I don't remember choosing each incision, each question, each moment of pressure that made him gasp and beg and promise things he couldn't deliver.
I was operating on instinct.
Gabriel's training.
"When you need information, you don't ask. You take. You peel away the layers until there's nothing left but the truth."
Or maybe he'd said something else.
Maybe he'd told me to be merciful.
Maybe he'd told me that pain was inefficient, that there were better ways, that a skilled interrogator didn't need to drawblood. Perhaps he didn't train me to kill at all? None of it made sense.
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't remember anything except the man's face and the blood and the way his voice cracked when he said the words I didn't want to hear.
"He left voluntarily."
"He was never taken."
"He chose to go."
"He chose to leave you."
I stopped asking when he ran out of answers.
The blade was still in my hand. The blood was still warm. The man was still breathing—shallow, ragged, wet—but he'd stopped begging. He'd stopped pleading. He'd stopped saying anything at all, because there was nothing left to say.
He didn't know where Gabriel was.
He'd never known.
He was just a guard, just a man who'd watched and done nothing, just another body in a long line of bodies I'd left behind.
Gabriel had left voluntarily.
He hadn't been taken.
He'd chosen to go.
He'd chosen to leave me.
"You're ready."
For what?
For this.
For being alone.
For waking up in motel rooms with blood on my hands and no memory of how it got there.
I looked down at the man's face—Harold or David or no one—and I didn't feel anything.
No anger.
No satisfaction.
