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Torture and that type of damage though usually comes from those on the opposite side of the law. The maniacs who cut people up and brutalize people are the ones we hunt.
Watching it happen by one of the guys on our side is eye-opening, and it tells me that there’s a very fine line that determines which side of the fence someone can fall. I’m grateful that Hemlock is on our side.
I swallow down the threat of vomit when the man screams, as I fight the urge to look away. I don’t want to look like a wimp in front of the other guys. I highly doubt any of them would give me shit because Hound simply clapped Jinx on the shoulder when he turned a little green and had to walk away.
I straighten my spine, standing a half of an inch taller, but I hunch again when Hemlock turns the crank. The guy he’s trying to get information from screams again.
His arms are tied behind his back, with a rope attached to his wrists. Every turn of the crank lifts his arms up higher and higher behind him. This whole strappado form of torture doesn’t look so bad, but the sounds the man’s body is making is ungodly. I know there won’t be many more turns of the crank before one, if not both, of his shoulders are dislocated.
“Make me fucking ask you again,” Hemlock says, his voice even, not a hint of anger or evilness in it.
I imagine it would be the same if he asked someone to pass the saltshaker at the dinner table, and that makes it even scarier than if he was yelling or growling.
“Won’t be able to hear you if you do that,” Hound warns when Hemlock lifts a knife to the man’s ear.
Hemlock changes direction with his knife, cutting the man’s nipple off instead.
His very limited range of motion, with the way he’s strapped up, doesn’t prevent the man from flailing with the pain.
“Jesus Christ,” Slick mutters when Hemlock tosses the piece of flesh to the ground completely unfazed.
Hound lifts his eyes to hers in warning, and she simply nods in his direction and walks away.
As a psychologist, she took an oath to help others, so I know this has to be harder for her on an ethical level.
This isn’t our normal method of operation, but we hit a brick wall in a very sensitive case.
The man who is doing nothing but screaming knows where the compound is, the one that is responsible for ten child abductions in the last three weeks. Local police here in Quito, Ecuador have already found the abused bodies of two of those children. We don’t have any additional time before we start finding more.
I can see the benefit of having a man like Hemlock on our side, but it’s also not an easy thing to witness.
“¿Qué dijiste?” Hemlock asks, leaning closer to the man when he begins to whisper.
I was shocked to discover the man knows several languages, and it still has the ability to make me raise my eyebrows each time I hear him mutter something in a different language.
The man stops speaking, and Hemlock doesn’t hesitate to turn the crank once again.
After the man stops screaming, all it takes is Hemlock’s hand to head right back to the crank for the man to start speaking.
I don’t understand much Spanish, but I know enough to tell he’s disclosing the location of the children, and I think a sigh of relief comes from everyone in the room when Hemlock steps back with the information.
He looks to Hound, his team leader, and, after the nod he gets, he pulls out the knife strapped to his side and shoves it through the top of the man’s head, angled down toward his throat. His arms dislocate when his lifeless body drops completely.
“For fuck’s sake,” someone else mutters.
We aren’t strangers to death and blood, but what we just witnessed is very different from pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger. This was very hands-on, and it doesn’t seem to have bothered Hemlock at all, I realize. I watch him as he pulls his knife from the man’s skull and wipes it on the shirt he pulled off of him before strapping him to the improvised lift that would normally be used in the garage to make oil changes easier.
“You got the information we need?” Hound asks as we turn to leave the mechanic’s shop, each of us having to step over the body of the first guy who died before giving up any information to Hemlock. I’m pretty sure he had a heart attack or something.
“Fuck!”
We rush to the sound of the yell, weapons ready, but instead of finding someone hurting one of our guys, we walk up and see Newton with his fucking foot in a rusty bear trap.
