And his cousins are the same. They didn’t have to help me. They could have just let me get shot and gone about their night like nothing happened.
But they didn’t, and even though I know they’re dangerous, right now, they’re the only people who give a shit if I live or die.
The guy on the ground makes a strangled sound when the twin with the curved knife kneels in front of him and pulls back his hood, taking his ball cap off at the same time. Then he rests the blade against the front of my attacker’s jacket, just under his throat.
I study my attacker's face now that I can see it. I can’t be sure, but he looks like he’s in his thirties. His brown hair, dark eyes, and generic features aren’t familiar, and I can’t place him.
“Who the fuck are you?” Xave asks in that deadly cold voice.
“And I’d think twice about lying or trying to get one over on us,” the twin with the butterfly knives says as he crouches next to him. “My brother here has a talent for knowing when people are lying.” He grins, and the combination of his big, wide smile and the total lack of emotion in his eyes is terrifying. “And me and my friends here”— he lifts his knives and gives them a quick spinaround his fingers—“hate liars. So I’d choose my words carefully if I were you, because they just might be your last.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Xave repeats when my attacker says nothing.
The guy rolls his lips inward, like he’s forcing himself to stay quiet.
“Fuck this,” Killian says and tucks his gun into one of his jacket pockets. “Send this asshole to meet his maker if he even breathes funny,” he says to the twins.
“Roger that,” the twin with the butterfly knives says jovially.
“Gladly,” the other twin says in that same deadly dark voice from before.
Killian roughly pats the guy down, and I don’t miss how he wrenches the guy’s hurt arm around as he digs a wallet and a phone out of the guy’s pockets.
He hands the phone to the twin with the butterfly knives, then flips the wallet open and pulls out a glossy school ID.
“Richard Hutcherson,” Killian reads. “Works in the IT department.”
“Now isn’t that an interesting development,” the twin with the curved knife says, still holding the blade just under my attacker’s throat.
“Tell me something, Richard,” the other twin says, his attention on the phone in his hands. “Do you go by Ricky, Rich, or Dick?”
Richard looks between the twins, his fear obvious, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, Dick,” the twin with his phone says. “I bet you’re sitting there thinking about how you’re super smart for putting a pattern ID on your phone because I can’t just cut off your finger and use your print to unlock it.” He glances up and smirk-smiles, somehow looking even more unhinged than he did when he was spinning his knives. “But you forgot to clean your phone screen.”He holds the phone at eye level with the screen up and looks at it closely as he tilts it around so it catches the light at different angles. “And because most people are basic, boring creatures with no creativity, I don’t need you to tell me your code because I already know it.” He holds the phone out and uses his finger to draw a bow tie pattern over the nine dots on the screen.
The phone lights up, and a home screen with a half-naked anime woman on it appears in its wake.
“Oh, Dick. Tell us you’ve never given a woman an orgasm without telling us you’ve never given a woman an orgasm,” he says, his attention on the phone as he taps on the screen. “Huh, that’s interesting.” He looks up at Killian. “Is Dick here as big of a dumbass as I think he is?”
“Depends.” Killian snaps the wallet closed and pulls his gun out of his pocket. “Are you asking if Dick brought his real wallet on a hit? Because if you are, then yes, he’s as big a dumbass as you thought.”
Xave tucks his gun into his hoodie pocket, and Killian tosses the wallet to him.
Not letting go of my hand, Xave flips the wallet open and thumbs through it.
“Well, Dick the Dumbass was smart enough to bring a burner,” the twin with his phone says, giving the device a little shake. “But still too much of a dumbass to not put a bunch of apps on it that are signed into his real accounts.” He pauses, a thoughtful look crossing his handsome features. “Is it considered cheating if you have multiple AI girlfriend chatbots on your phone? Or is it like a poly thing and they all know about each other?”
“Are you going to tell us why you tried to kill our friend here?” the twin with the knife still pressed against Richard’s jacket asks. “Or am I going to get to baptize my new friend here and find out how sharp it really is?”
Richard looks between the twins, his expression full of genuine fear, but still says nothing.
The twin with the knife gently flicks his wrist, and the top button of Richard’s coat falls to the ground as the blade slices it clean off.
“That looked smooth,” Killian comments, his tone casual. “How did it feel?”
“Pretty smooth,” his cousin confirms. “But thread isn’t much of a test for a blade this size, so it’s not really a good measure of how sharp it is.”
“No,” Killian agrees. “It’s not. You’ll definitely need to try something with more tensile strength.”
