My phone buzzed.
Nolan
If you hiked regularly, you’d stop aching.
Me
If I don’t hike at all, I also don’t ache, plus I don’t get bitten or risk falling off a mountain.
Love the sportswear, hate the sports; that was me. Although it wasn’t as if I did no exercise whatsoever. Several years ago, I’d taken a yoga class at Chase’s insistence and surprised myself by not hating it. Group exercise wasn’t my thing, but I did fifteen minutes of sun salutations with an app most mornings, enough to keep myself flexible and stop my neck and back from aching.
“I think the more important question is ‘why are you here?’” Dusk said on-screen, her tone almost playful. That was a bad sign, by the way. Of all the Choirgirls, Dusk pulled off the “girl next door” vibe the best, acting super cute and wholesome until she stabbed you in the eye with a chopstick. No, really. I’d watched her do it. The chopstick lodged in the asshole’s brain, and he made this weird gurgling sound as the light in his remaining eye slowly dimmed. So gross.
“We did nothing,” Barys tried.
“Define ‘nothing.’”
“We just three nobody guys from Minsk. We never hurt people.”
“Are you sure? The brunette who ran out of here last night looked kinda bruised.”
Barys glanced sideways at Kazik. “She didn’t mind.”
“Did you ask her?”
“We pay her,” Kazik snapped. “What is this shit?”
Inwardly, I cringed. Kazik wasn’t coming out of this with all his body parts intact, no way. Sin must have had the same thought because she raised her gaze to the ceiling and blew out a long breath. Funny how Sin was cool with participating in an impromptu interrogation that may or may not involve blood, but if you ate chicken or beef or pork, she’d bitch about it for a week straight.
“Are you the Bible guy?” Dusk asked. “You’re the Bible guy, right?”
“You’re crazy. You’re all crazy.”
“We’re talking about you right now.”
“You like to include a little piety with your ransom demands,” Jez prompted. “Sound familiar?”
Ah, now he paled a shade, but he still tried to bluster. “I don’t know anything about that. You are typical woman—always wrong.”
“Bullshit.”
“Now, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Dusk told him. “We’re gonna bring you a laptop, and you can unencrypt everything you’ve ever encrypted and shut down your entire operation.”
Kazik was back to sneering. Barys looked nervous, and Raban was wisely keeping quiet. See no evil, speak no evil.
“And what if we don’t want to do that?” Kazik asked.
“Well, I took the liberty of learning a couple of Bible verses myself, just in case you took this attitude. Leviticus verses nineteen and twenty—sound familiar? ‘If anyone injures his neighbour, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him.’ But I’m not so good at cybercrime myself, so I’ll have to substitute.”
Storm leaned back in her seat and groaned. “Oh, hell. We’re back to the eyes again.”
“At least she doesn’t have a chopstick this time.”
“Fuck you, woman.” Poor, dumb Kazik had no idea what was about to hit him. “Get out of my house.”
Dusk didn’t have a chopstick, but she did have pliers, and to mix things up a bit, she started with the teeth this time. Sin kept Barys and Raban in line while Jez and Spider held Kazik down, and Dusk yanked out an incisor with practised efficiency. Storm winced when he shrieked.
“Should’ve lowered the volume,” I told her. “You knew what would happen.”
