Page 51 of Shatter

When I crouch and open the lid, the tools stare back up at me.

Pliers, needle-nose and slip-joint.

A ball-peen hammer with a taped handle.

A set of jumper cables, coiled neat, and beside them a car battery sitting on the floor with a strip of red tape around the positive terminal.

I work on bikes all day, and a twelve-volt battery doesn't have secrets from me.

I know how long it takes to do its work on a man, and which parts of him it finds first.

My hand closes around the slip-joint pliers.

They're heavy and cold.

When I turn around, the kid in the chair sees them, and his face goes the color of paste.

"Wait." He starts shaking his head, fast. "Wait, wait. I don't know anything. I'm only a driver, man, they hired me to drive."

"Who hired you?" I walk back to the chair.

"I don't know his name." His eye darts to the pliers.

I crouch down again.

I take his right hand where it's tied behind the chair, gently, the way I'd pick up a bird, and spread his fingers out one at a time.

He's sobbing now, big ugly gulps of air, snot running down over the dried blood on his lip.

"Who hired you?" My voice doesn't change.

"I told you I don't—" He chokes on it.

I close the pliers over the nail of his index finger.

No squeezing yet.

I hold it there and let him feel the metal against the nail bed, cold and ridged, and I watch his face.

"Last chance to make this easy." I tilt my head. "Up to you."

He doesn't take it.

So, I pull.

The scream bounces off the cinderblock walls and comes back at us from every direction, high and raw, and it goes on for a long time.

I set the pliers down on the floor and wait for it to stop.

Even after it does, it keeps ringing off the cinderblock and inside my skull.

My hands are steady.

I stare down at them, at the red on the jaws of the pliers and the little curved nail on the concrete, and they don't shake at all.

Across the room, nobody moves.

When he can breathe again, I pick the pliers back up.