Gary opens the gate and wheels the man to the center of the ring, where Quinn and I stand. The man looks up at us, terrified.
“What’s going on here? I demand to know why I’m being held hostage!” He pulls against his arm restraints with a grunt. “You can’t keep me caged like this!”
“This is an interrogation,” I tell the man before I turn to Quinn. “The first time Jim visited this piece of shit, he discovered a very neglected shack at the back of the property. Inside that shack was an even more neglected cockatoo that Jim hoped would help Kenny feel more comfortable.”
“There’s nothing wrong with keeping the bird in a different building,” the man says with a roll of his eyes. “It did nothing but scream from sunup to sundown.”
I backhand the idiot in the chair, which sends the entire thing tumbling over. When I’ve righted it again, I grip either arm and lean into his ugly face. “You can’t take a social being and shove it in a box by itself and expect it to remain silent. You’re proof enough of that.”
The man closes his mouth. Wise decision. I’m about three seconds from killing him myself, and then Quinn would miss out on all the fun.
“Bring out the tools,” I say to Gary, and he hurries off to retrieve a selection of torture devices. I can’t wait to see what Quinn picks first.
Minutes later, he rolls a table into the ring. Quinn glances up at me, and I motion for her to make her selection. She nibbles her bottom lip and moves down the line, touching everything with her delicate fingers at least once. Finally, she settles on a whip.
“Aye, good choice,” I say with a nod. “Why’d you pick it?”
“If we want to extract information, we’ll need to keep him around for as long as possible.” She raises a hammer. “If I just whack him in the head with this, we’ll never get anything out of him.”
I bend lower and place my mouth beside her ear so that the asshole can’t hear me. “Don’t think about the kill. Think about different ways of inflicting pain. Sometimes death is a final act of kindness on our parts.”
She considers this, then swaps the whip for the hammer. My dick is already getting hard before she takes the first swing to his shin.
“I thought you’d go for the fingers!” I shout over his screams. I can’t remember the last time I smiled so widely. “You’re brilliant.”
“It just came to me,” she says. “I thought about how bad it hurts to get whacked in the shin, and voilà!”
“Aren’t you supposed to ask questions?” the man wheezes through cries of pain. “Isn’t that what an interrogation is? You ask questions, and if I don’t answer,thenI get tortured?”
“Oh, shit,” Quinn says with a giggle. “Guess I forgot that part. What are we trying to find out?”
I turn to Quinn. “The bird. When Jim arrived to seize the animals, the bird was no longer present. Despite scouring the property, the poor cockatoo was nowhere to be found.”
“And no one thought to justaskme?” the man screams.
I shrug. “This seemed more fun.”
“The bird is at my cousin’s place in Texas. I’ll give you the address if you’ll just let me go.”
“Way to suck the fun out of my day.” Quinn’s shoulders drop.
“Don’t lose heart yet, lass. I’m sure he knows something that he doesn’t want us to know.” I pluck a golf club from the table and toss it to her. “You’ve got a pretty good swing, if I remember correctly.”
She tests the weight in her hand before drawing back and whacking his other shin. A glorious howl springs out of him, and tears stream down his cheeks.
“Oh, shit,” Quinn says with a giggle. “Forgot to ask a question again. Hmm...tell us your darkest secret.”
“I slept with my brother’s wife. Twice.” The man gulps and peers up at Quinn through tear-filled eyes. “When I was sixteen, I set a trash can on fire and burned down the neighbor’s barn. It was an accident, and no one got hurt, but I never told anyone.”
Quinn sighs and tosses the golf club to the floor. “It won’t be this simple with Desmond. This is pointless.”
I take her shoulders in my hands and look down at her. “Hey, no getting discouraged now. Let’s finish him off and try another one.”
“What’s the point? These men are wimps.” She motions to the whimpering man who likely sports two broken tibias. “If I want to know what it’s like to really work something out of someone, you’ll need to provide someone who’s a little more...hardened.”
I sigh and nod. The girl is right.
“Get Ashwin ready,” I shout toward Gary.
