by Amelia Shaw
My story wouldn’t hold up for long. Hawk could easily speak to the chief, or anyone else on the team who helped me work that old case, and tear my excuse apart. But I didn’t need my story to hold up all day. I only needed it to last long enough to pry answers from the mage.
I turned back to face Hawk who still wore the same glowering expression. “You can check all the details you want later. I think this guy is waking up, and I want to be in there to throw him off before he can make up some story.”
I waited, holding his gaze. I wasn’t going to back down. My fatal flaw: never retreating, even when I’d already lost the fight. Or a tooth.
Hawk jerked his chin toward the holding cell. “Where did you pick this guy up? You both smell like shit.”
I had to give him something or he would stand in the hall and question me all day. “That was this jerk off’s fault. He tried to outrun me after hours of surveillance at The Silver Wolf. And once I finally caught up to him, he didn’t really feel like talking.”
“So you hit him?” Hawk asked with a grin beginning to lift the corners of his mouth.
I shrugged. “Maybe a couple of times. But definitely nowhere our union rep might catch a bruise. Obviously, we have to be”—I held up my hands to make the quote sign—“humane in our catches now. Ever since the Simpson case, I swear, they think every target who passes our threshold is going to get the beat down.”
He snorted and dropped his arms. “You’re telling me. I’m up to my ears in sensitivity paperwork and training I know none of you assholes are actually going to take.”
I snorted and gave him a little shrug. What could I say to that? He was right. It would be fun to watch him try to wrangle all the city’s hunters into one room and listen to the world’s most insensitive man tell us how to treat others.
Actually, that might be his selling point.
He jerked his chin toward the holding cell. “Your man is waking up. Call me if you need an assist. You know I’m good for the scare factor.”
I wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole.
I spun and marched into the room as sleeping beauty began to stir. I quickly secured his zip tied hands to a metal loop in the floor and then went to the long table lining the wall opposite him. His belonging. There was a pocket watch, a pair of dirty gloves with holes in three fingers, and a wallet.
I opened the wallet and started to see what I could learn about my target. A tiny part of me wished it contained a photo of the Black Mage. A business card with his address and phone number on it. I wished one of these guys would make my life the tiniest bit easier for once.
He groaned out loud and sat up on the concrete floor, arms bent behind him, legs splayed out in front of him. “What did you do to me?”
I shrugged. “I told you if you didn’t answer my questions, I would hit you.”
“You didn’t hit me, you choked me out and kidnapped me.”
“Yeah, well, sue me.”
I squatted down in front of him, ensuring I kept enough distance between his feet and mine. “So, do you want to try this whole question and answer thing again? Except this time, I won’t hit you. I’ll just let you sit in here for an hour after each question and then we’ll see where we are tomorrow without a bathroom, food, or water.”
The glare in his eyes told me my plan was probably not going to work.
I twisted my legs in front of me and sat down on the cold concrete cross legged. With my head now below his line of sight, I had to look up at him. Hopefully, that would start to make him feel like he had the upper hand and would loosen his tongue.
“Okay, you know what, let’s start this thing over. I don’t actually want to hurt you. And I don’t want to starve you. So how about we work together on this? I’ll ask you some questions, you answer them, and if there’s anything I can do to make you more comfortable in the meantime, then I’ll do it.”
The look on his face didn’t change. He wasn’t buying it.
Sell it harder, Zoey.
“I don’t want you here. Hell, I don’t even know who you are.” I glanced down at his wallet still clutched in my hand and drew out his license. “Winston. You aren’t even on our radar. You just happen to have a connection to someone I want to find. Not to hurt him but to speak with him, ask him a few questions as well.”
The man lunged forward as far as his binds would let him. “You think the Black Mage is going to roll over and let you catch him like you caught me? You don’t know a thing about him.”
Yes. The opening I needed.
“So, you do work for the Black Mage then? Thank you for confirming that.”
His forehead knitted up and he leaned back again, as if trying to distance himself from what he’d just inadvertently revealed to me. “No, I didn’t say—”
“If you don’t work for him, or at the very least know him, you wouldn’t know what he would or wouldn’t do for a lowly hunter like me.”
He exhaled loudly through his nose and stared down at me. “And do you think if you bat your eyelashes at me, I’ll give you whatever you want?”
I laughed. “Obviously not. But it’s always a tactic I like to try before I start getting out the power tools.”
I enjoyed the play of fear that flickered over his features. He didn’t know me well enough to know I wouldn’t know a drill bit from a screwdriver. It tickled me to let him think I could actually torture him like that.
The door opened and I jumped to my feet as Hawk frowned down at me.
“Hawk, I thought we were in agreement when I came in here.”
He folded his big arms across his chest again. “We were in agreement until I realized you weren’t getting anywhere.”
I huffed. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been in here like five minutes. I didn’t even get a chance to pull out the torture devices and parade them along the table. I didn’t get to drag Simon in here to look menacing. I didn’t even get to insinuate I would tear off a few fingernails. It’s always the most fun part.”
