“The fuck I will.”
“One to five odds,” Flir muttered to himself.
“You ever been tortured?” Relay asked, cocking his head.
“One to seven,” Flir whispered again.
“Those are some shit odds, hardly worth making the bet,” Strike whispered back, nudging Flir with a grin.
The way Rhino’s lips thinned out told me the answer to Relay’s question was no, but he didn’t look thrilled to get a lesson.
“I have,” Relay continued.
My eyes shot to him and I studied the man. There were shadows in his eyes. I’d noticed them earlier, his smiles never quite made it up to them. They didn’t light up with amusement the way that OD’s did.
Relay was calm, his body still as he held the hammer. He seemed at peace. “I was taught by the best,” he continued. “By assholes who were doing their damndest to get information out of me, and later tried to kill me.”
A quick look around showed grim looks on everyone else’s faces, but no surprise. They knew about this already.
“So, trust me, Rhino, youwillanswer my questions. It’s up to you what kind of shape you want to be in by the end of it.”
Rhino’s jaw flexed as he let that information sink in. “I’m fucking nobody. A grunt.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t have valuable information,” OD replied.
“I can’t tell you shit,” he sighed.
“You don’t and there’s not going to be much for me to patch up afterward,” Drifter warned him, breaking his silence for the first time.
“You’ll have to kill me,” Rhino replied, “because I ain’t saying nothing.”
No one mentioned that his death was the plan anyway. At least I assumed it was. By the way OD had spoken I’d thought it was. A loud cracking sound broke my thoughts and made me jump.
Rhino howled in pain, staring down at the top of his hand. Relay had brought the head of the hammer down and probably just broke at least two or three of the metacarpals in Rhino’s hand. Those bones were fragile; it didn’t take much to snap them.
I swallowed again. This might end up being too much for me. Seeing people in pain made my fingers twitch. I wanted to help. Even though it was Rhino and he would’ve had no problem dumping my lifeless body on the sidewalk, I still had a compulsion to help him.
“You have anything to do with those kids dying on the streets?” OD asked. “Of others going missing?”
Relay paused, seeming to have no problem letting Overdrive do the questioning as long as he got to do the bashing.
Rhino pressed his lips together, glaring at the men. Another crack, this time as the hammer came down on his left hand, made him scream again and had me cringing.
Relay went around to the table once more and selected something sleek and shiny. It was a long needle.
“Not yet, Relay,” OD said with a shake of his head, “I need him to be able to hear for a bit longer.”
My eyes widened when I realized Relay was planning to use that needle to rupture Rhino’s eardrums. Pursing my lips together, I wrapped my arms around myself.
“You don’t have to stay.”
I looked up at Bolo, he was as big as Rhino was, maybe an inch taller. Shaking my head, I let out a slow breath. “I want to know what he says.”
“OD will tell you everything afterward,” Drifter said from my other side, they’d ended up standing on either side of me without me realizing it. “Doesn’t mean you have to watch this part.”
“This is happening because of me…” The guilt was thick in my throat, making the words hard to force out.
“No,” Bolo said in a low voice. Relay and OD were continuing their work in front of us as we spoke. Rhino’s screams drowned out our conversation off and on. “He brought this on himself by coming after you.”
