6. Florida Man’s Ventures in Water Torture
Chapter 6
Florida Man’s Ventures in Water Torture
A dler was nothing if not a consummate professional; Rainy had to give him that. He kept quiet, face carefully neutral, the whole way to the Rattrap. Didn’t fuss over the dig of the zip ties into his wrists, didn’t even raise an eyebrow when they steered him inside and secured him to a chair.
The building the Rattrap occupied had once been a dance school. It was the butt of many jokes, but the space suited them just fine. Malia’s desk was situated in the old reception area, and they pulled Adler through it into what the Rattrap’s band of rogues affectionately referred to as the “multipurpose room.” It was the old studio, a large and windowless room whose wooden floor had been pried up to expose the slab of rubbery linoleum beneath. It was secluded, easy to clean, and had soundproof walls.
The purposes it could be used for were, indeed, multi.
When Rainy’s mentor Rezakova had bought the place, she’d pulled out the floors and barre but left up the floor-to-ceiling mirror that covered one wall. Rainy watched Adler’s expression in its reflection. His chair was the only piece of furniture and faced the mirror directly. In the mirror’s silver expanse, the room looked wide and stark under the harsh fluorescents; the only thing for miles was Adler, tied to the chair, and Rainy at his shoulder. Adler’s face was perfectly calm, but under the fabric of his pants, his thighs were straining against the tension of his bonds.
It was a checkmate position. The kind of position that those in their line of work dreaded finding themselves in, because it meant the end of the line. And yet, Adler still had that expression on his face—not haughty or arrogant like Rainy had first supposed. Just flat. Cool, measured. Rainy got the sense that Adler was a careful construction, something painstakingly put together and kept locked down tight. Perfectly in control of himself, in a way Rainy had never been from the moment he first drew air.
Rainy had always been a sort of quilt, or a bazaar. Most load-bearing pieces of him were borrowed from someone else, and he traded and swapped and shared with everyone around him all the time, shuffling into the bliss of not recognizing himself. Adler, though, was a closed system. Every piece of him belonged to him alone. Rainy had known plenty of people like him—those who built themselves walls to protect something inside. It drove him crazy with the urge to poke and prod and pry. He wondered what the soft, fragile center of Adler was.
Then again, maybe Adler was a special sort of wall-builder. Maybe he’d doubled in and over himself until there was no center, and walls were all he was.
They were alone in the room. Marco and Novikov were conferring outside for the moment. Rainy sucked hard on the lollipop he’d snagged from Malia’s desk, felt it clatter against his teeth in a satisfyingly annoying way. Adler’s eye twitched.
“Cherry,” Rainy offered, trying to school his voice to hide the adrenaline still capering up and down his sinews and veins, the throb of his heart at the base of his throat.
“Charming.” Adler’s mouth stayed flat, pinned in at the corners. Rainy wanted to peel that expression away, to wrench apart the walls until Adler was finished, totally undone.
He was going to do it, before he killed him. Before he put Adler in the ground, he was going to pry that flat look off his face, make him look at Rainy with desperation in his eyes. Yes, that was what he wanted. He could get it, too—he could break Adler’s kneecaps, each delicate bone in his fingers, crush his nose against the linoleum floor. If Adler gave him the word, Rainy could pin him against the wall and fuck him until he forgot every word except for Rainy’s name.
With Rainy’s blood coursing as high as it was, either option felt perfectly acceptable at the moment.
He walked a slow circle around the chair, taking the scene in from each angle. The flex of Adler’s wrists against his bonds. The slight involuntary part of his thighs where each ankle was lashed to a chair leg.
He opened the file on his phone again. “Sergeant Nathaniel Adler, Jr.,” he read aloud. “Parents call you Junior? That’s pretty cute.”
Adler’s teeth ground, just a little. Rainy dragged the lollipop along his cheek again, making a flat clack against each tooth. Starting right from his big brother, everyone he’d ever met could confirm that Rainy had a special talent for getting under people’s skin. And that was even before he’d started literally getting under people’s skin.
“Age twenty-nine, born and raised in Hedrick, Alabama. Kind of a shithole, if I’m being honest. I’m not surprised you didn’t want to limp back there after getting half your face blown off.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed by this?” Adler drawled. “I’m an open book. Any moron with a computer could’ve cobbled this together.”