The target glanced between us, eyes bouncing back and forth like a ping pong ball. He wasn’t sure what we were thinking or if I was joking. I smiled down at him, white teeth out, knowing it made me look a little deranged. All for his benefit. I hoped to keep him on edge and maybe he would reveal more than he already had to me. I needed every bit of information I could peel from his unshowered body.
Hawk dragged a black duffel from under the table and tossed it on top. It landed with a heavy thunk as things inside settled. They were mostly for show. Once we started pulling tools from the bag people usually began talking.
I sidled up beside him and watched as he pulled out a few pairs of pliers and lined them up neatly on the table. My body blocked the sight from my prisoner.
I leaned in and whispered fiercely. “This is my target and my job. You don’t get to come in here and take over in the middle. You’ll destroy the rapport I’ve started to build.”
“You mean the disgust. You flipped from bitch mode to candy sweet with not even a glimpse of a sober matron in between. It’s like you’ve never done a target interrogation before. I know damn well you were taught better than that. I also know you are aware you shouldn’t be working a case where you are emotionally involved. And it’s glaringly obvious you are emotionally involved in whatever the fuck all this is.”
I slumped and put my hand on the table. “Let me at least make the transition so I can still try to get something from him. If we go straight to the fear tactics, it’s as bad as actually using them. The information always gets blurred with whatever the target thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”
About fifty percent of fear-induced information could never be corroborated.
He gave me a quick jerk of his head to let me know he would fall in line with my next move.
I turned back to the prisoner with another slightly demented grin.
“Where were we? Oh, right, I was explaining how it would be easier if you told me what I wanted
to know and it saved us all a lot of time and, well...” I gestured at Hawk who meticulously lined up the tools on the table. “Discomfort.”
The man’s eyes grew wide and I snapped my fingers.
“Winston, look at me. Don’t look at the man with the mean instruments. We can keep things civil right?”
Winston searched for something in my face. I couldn’t say what, but his eyes continued back and forth as if delving deep into my soul and finding it lacking.
Then he spit right at my feet. Nope. I wasn’t getting anything out of him.
I sighed. “You know what, I take it back. Hawk, he’s all yours...Start with his balls and work your way up to the squishier bits.”
Hawk tested a tool of some kind. It made a whirring sound when he pressed the button which looked like a trigger.
“This is my favorite,” he said.
I smiled and leaned against the table, not looking at dear ol’ Winston or I’d put my boot through his smoke-stained teeth. “How long do you think he’s going to last? Do we have an office pool going?”
Hawk snorted and shook his head. “We didn’t bother. He’ll piss himself before I even touch him with one of these. I can always pick out the weak ones.”
I nodded. “You can. I know. What about that guy from Baltimore? He was tougher than you expected.”
“He screamed like a baby the second I started on his zipper.”
A shuffle came from the direction of the prisoner, but I ignored it. Hawk glanced over his shoulder and dropped the power tool on the table. He rushed to the man. I swiveled around and froze, watching as Hawk knelt down and checked his pulse on the slumped figure on the ground.
I held my breath until he told me what I already knew. What I could see plain as day on the asshole’s face.
“He’s dead.”
“Wow, that must be a record for us.”
And when the chief found out. I was dead.
Chapter Three
Not even enough time to hide the body later, the chief entered the office with his usual thumping stride. I was beginning to believe my life was an intricately choreographed series of disasters, each one perfectly timed to destroy my life, but not actually kill me.
I glanced over at Hawk, but he was already headed out the door to meet the chief in the main work area. The body lay slumped on the floor and I had some choice words for the asshole. Like neither of us would have tortured him; we were only going to make him think we would torture him. Way more effective and a whole lot less mess to clean up afterward.
Before I could make a quick escape, the chief shouted for me to join him and Hawk.
Okay, we were having it out in front of the entire office. Cool.
I sauntered out, trying to maintain a neutral expression and not glare at Hawk who sold me out in two seconds flat. “What’s up, chief?”
“Salix, did you grab that mage without an order?”
I swallowed the lump clogging my throat and then cleared it. “Well, chief, about that...”
He waved his hand and cut me off. “Unless the answer is ‘no, sir’ I don’t need you to elaborate further. My office so we can discuss this in private.”
Hawk turned to join us, but the chief put his hand out to stop him.
My stomach dropped.
No witnesses meant I was going to get my ass chewed up and then tossed out with the trash.
With a heavy heart, I followed the chief to his private office in the back, hands stuffed deep in my jacket pockets to keep from fidgeting.
It wasn’t like my behavior was a new thing. The chief often found me just outside the correct side when it came to our work. But I always got the job done.
The chief’s private office looked like something out of a Godfather movie and didn’t match the rest of the building. It made sense since the chief mostly lived here and had been caught a time or two sleeping on the old red couch in the corner.
As for the chief himself, although he was pushing sixty he still looked like he could bench press a small car. He kept his head and his face cleanly shaven to show off the wicked scar which bisected the right side of his face from forehead to chin.
