7. Florida Man Apologizes for Waterboarding Incident
Chapter 7
Florida Man Apologizes for Waterboarding Incident
R ainy found a towel and dried Adler off a bit after setting his chair back upright, then gave his own hair a quick once-over before kicking the towel around the floor to soak up some of the spilled water. Despite his best efforts, Adler was still shivering and choking a little. Rainy didn’t say anything, letting him cough up the last of the water with some dignity left intact.
Adler looked smaller when wet, like he looked smaller asleep. All the rage had leaked out of Rainy, all the righteous conviction. When he called up the image of his slashed tires, the adrenaline of dodging rifle shots on the roof, it felt flimsy and hollow compared to the immediate sense memory of holding Adler almost in his lap, close as a lover. Watching him thrash. Rainy felt oddly sick. He didn’t usually care much about fair play; you couldn’t really have a code of honor in his line of work. Still, the look in Adler’s eyes…
“You’ve been waterboarded before,” he said. Adler glared at him in the mirror.
“The Syrians thought it was funny to give Americans a taste of their own medicine. Like I said—your friend’s an amateur.”
“Didn’t seem so casual when it was happening.”
“Yeah. Well.”
The slightly sick twinge to his stomach was identifiable now. It was shame. He felt a sudden need to explain himself, to make it clear to Adler.
“It wasn’t my idea,” he said.
“I gathered that much.”
“I’m… sorry.”
Adler’s eyes flicked over him, unreadable. “Don’t ever apologize, Mister Rainy. It don’t look good on you.”
Rainy felt a smile tug at his mouth. “Are you okay?”
“Does it matter? I thought you were gonna kill me.”
“I like to know what I’m up against.”
Adler didn’t humor him with a response, but Rainy could have sworn that the corner of his mouth twitched, just a little. The hot sea of emotion he’d thought had entirely drained away lapped at his ribs. He wanted to drag that smile out kicking and screaming.
“I’ll consider your emotional suffering payment for my tires,” he offered.
“We’re square, then?”
“Nah. Pain and suffering caps out at five hundred. You still owe me four hundred.”
Adler blinked. “Seems cheap for that nice of tires.”
“Well, I did take three hundred bucks from your wallet while you were being tied up.”
“Ah.”
Adler seemed just fine now, the lines of his terror and pain smoothed away as easily as he might iron the wrinkles out of a dress shirt. It was almost as if the whole thing hadn’t happened. It wasn’t exactly the same, though. There was something a little softer in the way Adler was holding himself, as though Marco’s First Water Torture had shaken something loose in him. He seemed less tightly wrapped, like Rainy could peel up a corner and unravel him, just a little.
Then he remembered why Adler was here.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearing one, and he needed to wrap this up by dawn. Now, though, he couldn’t summon the fury that had made him want to make this particularly creative. It still felt personal, but in the wrong way.
“I’m going to kill you, you know,” he said.
“So you keep saying.”
Rainy sighed, rubbed his neck. “Can I get you anything first?”
It seemed only polite.
Adler eyed him, that little crease between his brows. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
Adler seemed to genuinely consider it, cocking his head and wrinkling his nose a little. It was a startlingly adorable thinking face and not at all what Rainy needed at the moment.
“A cigarette,” he decided.
Rainy was embarrassed by the force of his own surprise. “You smoke?”
“Not since I got out of prison. But if it’s my last chance…” Adler shrugged.
“I think I can make that happen.” Rainy had avoided smoking like the plague in high school to keep his body in tip-top football shape and never picked it up after. But it was a common enough vice around here. “I might only be able to find Marco’s vape, though.”
“I would rather you just shot me now.”
Luckily, Novikov had a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter in his locker. Rainy pocketed them and returned to the multipurpose room.
Bending over the chair with his back to the mirror, he shook out a cigarette and held it out. Adler took it between his teeth, and the faded bruise on Rainy’s shoulder throbbed. Adler’s mouth was still bleeding; a dribble of red ran down his chin. The lighter took a few tries.
When the tip of the cigarette lit up orange, Adler sucked in deep, a foreign, blissed-out expression kind of like the one he’d made right before Rainy came in his mouth crossing his face. Rainy watched, enthralled, as he held the smoke in and then let it out in a slow stream. He nudged with his lips, and Rainy obediently took the cigarette back.
“Fuck, that’s good,” Adler said, and the hoarse pleasure in his voice made Rainy’s dick stir. “And after all that time I wasted quitting. I guess we do always end up our parents.”