“I just like to know who I’m dealing with. And, after reading your whole file…” Rainy clicked his tongue. “Honestly, not as impressive as I was expecting.”
He stopped just behind the chair. Their eyes met in the mirror, and there was something behind Adler’s gaze now, that stoked-up hot-coal bite to his coiled reservation.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said. “Now, can we get this over with? I really don’t wanna hear the sound of your voice any longer than necessary.”
The temper lurking under Rainy’s skin jumped, flushing him hot and cold just subdermal. Adler’s hair was a little longer than it looked, shaken out of its careful styling. Long enough for Rainy to get a good grip on it, blood-white tight right at the scalp. He pulled Adler’s head back firmly, exposing the vulnerable arch of his neck.
His hair was stiff and sticky with styling gel against Rainy’s fingers. There was sweat and blood beaded on his brow. His eyes were like a knife between Rainy’s ribs. Lips parted involuntarily.
“You’ve got such a mouth on you,” Rainy murmured, something dark and fluid uncoiling in his chest. “I remember that.”
With his free hand, he pulled the lollipop from his own mouth and pressed it against Adler’s lips where he was held in place. It poised there for a moment, glistening red and clear under the fluorescents like a precious jewel or a drop of blood. Pushing in, insistent. Then Adler parted his teeth and it slid down into his mouth, slick and easy as if it belonged there.
Rainy could feel Adler’s eyes on him, but he was watching his mouth as his lips closed around the white stick just a breath from Rainy’s fingers. His cheeks dipped in, scar tugging the corner of his mouth. Rainy felt the tremor in the stick when his tongue traced over it and he sucked, once. Then Rainy tugged and he relinquished it, letting it slide back between his lips. Rainy pressed the head of the lollipop, dragging his bottom lip down. The moment hung heavy, stretched out with the slide of the candy against Adler’s lip, the tiny wet part of his mouth.
Rainy finally dared a glance at Adler’s expression. His eyes were hazy and violent. An electric-red dab of artificial dye gathered at the corner of his mouth. Rainy was struck by the sudden urge to lean in and kiss the taste of cherry out of his mouth. He might have, too, if he hadn’t known Adler would bite him bloody.
“Rainy,” a voice alerted. Rainy released Adler’s hair roughly and stepped back to look at Marco framed in the door. “Conference.”
Out in the office, Novikov was sitting on the musty green-brown couch, poking at his knife wound with a mild frown. Malia was hunkered behind her desktop monitors, looking alarmed.
“Jesus, he’s going to bleed out on the couch,” she hissed. “This is why you guys are supposed to take care of things in the field. ”
“Not going to bleed out,” Novikov assured her. “Not good, though.”
Malia looked doubtful and was carefully averting her eyes from the blood. Marco folded his arms.
“Ilya needs to tap out. That stab wound could be a problem if he doesn’t get it looked at soon.”
“I can finish,” Novikov insisted.
Rainy sighed. “No, you need to get out of here. Go get Nasrin to stitch you up.”
“She’s not admitting anyone right now. Says she’s not to be disturbed on maternity leave.”
Marco ducked under Novikov’s arm and steadied him upright. “Tell her it’s a favor for her favorite brother-in-law.”
They got Novikov mobile and out, and then Rainy was cracking his knuckles.
“All right,” he said, thinking of the red on Adler’s lips. “I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”
Rezakova had told him years ago that there was a special line that a professional killer had to straddle. You had to be cold enough to do it without hesitation, but you could never start to get off on it, or take pleasure from the act for the act’s sake. If you tipped off that tightrope in either direction, it would drag you under.
As pissed-off as he was about his tires, he wasn’t going to find it entirely pleasurable to wring the life out of Adler.
Not entirely—but a little bit.
He had been considering how to do it. A bullet was too quick and easy. A knife too slow, too difficult to clean up after. Rainy had been leaning toward strangulation. He’d put on a pair of gloves and wrap his hands around Adler’s throat, squeeze until it took. Watch the desperation come into his eyes and then go out, along with everything else.
