Page 97 of Sins of Arrogance

“You got a prayer to the saint of sol­diers, but not a dog tag to your name. I’ve seen cleaner ghosts, but not many. Tell me…” I bend in close, voice drop­ping low. “How much did they pay you to for­get who you are?”

His pulse ticks in his neck, steady but tight. Eyes open just enough to track me. Wait­ing. Cal­cu­lat­ing.

I’m im­pressed in spite of my­self.

“I’m bet­tin’ your pals’ll be a bleedin’ fount of in­for­ma­tion.” Both men were too easy to take down to be trained like Ranger Rick here.

My watch vi­brates against my wrist and I check it. Conor and Brice are on their way with the other in­trud­ers.

Time to set the stage.

I grab my slap jack and give Ranger Rick’s abs a good go­ing over so they glow bright red. He doesn’t so much as grunt.

I nod to my­self. Then I grab his ce­ramic knife. Noth­ing like mark­ing a man with his own weapon.

Dig­ging the tip un­der his pinky fin­ger, I get it loose and pull. That gets a gusted out breath at least. And a good amount of blood spat­ter.

Not enough though. I slice a shal­low line down Ranger Rick’s left thigh. If he lives, it won’t take more than a cou­ple of days to heal, but it’s bleed­ing like I want it to.

I do the same to his right bi­cep and then step back, ad­mir­ing my hand­i­work.

He looks tor­tured good and proper. Ninety per­cent of in­ter­ro­ga­tion is psy­chol­ogy. And a so­ciopath who has spent his en­tire life study­ing peo­ple to mir­ror, is feckin’ aces at psy­chol­ogy.

If I ex­cel at the vi­o­lence that makes up the other ten per­cent too, that just makes me well rounded.

Leav­ing my hand­i­work to con­geal on the floor around Ranger Rick, I go to the cab­i­net where we keep our com­pounds.

There’s a mix to lower in­hi­bi­tions. One to in­crease nerve sen­si­tiv­ity and there­fore the im­pact of pain. I hear the Greeks on the West Coast have some­thing even bet­ter. Note to self, con­tact the Greek mafia and see if we can’t do busi­ness.

We have drugs to knock our guests out. Some with am­ne­siac prop­er­ties like Spe­cial K, oth­ers that let our vic­tims re­mem­ber ev­ery mo­ment they spent in my com­pany.

I grab a bot­tle la­beled in Chi­nese Hanzi, a benzo com­pound de­vel­oped by one of our arms clients. Pre­par­ing it for use, I in­sert two drops into the aerosol dis­pens­ing sys­tem at­tached to a breath­ing mask.

One drop low­ers in­hi­bi­tions, but two will knock Ranger Rick out. Ad­min­is­tered as an aerosol it will have im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

When he wakes up, he’ll still be un­der the in­flu­ence of the drug. Telling him what I learn from his co­horts should be the fi­nal trig­ger to re­lax his own tongue.

No use hid­ing what is no longer a se­cret.

Hum­ming, I turn back to Ranger Rick.

When I move to slip the breath­ing mask over his face, he jerks his head away. It takes me a few sec­onds longer than I want to get it on him and re­lease the aerosol.

But he’s slumped for­ward in the chair, his breath­ing so shal­low, his chest barely moves when the lock dis­en­gages on the door.

His pals will have to get a real good look to fig­ure out if he’s dead, or not. I’m not giv­ing them the chance.

Conor shoves the man whose arm I broke into the room. He cries out in pain.

“Fuck off y—” His voice cuts off abruptly when he sees Ranger Rick. “Is he dead?”

The color leaches from the dick­head’s face as he takes in the scene I set for him.

“Wraith is in­de­struc­tible,” the other in­truder says as Brice shoves him into the room too.

Then he sees Ranger Rick and curses. In Al­ba­nian.

“Yiz are from Besnik’s crew.” Just say­ing the smarmy bas­tard’s name leaves a foul taste on my tongue.