“I’m nothing like my parents,” Rainy said, going to sit on the still-drying floor on Adler’s right.
“Everyone’s like their parents. Don’t sit there.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I said so.” Adler jerked his head to the left.
Rainy shrugged and moved around the chair to sit on the other side. He lifted the hand with the cigarette in offering, and Adler leaned forward for another drag. His lips brushed Rainy’s fingers.
“I don’t really see any way I’m like my parents.”
“Let me guess: you got either stupidly hardheaded assholes, or ones who insist on being blind to what they don’t wanna believe.”
“One of each, actually.”
“Well, there you go, Mr. ‘I don’t see any resemblance.’”
Rainy grinned. “You’re actually kind of funny, you know that?”
Adler snorted. “Cigarette,” he ordered, and Rainy held it up to his lips again. Whatever the water incident had shaken loose in him, the cigarette seemed to relax even further. Adler blew smoke out through his nose like a dragon and rolled his long, pretty neck to work a kink out of it.
This version of him… well, Rainy actually sort of liked him.
Too bad he had to die.
“It’s getting to be that time,” he said.
“Mm.”
Rainy hesitated, feeling like he was teetering on a whisker-thin edge. “How do you want it?”
“Are you for real?”
Rainy stared into the mirror, the image of the two of them close together in the wide, empty room. “I always kind of wanted to get decapitated. Or blown up. Something really flashy. I want people to be talking about it for years, like, ‘Oh, that Rainy guy. You know, the one who got his head chopped off and then a building dropped on him.’”
He was hoping that would draw out another half smile, but Adler just looked pensive.
“You ever been real close to dying?” he asked.
“Nah. Been shot a few times, but not big-time. Shoulder, leg. What about you?”
Adler didn’t answer. He’d tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, neck extended gracefully. With his hair plastered to his head and his scarred side facing away, he could have stepped out of that photo from Malia’s file. Young, soft, and new.
“I’ve almost died alone on concrete floors too many times to count,” he said. “Honestly? I just want someone to hold me while I go.”
And Rainy… Rainy didn’t know what to do with that. He didn’t know how all these variables—Adler kissing him hard in a service hallway, firing down on him from a roof, looking up at him while he drowned, smoking a cigarette like it was his last—added up to the feeling in his chest. It wasn’t affection, or even grudging respect. It was just a heaviness in his hand as he tugged his Colt free from his waistband. He glanced down at it, uncertain.
“I guess the real question is whether there’s a way you don’t want it.”
Adler snorted. “Right. You think I’m that dumb?”
“No, seriously. I’m still going to kill you. But if there’s a way you don’t want it, then I’ll pick something else.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you?”
“Honor among thieves, right?”
“Mm.”
“I mean, I already admitted I’m going to kill you,” Rainy pointed out. “Is there any lesser need for dishonesty than between a man who’s about to die and the man who’s about to kill him?”
Adler was silent.
“I’d lie about a lot of things, but not about this. Trust me?”
Adler didn’t answer for long enough that Rainy started to stand, checking his gun. He almost startled when Adler said, softly:
“Just nothing over the face. I don’t like feeling trapped.”
Rainy remembered the way Adler had scrabbled, panicked, at the bag over his head. He nodded.
“Noted.”
He met Adler’s eyes in the mirror. In his experience, looking into a man’s eyes just before he died yielded all kinds of things—fear, desperation, hatred, resignation. He didn’t find any of those things in Adler’s gaze. Instead, even now, Adler looked calm and collected. His eyes gleamed with defiance. It was a shame, Rainy thought, that he’d only gotten the one chance to kiss him. That feeling was drawing in closer now, a heaviness in his gun hand, a pendular ticking at the inside of his ribs.
“Regret,” he named it. “I think you might be the first person I’ll ever regret having to kill.”
“I got good news, then,” Adler told him. “You’re not actually gonna kill me.”
“No?” Rainy was charmed despite himself by Adler’s flat affect.
“No. You’re gonna untie me.” Adler’s pensiveness had sunk back beneath the surface, subsumed by cool matter-of-factness.
“Why would I do that?” Rainy asked.
Adler smiled then. That big, full, mean smile from the wine cellar. Dimples. He had fucking dimples. And Rainy thought, Uh-oh.
“Because I’m better at this job than you are.” Adler watched him in the mirror. “You seemed to have fun listing off your little fact sheet, earlier. Do you wanna hear mine?”
Rainy stood, uneasy, letting the half-smoked cigarette fall to the floor. His gun itched and bit at his palm.
