“Patch Cisco up,” he told him. “Get her ready for exfil.”
Clay laughed. “Exfil. You got a fucking chopper coming in?” he asked. “Or you just play with your Action Men too much as a kid?”
Taser glared at him. He holstered his taser on his belt and bent down over Cisco. One hand gripped her upper arm with brief reassurance; then he unclipped the identical blocky plastic weapon from her hip. He walked over, bloody footprints left on the wood, and bent down to shove it against Clay’s balls.
“Shut your mouth until I tell you to open it,” he said. “When I ask you a question, you answer it, and we all go home happy. Don’t, and I put 1000 volts through your cock. How much good do you think that will be to your boyfriend?”
Clay leaned back and braced his arms on the bed behind him. He grinned at Taser. “We’re not dating,” he said. “And it wouldn’t kill him to do some of the work in bed.”
“Fuck you,” Grade said.
Clay jerked his head in that direction. “See? He says that, but he never follows through. All mouth.”
Taser pulled a sour face. He hooked a finger at the man who had Grade pinned down and pointed at the bed next to Clay.
“Get him up here,” he said.
The mattress bounced as the man got off the bed. He twisted his fingers in Grade’s hair and dragged him, naked and half tangled in the sheet, down to sit next to Clay.
“His cock goes next,” Taser said as he pointed at Grade. “So, are you going to tell us what we want to know?”
“Of course,” Grade said.
“Don’t fall for that,” Clay told him. “Even if you tell them the truth right off the bat, they’re going to torture you anyhow to see if you stick to the story. Right?”
Taser laughed softly as he glanced over at one of his companions. He had a tattoo on his neck, just visible between his camo paint and his collar. It looked like a Celtic cross. Clay filed that away for reference as he tried to weigh up who he was dealing with.
They had training. It could be military, but Clay doubted it. It felt more cobbled together than that.
“The other option is that I start torturing you now,” he said. “What do you have to lose?”
The man who had been designated as the nurse slapped a surgical bandage against the woman’s thigh. He hooked his arms under her and levered her up onto his shoulder as she bit her fist to stifle the groans. Definitely not military, then, not with that lift. He headed for the door.
Meanwhile, the last member of the team turned Clay’s room over. He dragged out drawers and emptied them, pulled clothes out of the closet, and used a knife to carve a gash into the seat of the leather chair in the corner of the room. Stuffing was pulled out and discarded on the floor.
“What do you want?” Clay asked.
The hit of adrenaline had cleared his head, stripped back the fog and the noise. Sex and violence, those were the only times that Clay felt like he wasn’t swimming against the current of his own brain. Clarity in short, sharp shocks.
If it weren’t for the fact he could hear the unevenness in Grade’s breathing and the slight tremble in the arm nudged up against Clay’s, this would be a good night.
“Where is it?” Taser asked.
“I don’t know,” Grade said. His voice cracked with frustration. “I never knew. It’s nothing to do with me.”
Taser backhanded him. The crack of contact was loud enough to make Clay start in surprise and knock Grade off the bed. He sprawled on the floor, his skin pale. He didn’t move for a second, and then he propped himself up on his elbow, one hand pressed against the side of his face.
The hot flash of rage pushed Clay to his feet. He took a step toward Taser and stopped as the man pulled a gun out of the holster and pointed it at Clay’s forehead. They stared at each other for a second, and then Taser smiled and shifted the gun to point at Grade’s back.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
Clay took that one step back, but stayed on his feet.
“Fisher told us to deal with this,” Clay said. “I’m dealing with it. This wasn’t necessary.”
Grade pushed himself up into a sitting position. The skin on his cheekbone was split, blood dribbled down his bloody jaw, and he had a fat lip, already shaded blue and bruised.
“Fisher?” he asked
