Page 57 of Ricochet

“Park here.” I pointed to a spot where grass had grown up through the cracks in the pavement, beside my Mustang. I’d walked from the dock to the bar, planning to switch out his sore thumb of a ride that would have assholes chasing us through the streets. “Get out. And don’t bother to run.”

He slid out of the driver’s seat and yanked his loosened pants up as he hobbled along toward the fence in a pathetic break for it—exactly as I’d anticipated he would.

Idiot. Gun cocked, I shot him in the ankle, blowing bits of bone onto the pavement.

He collapsed, clutching his leg. “Fuck! Awww, fuck!”

“I told you.” I shook my head as I approached him. “No running.”

Gripping his collar, I dragged him back across the parking lot, against the kicking of his good foot and his screaming. No one could hear him. Even if they could, no one would care.

I opened the passenger door on my Mustang and tossed him into the seat, hating the idea that I’d have blood to clean later. After rounding the vehicle, I plopped in the driver’s seat and drove the Mustang out of the parking lot.

His sobbing beside me, trembling as he clutched his mangled ankle, had me about two seconds from knocking the bastard out. “You wouldn’t happen to be diabetic, would you? That wound looks like it’s gonna be a nasty one.”

“Fuck … you.” I couldn’t help but smile at the shaky threat in his voice. More sobbing, and goddamn if my hands didn’t instinctively ball into fists. “What … did I do … to you?”

I glanced across to see him hunched over his legs, hand supporting his head. “Funny you should ask.”

He lifted his gaze to mine, and his brows pinched. “What?” He scanned the interior. “Do I know you, man?”

“I wouldn’t say you know me. I wouldn’t say any of you fucks knew me. Or my wife. Or my son.” Instinctively, my lip curled at the mention of them. “But it’s better that way, isn’t it? You can kill indiscriminately without care or conscience.” I rested my elbow on the back of the seat, casually, as if we were having a normal conversation that wouldn’t ultimately end in death. “Nasty thing, a conscience, isn’t it? Keeps us aware of what’s right and wrong.” I patted his back, and he flinched. “Good thing I no longer have one.”

He rocked in the seat beside me, rubbing his skull back and forth, back and forth, while Detroit’s cityscape passed beside him in a blur. Didn’t take long for him to contemplate his next predictable move. He grappled for the door handle, but it broke off in his hands. He whimpered when it tumbled out of his opened palm.

“Broken on the inside.” I sighed. “I know the feeling.”

He screamed. Like a bitch.

In what must’ve been a moment of insanity, he leapt across the console, fumbling at the holster hugging my hunting blade.

I gripped his wrist and elbowed him square in his cheekbone, knocking his nose along the way.

He fell backward into his seat. “You bwoke my fuckin’ nose!”

“My apologies, if I’ve given you the impression that I don’t plan to hurt you.”

Within a couple of minutes, we arrived at the metal stamping factory. Taking my time, I dragged my finger across the hood of the car as I rounded the vehicle and opened the passenger door. “I have a surprise for you.” Squeezing his nape, I yanked him from the seat, and he fell in a heap on the ground. Fuck if I was gonna carry him. Instead, I cocked the hammer back with a click and pointed the gun at his good ankle, smirking when he squirmed like a worm caught on a hook.

“C’mon, man! C’mon!”

“Get up. Or I’ll make you crawl with two blown out ankles.”

Wheezes of panic ended on a long sob, but he dropped forward and pushed, propping himself on his good foot. Once upright, he pogo’d in front of me, and I gripped his arm, guided him over the rubble with my gun pressed into his skull. With some effort, he climbed over the charred brick and debris piled outside of a back entrance, while I easily stepped behind him.

I’d already taken the liberty of setting up a chair beside the huge hydraulic press in the back of the factory, and with a nudge, he collapsed onto it. His bloodied hands trembled when I chained them behind his back, and he bucked as I wrestled secure a blindfold over his eyes.

“How does that bullet feel?” I knelt down and examined the hole in his tennis shoe, slapped his shin. I laughed when he curled his foot up under the chair.

“Don’t touch it!”

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I pushed to a stand. “Man, wait till you see what one feels like lodged inside your skull.”

His cheeks lifted, as if he cringed behind the blindfold. “Look, whatever … whatever I did …”

“If you think you’re going to win me over with your useless, artificial apologies, you’re wrong.” I shrugged. “You’re lucky. We’re just here to … mutilate you mercilessly until you die. No talking.”

He let out a long and drawn out scream that echoed into the surroundings, reverberating off of the cement walls.