4. Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Andy
The last two days feel like a lifetime. I’m quite sure that Chi’s anguish has taken years off my life. Cas’s mother killed herself, and my own father was murdered. I saw some crazy shit in the army and took many men’s lives myself. It feels like it all pales in comparison to what Chi has just been through.
After all, I still had my mother through all of that. In fact, although she isn’t exactly a fan of this life I live and stays away as much as possible, I could even see her now if I wasn’t afraid of putting her in danger. Even though I can’t imagine myself with kids, I can see her as a grandmother clearly in my mind. I’ve always had someone I love and who loves me. Chi had that too, up until she watched them both die horrible deaths right in front of her. I can’t even imagine what she’s going through right now, even with all the terrible shit I’ve seen.
Cas tries to get me to pass out for a few hours, but I convince him that I’ve gotten enough sleep in the last two days. I have gotten some; I fell asleep next to Chi twice for a couple hours. That counts for something. But even if I hadn’t gotten any, I would still insist on going now. Waiting will only give these assholes time to get away.
Cas gets it and quickly gives up. He knows he wouldn’t be sleeping either if this had happened to his girl. So we head out of the house wearing matching black trench coats that house a medley of different guns and torture devices. No one will be getting in our way today, that’s for goddamn sure.
I don’t realize how badly I want to kill someone until we get to the room where the guards who followed fake orders are being housed. I don’t trust any of these motherfuckers, no matter how good a show they’ve put on until now.
This is the kind of shit Cas lives for, and he begins animatedly. “Our tech guy has the lead anyway. You little fucks wanna give us some information we can use before we decide whether or not to blow your brains out?”
They all swallow hard, but one of them speaks up. “We didn’t do anything except follow orders, man. We didn’t know—”
“That’s fucking great,” I say in a bored tone, lifting my gun to his forehead and digging it in. “But Cas didn’t ask if you followed orders. He asked if you had any pertinent fucking information.”
The guy swallows hard again. “Why would we have any information you guys could use? Like we said, we were just following orders. We’ve been asked — fucking tortured — because we didn’t know about who the other people were during phone calls or—”
I interrupt his little tirade with a shot in the head. Me and the other two men are splattered with blood and brain matter as I turn back to them. They both sit without blinking, eyes wide, clearly fucking terrified. I’m too tired to care about what I look like.
“I don’t really have a lot of time right now, so I’m gonna need the both of you to give any information you have that may be at all relevant. I don’t really give a shit if you think it matters or not. I’m talking literally anything. A deep voice you heard over the phone? Or maybe it was higher pitched? Exact times you were told to mute cameras or disarm parts of the property. Discussions about money exchanges.” I walk up to the both of them, fishing another gun out of my pocket, and push one to each of their heads. “Any. Fucking. Detail.”
“A gravelly voice. It sounded like he was disguising it. Like Batman or something,” one of the men, who’s been visibly sweating this entire time, bursts out.
“Okay, good start,” I say, pushing the guns in further. “Did you hear any of the words this gravely voice said?”
“No,” the same man says, closing his eyes. “No, I didn’t.”
I cock my brow at the other guy, who has stayed silent. “You wanna add something to this, or should I use your brains for the new tableau on the wall too?”
“I—I have a wife and—and three kids!”
“Lots of shitty people have a wife, kids, a sister, a brother, a mom and a dad. I don’t fucking care.” I bend to put my nose to his so that he’ll see my expression clearly through the blood and grime. “I have had a very bad few days. And I promise, I won’t even think about you after I kill you. You’ll just fade into the abyss like all the rest of the men I’ve killed.”
The guy looks legitimately worried and shuts his eyes. “Okay. Okay. I know it was a Japanese voice.”
It seems like this would be a trifling detail, since Akio was the head of the Yakuza, but he had enemies of all ethnicities. “Hey, you had something in that useless fucking brain of yours after all, didn’t you? Maybe it doesn’t need to end up all over the wall. Now, the question is, what did he say?”
I look at both of them, pushing the gun into their faces harder. The other guy lets out a shaky breath. “All I heard was that he was coming tonight.”
