“Thanks, Doc.” I closed the door and rushed down the hall to find Menace. I’d just made it to his room when I heard him call out to me. “Yo, Shotgun! I’ve been looking for you.”
“I just got back. What’s going on?”
“We got ’em.”
I knew he was talking about Abernathy and McKinney. “Seriously?”
“Fuck yeah. ’Bout a half hour ago.” Looking quite proud of himself, he continued, “They were drinking down at one of their hangouts and were both feeling pretty fucking good until we tackled their sorry asses in the back alley.”
“Where are they now?”
“We took them down to your holding rooms.”
During my time as the Sinners’ enforcer, I’d constructed three different holding rooms filled with various tools and restraints I used to extract intel from assholes like Abernathy and McKinney. It was a place where I could cut loose and release my inner demons, and at that moment, I was eager to unleash those demons on the men in those two rooms. Not only did I want to make them pay for hurting Remington like they had, but I also needed to find out everything they knew about Long and that fucking Detective Mathews. “Give me a couple of hours.”
“You got it.”
With that, I turned and headed to the first holding room. When I walked in, I found Drake Abernathy standing in the middle of the room with his hands bound above his head. Like the picture Menace had shown me, the guy was young with tattoos covering his arms and neck. He was average-sized, several inches shorter than me, and about a hundred and ninety pounds with dark, beady eyes and a scar under his left eye. Menace and Country had roughed him up a little. He had a couple of bruises and scratches on his arms and face, but they were nothing like what he was about to get. A snarl crossed his face as I approached. “Who the fuck are you?”
Instead of answering, I slammed my fist into his gut, knocking the wind from his lungs, then stood there glaring at him as he tried to catch his breath. When he finally recovered, he spat, “You don’t know who you’re messing with, motherfucker. You and your boys have fucked-up big time. Fuck. You’re as good as fucking dead.”
“You’re in no position to be making threats.” I walked over to the counter and picked up my ball-peen hammer. As I carried it back over to Abernathy, I told him, “I’ve got some questions for you. Answer them, and I’ll consider taking it easy on you. Don’t answer, and there’ll be hell to pay.”
“I ain’t answering shit.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” I tightened my grip on the hammer, then slammed it into his shin. A sense of satisfaction washed over me as his pain-filled screams echoed through the room. Panicked, he tugged at his restraints, trying with all his might to break free, but it was no use. He wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. I hit him again in the knee as I asked, “You ready to start talking?”
“Fuck you!” he screamed. “Piece of shit, motherfucker! You think you something ’cause you got that fucking hammer, but we both know you ain’t fucking shit! Just a fucking lapdog for a bunch of no-brained pussies on goddamn trikes!”
“That right?” I was used to trash-talk. Hell, I’d heard plenty of it over the years, but there was something about this guy that got under my skin. Maybe it was his tough-guy attitude or the reference to my brothers, but I had a feeling it was something else altogether. “Well, this fucking pussy is about to become your worst fucking nightmare.”
“You think you scare me?” he scoffed. “I’ve dealt with crackers like you my whole life. I can take anything you dish out.”
“We’ll see about that.”
I dropped the hammer, then walked back to the counter and grabbed a pair of vice grips. I took them over to Abernathy and locked the grip around his index finger, quickly breaking it before moving on to the next. With each broken finger, his groans and grunts became more and more pronounced until he let out a stream of curses that roared through the room. Before I started on the second hand, I asked, “Tell me about the girl you tossed in Stilettos’ dumpster.”
“This is about that fucking bitch?”
I immediately broke his next finger, causing him to bellow in agony. “I’m running low on patience.”
“Don’t give a fuck. Ain’t gonna tell you nothin’.” He shook his head with a chuckle. “All this over some fuckin’ piece of ass. I should’ve fucked her good and hard when I had the chance. Showed her what a real man has to offer.”
I wasn’t one to lose control, but his words got me right in the gut. Unable to hold back my rage, I wrapped my fingers around the vice grips, then reared back my fist and slammed it into the side of his head, knocking him out cold. I strode over to the back corner of the room and tightened the chains around his wrists, lifting him up even higher. It took some time for him to come around, and when he did, he made the mistake of a lifetime. He was trying to fight against his restraints when he snarled, “You’ve fucked up now. All you Sinner assholes are gonna pay for this shit. When I get out of here, I’m gonna blow this place fucking sky high. Won’t be nothing left of you. Nothing!”
His words had my mind going back to the day I’d lost most of my platoon in a hostile raid. We were surrounded by gunfire. Bullets were flying over our heads, and when one of them pierced through my chest, we decided to go into an abandoned building for cover. We’d barely stepped inside when an explosive was detonated, and the entire building was blown to shreds. After the dust finally settled, and I realized the rest of my squad was dead, I wished I’d died right along with them.
That same cold, bitter feeling came creeping up over me as I stood there glaring at Abernathy. Unable to hold back my rage, I reached into my holster for my Glock and put a bullet in his head, killing him instantly. Seeing that my time with him was done, I made my way next door to introduce myself to Mr. McKinney.
When I walked into the room, I found him bound with his hands above his head just like his buddy. I already knew this guy was older, a little rougher around the edges with graying hair and crow’s feet around his eyes, but unlike Abernathy, there was a despondent look in this guy’s eyes, making him appear defeated or broken. I walked over to him and crossed my arms. “I’ve got some questions for you.”
“Yeah, figured you would.” He motioned his head towards the room next to us. “You the one in there with D?”
“I was.”
“You gonna tell me what this is all about?”
“I need to know about the girl you and your buddy tossed into our dumpster at Stilettos.”
“Damn, I knew that shit wasn’t a good idea.” He lowered his head with regret. “I didn’t want no part of that. Poor girl didn’t have shit to do with anything. Just in the wrong place at the wrong fucking time. Didn’t deserve none of what happened to her, especially that beating. That shit wasn’t right.” He looked up at me and added, “It was up to me to finish her off, but I just couldn’t do it. I stabbed her in places where it wouldn’t fuck her up too bad.”
“How are the Punishers connected to Detective Mathews and Detective Long?”