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He sent a quick text back:I will.
Then he pulled on a coverall and covered his boots as well. In the top compartment of his tool kit was a box of heavy-duty nitrile gloves; he pulled out a bunch, set them aside, and drew a pair over his hands.
The barn was drafty and unheated, and it was January, but they had a patio heater like those out back at the clubhouse. Within its radius, the temperature was bearable. Not comfortable, but warm enough.
The work would do the rest of the warming. For Dex and Gargo, at least.
Still, he didn’t relish a full-day bloodletting marathon. They needed information, and they wanted these fools to suffer. He thought of the thing Mav had told Kelsey about: when he’d removed the skin from a target’s arm. It was something he’d done repeatedly as a Marine, but only that one time wearing a kutte. That day, he’d had a Perro audience and was working on Perro orders, so he’d made a show for their bloodthirsty overlords.
It was, in fact, a really effective technique—maximum pain, moderate mess, and, depending on the approach and the goal, either a high likelihood of survival for the target or an extremely painful death.
They had no intention of allowing these men to leave this farm. The field would be their eternal address. Their goal today was intel first and payback second. It was Dormer they’d pull the intel from, so they needed him good and soft. Terrified.
Yeah. Dex knew just how to do that.
So he opened the kit he’d brought from his saddlebags and pulled out a syringe.
“Oh fuck yeah,” Gunner said with a ravening grin. And people calledDexpsycho.
“What is it?” Duncan asked.
Dex didn’t bother to give him the polysyllabic medical name. “It’s a neuromuscular blocking agent.” A pharmacist at the VA kept him in supply.
When Duncan frowned, his father finished the answer. “It’ll make it so he can’t move, but he’ll still feel everything completely.”
“Fuuuuuck.” Duncan drew the word out with horrified appreciation. “Will he be able to talk? Or, like, breathe?”
“The dose should be enough to let him do both, but he won’t do either well. Enough to stay alive and whisper,” Dex answered.
“Why do it?” Duncan asked.
“Watch and learn, little bro,” Gunner answered. “Watch and learn.”
They’d been talking at some distance from the rack. Gargo and Eight had Grenell ready to go, naked but for his white briefs, bound in leather restraints at his wrists, with his arms outstretched above his head, and his ankles, at the end of the table. In his late forties, he looked like he’d never done much in the way of taking care of his body. He was a big guy, almost as long as the table, with a soft, pasty white belly that spread out and nearly filled the table from side to side. A dozen or so tattoos scattered over his arms and torso had the look of a kid who’d gone crazy with of those rub-on tattoos you could get as a prize in one of those coin machines they had by the sales desk at the station. In this middle of his chest, somewhat obscured by a long, steel-grey beard, was Grenell’s version of club ink—a grinning skull with blue flame for hair.
Dex never did the questioning. He did the hurting. So when he walked to the rack, Eight stood across from him.
Grenell, still gagged, looked at Eight, at Dex, at the syringe in Dex’s hand, and back to Eight. His eyes were steely cold, full of resistance.
“Last chance, Marv,” Eight said. “After this, shit gets very hard for you. Where’d you get those chicks you had caged up? Boss, partner, supplier, I don’t care. I just want the name.” With that, he ripped the duct tape off Grenell’s mouth, bringing with it the rocker that had been stuffed in his mouth—and a good chunk of beard, too.
“Fuck you.”
Gunner made a quiz-show buzzer noise. Eight chuckled darkly. “See, this is why you washed out of a real MC, my man. Y’ain’t bright.”
“He’s also a racist piece of shit,” Mav added—and with that, Dex remembered.
Grenell had been a pretty okay prospect. He was older, and he’d occasionally bristled at being treated like a prospect, but the Bulls allowed something of a learning curve, especially with older prospects. Being treated like shit on the bottom of the club’s shoe was not easy.
Dex had been through both basic training and Raider training, so he knew what it was about and dealt with it. But nobody liked being a prospect. Older guys, who’d experienced some respect in their lives, took it harder than younger guys, generally. But Grenell had been doing okay.
Then Jazz and Terry, two Black patches, had both said they got a vibe they didn’t like from him, Terry had straight out said he thought the guy was racist and didn’t trust him, so Apollo had dug deep online and discovered a whole trove of racist shit, from posts to group memberships to 4chan meme farms. Full-on neo-Nazi, white supremacist shit, even before that poison had re-entered the mainstream.
The shit people did online, man. What a fucking sewer.
Apollo had brought it all to the table; they’d voted to kick him right then.
Thathad been why he’d beaten the sweetbutt so bad. He’d caught a vibe that the club was turning on him, and she’d gotten in his way at the wrong moment.