The thought made his pulse pick up again. Not exactly with excitement, or with dread. Just… something.
“Hold on,” Marco said. “We don’t want to start with the killing yet.”
“No, actually, I do want to start with the killing. Were you not paying attention?”
“Hold on, Rainy. Don’t you think we should start with—” He made a gruesome twisting gesture. “Let’s not waste an opportunity here. You said this guy has dinner at Seong’s house. Hugs his kids. He’ll definitely know something worthwhile.”
Displeasure crept up Rainy’s back. “This is my job, Marco. We’re not torturing him.”
“Come on.”
“If your dad wanted the full bundle, he should’ve offered me more money. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
Marco stepped in closer, angling Malia out of the conversation. “Please, man? Look—Andy Parish is now trying to strong-arm us into selling him a portion of our dockfront, and we know Seong is almost definitely involved. My dad is hard-pressed right now, which means he’s riding Felix’s ass, which means Felix is riding mine. I need this. You’d be doing the family a favor.”
“I don’t do favors,” Rainy hissed. He dragged a hand through his hair, thinking. “You owe me back half the cut I offered you. And when I say you’re done, you’re done, understand?”
Marco clasped his hands together. “You’re my hero. Come on, Malia,” he called over his shoulder. “Novikov’s gone; you’re spotting us.”
Malia’s brown skin went several shades paler. “What? No, I’m not going in there.”
“You work here, too, don’t you?”
“Not like that,” she snapped.
“Well, congrats. You’ve been promoted,” Rainy said. He pushed back into the multipurpose room, blood fizzing with irritation. Adler met his eyes in the mirror and arched a brow, like he knew Rainy’s delightfully organized plans were starting to slip.
On second thought, roughing him up was maybe an excellent idea on Marco’s part.
He crunched down on his lollipop and swallowed, the jagged pieces scraping his throat, then tossed the crumpled stick into the corner. Malia dodged it and made a face as she slunk into the room.
Marco crossed to stand in front of Adler, looming over him in the small metal chair. Adler just looked up at him with narrow, hooded eyes.
“We’re going to have a chat about Seong’s dealings with Andy Parish,” Marco said.
Adler stared up at him evenly. His gaze slid to Rainy, checking something, and back.
Then he laughed.
It was a short, sharp bark, more taunt than mirth. He kept laughing right up until Marco struck him in the face.
The blow hit so hard that Adler’s chair toppled sideways, and he landed on the floor. He grunted, and then Rainy was pulling the chair back upright, bracing the back with his hands and the legs with his feet.
“If you think this is a joke, you’re about to have a rude awakening,” Rainy murmured in his right ear, the side with the scar.
In the mirror, Adler’s face changed a little. A wrinkle between his brows, a slight tilt of his head. Not fear, but something like misunderstanding. Before Rainy could puzzle it out, though, Marco was hitting Adler again, snapping his head back against Rainy’s chest. Adler let out a rough noise. Malia jumped.
“Fucking Jesus,” she yelped, turning her back. “Oh God.”
“Really, Malia?” Marco asked, massaging his knuckles. “Fuck, grow a pair already.”
To drive the point home, apparently, he grabbed Adler by the shoulders and drove his knee up hard under his ribs, sinking into the unprotected softness of his abdomen. Once, twice. Bruisingly. Adler doubled over, coughing, until Rainy grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him back up.
“Get it moving, Marco,” he said. “I’m not going to wait all night.”
The involuntary noise of pain Adler had made was doing something to him. Rainy’s breath was coming hard now, static buzzing between his ears. He didn’t know if it was anger or satisfaction or arousal, but he wanted Marco to hit him again. He felt like breaking something if Marco hit him again.
“Start thinking,” Marco advised Adler. “Seong. Parish. That bomb didn’t knock your brain loose, did it?”
Adler snorted, tilting back into Rainy’s rough grip on his neck. “Fuck off.”
“If that’s how it’s going to be,” Marco said, slipping a set of rings from his left hand to his right.
His next hit knocked Adler’s head back again. And again. The sounds of violence were so familiar. The dull thud of colliding bones cushioned by flesh. The clack of teeth being forced together. With each impact, Adler let out another tamped-down grunt, caged behind clenched teeth.
