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What he had in his hand now wasn’t so specialized. It was a typical hunter’s skinning knife, this one with a 3-1/8-inch drop-point blade and an ebony handle.
“Dunc, c’mere.”
Duncan came over and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Yeah, Sarge?”
“Grab his beard and pull it up and out of my way.” He didn’t want to cut it off yet; that could be useful later.
Duncan did what he was told, and exposed Grenell’s so-called ‘club ink,’ that lame-ass grinning skull in this middle of his chest.
With the skinner, Dex relieved Marvin Grenell of his tattoo.
The beauty of using a blocker before starting work like this was he didn’t have to fight the body’s instinctive responses to pain. No flinching or retreating, no quivering. A perfect canvas. He could have sliced this eight-by-six-inch section of skin from Grenell’s chest in under a minute.
However, ridding him of his ink was a tertiary goal here. Getting information from his associates was the main goal. Vengeance and discipline was the secondary goal. So Dex took his time.
Perfectly still beneath Dex’s blade, Grenell moaned and sweated.
“Fuck,” Duncan muttered.
That word had sounded shaky. Dex glanced up—yep, Dunc looked like he was going to lose either his legs or his lunch.
But then his father was there, putting his hand around Duncan’s where it held Grenell’s beard. “Get some air, son.”
Duncan reeled back. “Sorry, I …”
He was young, their newest patch, and this was his first time seeing something like this.
Maverick nodded at a point behind Dex, and Gunner came around and dropped his arm across Duncan’s shoulders.
“It’s okay, little bro. Lotsa guys lose their Oreos the first time. What say you and me do a perimeter check.” He led Duncan out into the cold sunshine.
Dex set the tattoo—which he’d taken in a single sheet—aside for later. It would be their message to the others, in whole or in part. Then he had Gargo turn the crank again. This time shoulders, wrists, and ankles all dislocated, and Grenell very nearly managed an actual scream.
The men hanging from the rafters struggled against their bonds and shouted through their gags.
Dex went back to his tools, picked up a small brown bottle, uncapped it, and poured about a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide on the skinless section of Grenell’s chest.
He did manage an actual scream then.
Dex put the peroxide aside, selected another knife, and carried on with his work.
~oOo~
Dex worked on Grenell until he died—about two and a half hours from the first turn of the crank. He’d worked methodically, making the most of the example. He used a sliding scale of pain and damage, starting with an emphasis on the former, moving toward the latter as Grenell weakened.
The blocker began to wear off after about ninety minutes, but by then, Grenell had so little control over his body it didn’t matter. His screams, though, gained a lot of volume.
By the time the man finally died, all his joints were dislocated, Dex had taken all his toes, his ears, the skin on the undersides of both upper arms, the rest of the skin of his chest. When Eight finally called an end to it and told Dex to make it a big finish, he took a gut hook, opened the man’s belly, and started unpacking until his screams stopped and he was dead.
While the others cleaned up the rack and the tools, and got Dormer, his next target, ready, Dex grabbed his phone and went outside for some air. He stood in the barnyard and stretched his back, closing his eyes and facing the sky. The cold felt good after all that, and the afternoon sun felt better.
His phone buzzed in his hand: a text from Kelsey. JustThinking of you.
He texted backSorry I’m quiet. Busy. But same.
Truthfully, he’d thought of nothing else but the work since he’d first put the blade to Grenell’s ink. But he hadn’t lied, suggesting that he was thinking of Kelsey. She was in his head always now, a steady, quiet presence. Like a baffle for his brain.
She wanted him to go back to therapy. He knew he needed to; he just couldn’t figure out how to have the life he wanted and also the help he needed. One or the other had to give, and Kelsey stood right at the center, a foot in each.