“Rafael Perez,” Adler drawled, and ice washed down Rainy’s spine. “Age twenty-seven, born and raised in Miami, Florida.”
“How did you find that out?” Rainy snapped. “Nobody knows that.”
“Like I said: I’m better at my job than you. Shall I go on? Son of José and Esperanza Perez, of 238 Punnet Street. Lovely folks. I think that right about now, your mother will be asleep, but your father will be just getting to bed after catching up on his DVR. He’ll walk upstairs and open the curtains to look out onto the street. Little basil in the window planter. They’re big windows. Lots of room to see in.”
Rainy’s mind was blank. Here was that feeling again, that chasm of adrenaline just before death bit down. Adler’s charm had fallen away like a cheap silk sheath, and Rainy couldn’t believe that he’d thought for a second there was anything under there but this. Icy, deadly, calculating.
Killer’s hands, he thought. He should have trusted the hands.
“I got two guys posted at 237. They’re on standing orders. Seong’s men are good at that. If I don’t call them every three hours, well… you get the idea. I called them just as I was leaving work.” Adler smirked. “If you hadn’t offered me the cigarette, you might have had time to shoot me and get there in time. But you don’t, now.”
Rainy’s tongue felt like lead, too heavy and sliding down his throat to choke him. He could see it so clearly—his father scratching his belly, peering at the empty street below, his mother fast asleep, hooked up to her CPAP machine.
Bullet. Bullet.
“So,” Adler finished, “you’re gonna untie me.”
Rainy hated him. Fuck, did he hate him in that moment. He’d let himself fall for the guilt and the cigarette and the soft confessions. He’d let himself forget the rules of the game they were playing. And he’d been played like a fucking chump.
“I told you,” Adler said, almost apologetic. “Nobody gets the drop on me twice.”
The world was still.
“Okay,” Rainy said. “You win.”
He stuck his gun back into his waistband and crouched behind the chair, working his numb fingers into the zip tie that held Adler’s wrists in place. He had to pull his knife to get it to fall away. Underneath, Adler’s wrists were rubbed raw, and Rainy felt a flash of satisfaction. He undid the ankle restraints, and Adler stepped cleanly out of the chair, rubbing at the skin under his cuffs. Rainy dropped the knife. Adler kicked it away.
Rainy raised his hands, showing that they were empty. “Your phone’s in the other room.”
Adler nodded and crossed to the door to rifle through the pile of his things that they’d left on the table, pulling out his cell. He gestured to Rainy in the doorway.
“Gun, now. Both of them.”
“Keep fucking dreaming.”
“I need to know you ain’t gonna shoot me as soon as I make the call.”
“You’re going to shoot me as soon as I hand you my guns.”
Adler regarded him evenly. “Well, then. I guess it’s you or your parents.”
Rainy made a valiant effort to burn a hole through Adler’s head with the sheer force of his hatred. Then he bent down and placed his Colt on the floor, pulling his other .45 from his shoulder holster to lay beside it. He kicked them both over.
Adler tossed the second gun off into the locker room and kept the Colt for himself. He ran a pleased finger along its pearled stock.
“Now make the call,” Rainy gritted out.
“The call.” Adler dropped his cell into his pocket derisively. “Here’s a word of advice: never play poker, Mister Rainy. You’re no good at it.”
Oh. Oh, fucking fuck.
Rainy saw red. He lunged forward, hands outstretched for Adler’s throat. He was going to throttle him, act out every fantasy he’d entertained in the last week and choke him until his neck snapped.
The Colt swung up between them, easy as a third hand. “Back up,” Adler said calmly.
Fuming, Rainy stepped backward into the multipurpose room. Adler followed him, impassive.
“You’re a better liar than you look,” Rainy said, his fists clenched at his sides.
“You said I needed to learn to play dirty, right?” Adler smiled. “I’m a quick study.”
Rainy’s body was tensed in preparation for a bullet, and yet he almost laughed. He was weirdly impressed, and half-hysterical. His parents were safe, for now. It was a burst of relief against the conflagration. It was a mercy. His parents were safe, and he was about to die.
Why hadn’t he just let Marco drown the bastard?
Adler flicked his wrist. Rainy dropped to one knee in the center of the linoleum floor.
The space between them closed, Adler stalking toward him. Everything echoed in the contained, shiny space of the old studio. Footsteps, heartbeats. The shot would echo. It would bounce around between the walls until it shattered the whole world apart with its roar.