I grit my teeth but look back at the guy who tried to plead by invoking his wife and children. I want to see what he has to say about this new development. I stick the gun I had pointed at his friend into my back pocket and face him with the other, giving him my full attention.
“I didn’t hear anything like that, but it did sound Japanese to me.”
“Great.” I take a knife from the back of my belt and stick it into the other asshole’s leg without warning. He screams and tries to throw himself forward and then backward to squirm away from me, but his chair doesn’t budge.
I grab the hilt of the knife to hold it steady, and he freezes immediately to stop it from moving around more than it already has. “Now, I want you to think very hard, because just an inch to the left and this thing will cut right through a very large artery.” I refrain from naming the femoral artery because it’s still a sore spot for Cas. I haven’t seen him slice anywhere near the inner thigh of a torture subject since his last big injury. But I have no such reservations. “I want you to think of why in the ever-loving fuck you would do anything for these guys when you overheard they were coming?”
“I didn’t know who it was! I thought it was planned by Chi and her father!”
“No, I don’t believe you,” I say, pushing the knife just slightly over to the left. “Some random guy whose voice you’d never heard? No. I think you were in on it.”
“No, I wasn’t, I swear!”
I drive it further. “You need to tell me the truth, fuckface. Right now.”
“Okay! I knew! But I only knew that he had something up his sleeve! I didn’t want to question a superior; he would have killed me!”
I halt right before I get to the really nasty part. “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. What else did you hear?”
“Nothing, I swear! He just told me to keep my mouth shut if I wanted to live! Because he knew I was around and that I probably realized something was up. But what was I supposed to do? Go in and tell Akio that I had a weird feeling about someone on the phone that sounded suspicious?”
I know for a fact that, although Akio might have been annoyed and terse with this guard, he would have at least heard him out. “Yes,” I say angrily.
“Listen, that guard was bad news, okay! He had some crazy connections — Akio should have realized—”
“What connections?” I ask, my hand in his wound shaking.
“He—he’s connected to some people in Japan…”
“What kind of people? We are all connected to the Yakuza,” I press, putting more pressure on his thigh.
He squeezes a few tears out of his eyes. “Not just the Yakuza. It’s high up shit, like the level of government Akio has connections to, man. He was planted; I’m sure of it.”
If this guy has connections, I should be able to find out some of them, who they are, and what they do in Japan. But I still have one last question. “You’re saying he was planted… but again, you didn’t think to talk to Akio about your suspicions?”
The guy can barely move his mouth into words now he’s in so much pain. “No, that’s what I’m saying… Akio didn’t believe that someone would test him… didn’t believe there were moles…”
Akio was difficult, but he did listen. He even listened to me when he was angry with me. He certainly would have listened to a guard who hadn’t done a goddamn thing to his daughter.
“Right. So you didn’t think it was important to warn Akio. I get it.” I blink leisurely and then slice the rest of his leg in much the same manner. He screams and begs me to help him as blood spurts from the wound.
“What? I thought you’d like to know what it’s like to be killed slowly by someone who could have helped you but chose to allow you to move closer and closer to your impending death until it took you. I hope it feels as good as it probably did for Akio.”
The man pulls at the restrains on his chair, trying to grab my arm with slippery hands, but passes out seconds later. His blood starts gushing out slower and slower, until it’s just a weak river.
I let out a satisfied sigh and catch the other guard’s terrified gaze. Cas would smile at that fear, but I’m apathetic. I don’t give a shit how this guy feels about me. I’ve gotten most of what I wanted and likely all I can out of the men I brought here to torture and kill.
I move quickly toward him with the knife, and he gasps and squeezes his eyes shut tight, working at the bindings on his wrists. “ You’re lucky today,” I say, flipping the knife in my hand and pocketing it. He sags forward in relief.
“You’re lucky because I’ll make sure the bad guys find your body quickly and leave your family alone.” I rip my gun from my jeans and shoot him in the head before he can protest.
I turn back around to face Cas, who looks equal parts disgusted and proud. Even though I know he wanted nothing to do with the femoral artery fun I had at the end there, I also know he needs to cover it up for his own ego, which is, I’m sure, why he says, “Goddamn. Next time, let me have a piece, will you?”