhuman sound. Something between a gurgle and a scream, his body convulsing as Jericho pressed the metal clips against his nipples.