If Adler got close enough, if Rainy lunged just right, he might get his hand around the gun before he was hit. Rainy gathered his weight, and breathed, and plotted his next move.
It was either that or nothing.
Rainy wasn’t a quitter.
Adler stopped a little too far away in that at-ease stance of his, feet spread apart and free hand drifting back toward his hip. Rainy would have regretted killing Adler, if he’d done it five minutes ago. But not now.
There was no elation on Adler’s face, no satisfaction. Only blankness. A killer through and through.
Rainy’s heart was pounding hard enough to break his ribs and spear itself on the jagged edges. With fear and adrenaline, but also, Rainy realized, with thrill. Knowing that his parents were safe, it was a game again. The same game Rainy had loved half his life. And now, finally, he’d met his match.
Above him, Adler’s finger was steady on the trigger. His hair was freed from its product completely, a dusty brown just long enough to brush the tops of his ears, fall forward into his eyes. There were bruises blooming along his cheekbone, his jaw, his brow. Charming, clever, smug, vicious, nasty Adler. There was a rosy flush in his cheeks, up his neck. A sheen of sweat glittered on his brow; water gathered in the hollow of his throat. His clothes were still soaked. His eyes were infinitely dark.
God, he was beautiful. Portrait of an avenging angel.
If Adler was pulling the trigger, Rainy supposed that it was a sufficiently legendary way to go.
He reached for something and found, as always, a joke.
“Not going to offer me any sexual favors this time?” he asked. “I mean, it’s only polite, right?”
The muzzle of his own gun pondered his forehead. Adler tilted his head, considering. His gaze scraped like a straight razor down Rainy’s body where he knelt on the floor. Rainy’s clothes were still soaked, his shirt probably clinging to him and the outlines of his tattoos showing through the wet fabric.
The gun… faltered.
“All right,” Adler said.
Rainy blinked. “What?”
“You’re right.” Adler’s smile was sharp-edged and opaque. “It is only polite. Just so you know, though, the second we’re finished, I will put a bullet in you. So make it count.”
Then he tucked the Colt into the front of his waistband.
Rainy considered the pre-coiled tension in his muscles. He could launch himself now, grapple with Adler. He probably wouldn’t be able to get the gun, but he could put up a good fight. Probably not a smart plan, considering how he’d fared in the hotel loading bay when Adler was already drugged. But it was what he had. Well, unless…
“You’re actually going to blow me?” he asked.
Adler shrugged. “Don’t have to be a blowjob, I guess.”
“What, then?”
Adler was sliding out of his jacket. He stood in shirtsleeves and vest. The water turned his shirt translucent, clinging to the toned shape of his arms. He tossed the jacket aside.
“Dier’s choice.”
His pupils were dilated and his pulse jumped at his throat. And then it made sense—this and the wine cellar and the teasing interference. Because Adler loved this game like Rainy did, and maybe playing it well turned him on just as much.
Rainy looked up at him—his long, tailored lines, the narrow but strong set of his shoulders, the dark promise in his eyes. He remembered what he’d thought in the dim afterglow of the cellar, that he wanted to feel Adler inside him, wanted to know what it was like to have that haughtiness and single-minded ferocity focused entirely on taking him apart. And, God, just the image of it had Rainy half-hard. But if this might be his last time on Earth…
“I want to fuck you,” he said. Blunt, the way Adler liked it.
Adler smirked and loosened his tie. “Good.”
Rainy lost his breath a little. “There’s, uh, supplies in my wallet. On the desk,” he offered. Waiting for Adler to back down, write it off as a joke. Maybe just shoot him.
“Of course there are.” Adler turned and walked back into the office. Rainy heard him pushing through the scattered supplies on Malia’s desk.
He could run. There was a small chance he could make it to the door. He could just—
Ah, fuck, who was he kidding?
Adler reappeared in the doorway and tossed Rainy a condom and some packets of lube. Rainy caught them out of the air, grinning.
“Is this for real?”
In reply, Adler pulled Rainy’s Colt from his belt and released the magazine, catching it deftly in his right hand. With his thumb, he flicked out the first round. Then the next. They landed on the linoleum with dull clicks. All the way down until there was a little glinting constellation around his polished black shoes, and one round left in the magazine. Adler showed it to him.
“This one’s for you,” he said, sliding the magazine home with a careless efficiency that did more for Rainy than it probably should have. He bent down and set the gun on the floor, right next to the door. “I’m gonna shoot you with it before I walk out of here. Now take your clothes off.”