Marco was smiling, a familiar, feral thing. Emilio had never understood him; this was Marco’s natural element. This was what he was made for. Rings flashed on his fingers, wet with blood.
Each punch knocked Adler’s head back against Rainy’s sternum. Hard enough that he felt the hit in his own bones. He felt each one.
When Marco’s frenzy subsided, Adler’s face was red and raw. Blood trickled from his nose and sliced lip, from the patch where Marco’s ring had skinned his brow. He tilted his head and spat a clot of blood and saliva onto the floor, bright and candy-red.
If Rainy kissed him now, would he taste like cherries?
During the onslaught, Malia had hidden her face in the crook of her elbow. Now she looked up and immediately started gagging.
“Are you fucking serious?” Marco asked, letting his bloody knuckles fall to his sides.
“Miss Malia,” Adler said gently, despite the nasal gargle in his voice, “would it be better if you waited outside for this part?”
Malia nodded and stumbled toward the door.
“Hey!” Marco snapped, darting after her. “That’s not—”
Rainy sighed and released Adler to slump in the chair. “Wait here,” he ordered, patting him on his bruised cheek.
Outside, Malia was cramming things into her backpack.
“Grow the fuck up,” Marco told her. “This is kind of what we do here, remember?”
“Not me,” she snapped. “I’m not involved in that shit.”
Irritation was a hot wire around Rainy’s skull, pulling tighter. The confusing mix of anger and excitement and displeasure that had been crashing through him all night was igniting everything white-hot.
“Really? What did you think we do with the information you give us? On the hits you help us set up?”
Malia turned to Rainy, startled at the outburst. “I’m not like you.”
And that was too fucking much.
“What, you think your hands are clean? You think that one day you’ll just up and leave, and this place won’t stick to you?”
“Fuck you.” Her voice was ice and flint as she stuffed the last piece of paper into her bag. “This isn’t in my job description. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She pointed at Marco. “And you’re a fucking idiot if you think you can just break some of that guy’s fingers like you would with any random ghetto kid and he’ll talk to you. He was a fucking Green Beret, moron. He’s probably been trained to resist torture.”
She grabbed her car keys off the desk and stormed past Rainy out into the night. Marco looked at him helplessly.
“I didn’t think of that, actually.”
“God, you’re an idiot.” Rainy pinched his brow. “I’m giving you five more minutes. That’s it.”
“I—”
“He’s my contract. I call the shots, and I’m getting tired of this. Five minutes.”
Marco had that look in his eyes still, that ugly glint that Rainy sometimes thought was less than human. In a family full of fairly awful people, Marco Espinosa might just have been the scariest.
“She’s right,” he said. “We need to go all ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on his ass.” He crossed to the bathroom adjoining the office and emerged with a pink floral hand towel.
Rainy paused. The wild crash of anticipation and vicious delight was still surging inside him, lapping a question at his ears: How much further does this go? Questions of death and pain and flesh, Rainy usually didn’t have any trouble parsing. He wasn’t supposed to feel guilt or joy at killing. Killing just was. But with this, he felt.
“Marco,” he warned.
Ignoring him, Marco jostled the water cooler in the corner, lifting out the five-gallon plastic jug. Water splashed across his sneakers. Tucking it under his arm, he looked at Rainy.
Rainy clenched his fist at his side, popping each of his knuckles in turn. He could shut it down right now; Marco would give him shit for the next month, but he could do it. With any other target, it wouldn’t have mattered, but part of him wanted to say no. For the life of him, though, Rainy couldn’t figure out why, so he said:
“Fine. Five minutes.”
This wasn’t supposed to be conflicting. He wasn’t supposed to be confused. He followed Marco back into the room where Adler was bound. As they approached from the right, Adler tilted his head as if to angle his good side toward them again.
“I’ve always wanted to try this,” Marco gushed.
“God, you’re such a psycho. Fuck.” Rainy swallowed at the sight of Adler’s eyes following them in the mirror, dark with understanding and challenge. He tipped his chin up.
“Hold his head,” Marco instructed.
