“You know what I am going to say,” Dale said.“That every man I’ve put in the ground had someone who loved him.That it doesn’t end anything.”
“It ends for you,” the father said, and stepped close enough that Dale could see where old grief had shaved his voice down to the bone.“I must bring my son’s honor home.I will do this with your last breath.”
A glove hit his ribs again.Not full power.Just a well-placed reminder.
Static scratched Dale’s left ear.A whisper cut under the room.“Dale.”Oren’s voice, tucked right against the drum of his heartbeat.“Talk to me.”
Dale didn’t move his head.He didn’t turn his mouth.“I’m here,” he said, barely air.
“Do you know where you are?”Oren asked, soft and flat like he was reading off measurements.
“New construction,” Dale said.A fist found his left side this time, impatient, making him grunt.He kept going.“Concrete dust.Plastic sheeting.Temporary lights.Smell of adhesive.Cold slab.No street noise.”
“Good,” Oren said.“We’re coming.”The words were calm.The heat behind them was not.“Keep breathing.”
One of the brothers caught the way Dale’s lips moved and swung for his jaw.The cuff chain took most of it, the rest rang his teeth.
The father held up a hand and the room obeyed him.He studied Dale like a map.“You have someone in your ear,” he said, not asking.
“I have a lot of someone’s looking out for me,” Dale said.The split on his scalp made the laugh cost.“You brought an audience.So did I.”
The father’s eyes didn’t change.He reached up and, with a narrow blade, drew a careful line under Dale’s jaw.Just enough to sting and bleed.He wiped the knife clean on a blue shop towel and folded the towel like it mattered.“In my village we mark what is ours when it is time to say goodbye,” he said.“We are not animals.We do not tear.We write.”
“How poetic,” Dale said, gritting the words.“Right now, you need to know you picked the wrong team with which to fuck.”
The father tilted his head.“And you picked the wrong son to kill,” he said.“But we must all live with the choices we make.”
Static again—Oren, closer in his ear for how far away he had to be.“Say again the smell.”
“Adhesive.Pine.Drywall.Bleach,” Dale said.“Floor slopes to a drain.”He let his head tip as though the cuff weight did it.He didn’t want to give the father the grace of seeing him look for help.
“Copy that,” Oren said.A murmur off-mic—Ty, probably, low and precise.Then Oren, warmer.“We have you.”
Dale shut his eyes a second.He hadn’t planned to.It still happened.“You always do.”
The father watched the little surrender and mistook it for his own.He nodded to a brother.A punch to his stomach came lazy and mean, but packed with strength.He took it and rode it down to his toes and back up.
“Enough,” the father said to his men, not to show mercy but to save it.He stepped in and tapped Dale’s sternum twice with two fingers, the same measured touch as before, then traced the flat blade of his hand across the air at throat height.“We finish clean.”
The room changed on the next breath.
It was small things first—the way one of the brothers glanced left without meaning to, the way another set his stance like he’d heard a truck roll up outside.Air moved under the plastic sheeting.Wind had no reason to be here.
Ricky’s voice, faint through the mic.“On your go.”Bateman’s answer, quieter.“On me.”
Dale rolled his shoulders against the bite of steel and took the extra breath that was being offered.“Showtime,” he told the father.
The breach came fast.Two men entered at once, a third half a count later from the rear.The brothers moved the way men do when their plan meets a bigger one and loses.Two dropped fast.Qne tried to run through the wrong space and met Ricky’s weapon and the end of that idea.The father alone didn’t flinch.He took a step back, as if to make room for the story to finish itself.Then crumpled to the floor, the red mist from the back of his head signaling his grizzly end.
Ty was there when the edges stopped screaming.No bang, no speech.Just Ty, eyes searching and landing, mouth set, hands already reaching up.He took Dale’s weight first, then the cuffs, like he could be two places at once.A pick was in his hand.Two turns.A click.
“Got you,” Ty said, low and fierce.“Eyes on me.”
“Trying,” Dale said.The world swam and tried to tip.Ty’s shoulder kept it from being a choice.
Oren slid into the corner of Dale’s vision, gun down, jaw tight.“You pick the worst rooms to just hang out in,” he said.
“Good acoustics,” Dale managed.He let Ty pull his arms down, let the blood come back hot and ugly.“How did you find me?”