“Sit down, Salix. We need to have a little conversation. It seems my orders aren’t penetrating that thick skull of yours.”
“Sir...”
“Nope, you don’t talk. I don’t need any input from you. All I want to see is your head nodding along with mine when I give you a directive. Can you do that?”
He nodded, and I gritted my teeth and nodded along with him.
“Excellent start. So, you ignored Hawk when he tried to start the interrogation, that much is obvious. You brought in a target we didn’t have orders for, despite the unions breathing down our necks about standards and safety. I also heard on the way you were fighting with this mage in the street.”
I folded in my lips and sat on my hands. I didn’t need to add anything else to get me into trouble.
“How many free passes do you think I’m going to give you, Zoey?”
I met his eyes at the use of my first name. His tone finally softened the slightest bit. I knew better than to consider it an opening though. Even if he had asked a question.
He continued. “And Hawk...why did he go along with helping you after you were clearly in violation of the office’s rules? I know he doesn’t condone bringing in targets without orders.”
I couldn’t hold my silence any longer. “This whole thing wasn’t Hawk’s fault. He argued with me. I’m just pretty persuasive when I want to be.”
The chief snorted and plopped into an overstuffed armchair he used as his desk chair. “Oh, I know that, Zoey. But Hawk is my right hand. He shouldn’t be easily persuaded by anyone but me. Explain to me why you did this.”
I sucked in a breath, using it to try and think of an answer, a lie. “I was on a case, and he was part of a follow up.”
I tried to piece together bits of what I’d told Hawk or Simon before, but I had to admit my story was starting to get a little blurry even for me to follow.
“Not even close. Try again,” he said, the edge of menace in his tone now.
I slumped a little. “It’s not what you think.”
“And tell me what I think.”
I wasn’t dumb enough to answer that question. “I have no idea what you think, but it’s not what you probably think.”
He chuckled, then his mouth went slack again. “Still not working for me. Do you like your job? Do you want to stay here? Or are you trying to get me to fire you? Because no one will touch you freelancing with a black mark on your record like this. Especially if you lose the Office’s protections.”
The rebellious part of me screamed, I don’t need protection! I didn’t need this place with its antiquated rules and superstitions.
Instead, I swallowed all that down and tucked my chin to present the submission he sought, but I couldn’t provide my gaze.
He slammed his hand on the desk. “Answer me, damn it. Do you want to keep working here?”
I pushed out a meek, “Yes.”
“And why don’t I believe that for a second? You think you have free reign in here but that ends. Now. I won’t see you go down because you didn’t follow protocol. I won’t see someone standing over your dead body like I found you standing over your parents.”
The mention of my parents jolted me, and I locked eyes with him. No hiding the anger in my gaze now.
“Does me mentioning your parents get through to you? Good, I’ll keep talking about them then if need be. But right now, you need to get your shit together or I’ll be sending Simon to pick up your corpse.”
I waved at the other room. “That mage had no power. I brought him down easily. Most of my time was sitting in the bar waiting for him to leave so I could grab him.”
“I don’t doubt your abilities, only where your head is at. You went after that mage for what? To find out what happened to your parents.”
I opened my mouth to speak again but
he waved me off. “No. I don’t need you to confirm what I already know. You think they have some kind of connection to the Black Mage. And just because you see one doesn’t give you the right to bring him or her in. You need the proof of deliverance for his power. Without that, you have nothing, and we have nothing to hold him. As of right now, if any of his family find out about this, you could be looking at jail time and losing your license. Did you think about that when you put him in the box?”
I sank into the chair. “I didn’t kill him. At the very most, I’ll be looking at a battery or assault charge. The man committed suicide. Crunched a pill, or something.” I shrugged. We didn’t know exactly how he’d died yet, but the mage had worked out a way to end his life quickly, and without us being able to stop him.
“Which brings me to my next point. Did you for one minute consider what a mage could do to you while stuck in a room under threat for his life? How did that play out in your head?”
“He never showed a hint of magic when we were fighting nor when I caught him.”
The chief shook his head and rolled his eyes. “And did you wonder why that was? Or did you just think, ‘well, this is my lucky day the mage isn’t using his best weapon against me’? Did you even consider if he was working for the Black Mage maybe he was dropped in your path? That possibly, with your never-ending hunt for him, he might be doing the same to you?”
I looked away in embarrassment. While I had considered I might be a target for the Black Mage, I never thought about Winston being sent as some sort of plot. And I excelled in paranoia.
The chief waited for me to answer so finally I conceded. “I considered some of that, but not all of it.”
“Which is what I’m fucking saying. It’s my job to think about what is right for the office and what is safe for my hunters. You are taking those choices away from me and when you do that, how can I keep you safe?”
His voice dipped on the end and I looked at the far wall over his right shoulder. Guilt stabbed at my chest and throat, seizing everything up. While he and I had a tense relationship, I hated the feeling I had let him down in some way. That I’d become a burden instead of an asset.