Rainy’s palms hovered on either side of Adler’s temples. His face was starting to bruise, and there was blood in his hairline. Despite his composed expression, he was breathing hard. Gently, Rainy grasped his head and tilted it back. Adler’s neck stiffened with resistance, then released. Like he knew this was inevitable. Like he wanted to get it over with.
Rainy knelt on the floor and tipped the chair back until Adler was braced against him. It was almost like holding him.
“Seong. Parish,” Marco repeated. “Last chance.” He was soaking the hand towel in water.
Adler’s eyes latched onto Rainy’s, unreadable.
I watched over you while you were sleeping.
“Deep breath, sweetheart,” Rainy whispered.
Marco laid the wet cloth over Adler’s mouth and nose. Rainy saw the moment the cold composure in his eyes slipped, the way memory flashed across them, bright as terror.
Wait, hold on, stop— he thought.
Marco stood and poured the water in a low arc onto Adler’s face. For a single second, his eyes went wide enough to swallow all the light in the room. Then they closed, and he was thrashing, struggling against the ropes, the chair, Rainy’s hands. The water splashed over Rainy, cold and shocking, and Adler was gasping and choking, fighting like Rainy was killing him. The cloth bowed as he futilely tried to suck in through his mouth, and—
And Marco stopped pouring. Rainy tore the cloth away, and Adler bucked in his arms, sputtering and coughing. Bloody water splattered Rainy’s face.
Marco was beaming. “Holy shit, it works! Feel like talking now?”
Something like panic was squeezing Rainy’s lungs. That wild feeling inside him was shaken up like too much carbonation, ready to pop. “Marco—” he warned.
Adler spat on Marco’s already-soaked shoes.
Then Marco’s weight was pressing the chair back into Rainy, and he had the cloth back over Adler’s face, and he was splashing water, a torrent rather than a stream. Adler was writhing again, his head punching Rainy in the ribs, his breathing a wet scream. His eyes were open, and they were a dying man’s eyes. Desperation. Desperation was what Rainy had wanted.
“ Fuck! ” Rainy shoved Marco, sending him stumbling back against the mirror. The jug of water went rolling across the floor, mostly empty. “That’s it! That’s enough!”
Adler kept struggling until Rainy peeled the towel away, then spat up a stream of pink water. Rainy turned him onto his side to help him cough.
“Jesus, what does it matter?” Marco pushed himself up with a squelch. He was wet, but not as soaked as Rainy, whose clothes felt like plastic wrap and whose hair was a drenched black sheet.
Adler was still heaving on the floor, but he looked up at Marco anyway. His voice was bloody-hoarse.
“If you wanna get something out of my head,” he said evenly, “you’re gonna have to use an ice pick.” He spat more water onto the linoleum. “Fucking amateur.”
Marco’s hand was at his belt, then he was holding a switchblade. In two steps, he had Adler by the neck.
“How about I carve up the rest of your face, asshole? See how you like being symmetrical.”
One second, Rainy was watching the knife scrape along Adler’s left cheek, Marco’s fingers digging into Adler’s neck hard enough to bruise. The next, something was popping in him like a sudden change in atmosphere, and he was hauling Marco away with one hand in his belt and the other on the back of his neck.
He threw him toward the other end of the room hard enough that he stumbled and fell. Sometimes, Marco needed to be reminded that he wasn’t the biggest fucker around.
“You’re done,” Rainy shouted. “You’re done. Go home.”
Marco gestured with his knife, furious. “I’m not—”
“ Go the fuck home. ”
Marco glared at him for a moment, but throwing his weight around had worked. He backed down with one last kick at Adler, splashing water, and stalked out of the room. Rainy paused, breathing hard, and squeezed his head between his hands hard enough to hold himself together. There was a clatter of office supplies being swept to the floor, then the front door slammed and the deadbolt clunked.
Rainy looked at Adler, who looked at him. The blood had mostly washed away from his face, leaving it flushed and bruised. His hair was completely wrecked, hanging limp around his ears, and his skin glistened with water. His beautiful suit was completely soaked, collar turned pink with blood. He looked—well, drowned.
“You got excellent taste in coworkers,” he told Rainy.
“Yeah. He’s a real gem, huh?”
And just like that, Rainy realized, for the first time since the night they’d met, they were completely and utterly alone.