Page 89 of Coup De Grâce
I barked out a laugh, tossing back my head in glee. “Well,obviously. Though if my friend FNG were here, he would say the correct adverb would beclearly. I beg to differ. Obviously means that it was so clear to you that I’m crazy. Whileclearlycould be misconstrued to mean something else entirely.”
“What?” he snapped.
I pulled my knife, cutting the shoes from his feet and letting them drop into the acid. “Well, not everyone understands the basic differences between clearly and obviously. It’s actually quite a point of contention in our group. Then again, it wasn’t me who started it. It was actually between Dash and FNG. Those two are a bunch of characters. But you’ve been watching us, so I bet you already know that.”
I studied his pajamas, wondering if I should cut them from his body or let them boil off along with his skin. It was a tough one because sometimes the fear of seeing the fabric boil awaywas enough to make a man talk. But then he really didn’t get to see his skin slough off if he was covered in material.
It was definitely a conundrum.
My phone rang before I could make a final decision. “Ah, that will be Rae. She’s just getting some information on you.” I slid my finger across the screen and put it on speakerphone. “Rae, my darling. What do you have for me?”
“Well, he’s definitely on the list with the others. It seems he handles the finances for the Shadow Government. We need their accounts.”
“Accounts, you say?”
“Easiest way to dismantle them,” she said happily.
“Well, I can definitely do that. Hey, do you know that he doesn’t seem to like musicals?”
“Fox, many people don’t. Try not to take it personally.”
“Well, that’s a tad hard when he doesn’t like Funyuns either.”
“Call me when you have something,” she said without a simple goodbye.
I shoved the phone in my pants pocket and flipped my knife in my hand, decision made. “Now, I’m not saying I’m going to enjoy this, but I’m going to enjoy this. What I need are account numbers. You heard the lass. So, you can either hand them over now and I’ll drop you in the vat with no fanfare, or you can make this long and drawn out, and I’ll slowly lower you into it until all your bones melt and your skin is floating around in the water.
“Personally, I would fight it, but that’s the psycho in me. I really don’t want to sway your opinion one way or the other.”
I sat back and crossed my arms, waiting for him to make up his mind. He would probably hold out like the others, wondering if I would really go through with it, but they all gave in eventually. The pain became unbearable, and they eventually gave up everything.
When he didn’t say anything, I let the Phantom take over as a grin spread across my face. “Difficult way, it is then.”
27
CASH
“If we don’t go soon,the evidence won’t be there,” I snapped as we waited in the vehicle outside the building.
We were waiting on Dash’s flight to get in, and the amount of wasted time was killing me. I could have been in and out by now. Granted, it would have alerted everyone and their brother that I was here and I’d probably end up in prison, but it was beginning to look like a viable option.
“Relax, boss. He’ll be here,” Kavanaugh said calmly, his feet kicked up on the back of the seat as he attempted to snooze with a ball cap pulled down over his eyes.
“Boss?”
One eye peeked open as he stared at me. “That is your name.”
“Not so sure about that,” I muttered. “Besides, I never thought I would hear you call me that.”
“Why? Because you shot me and nearly ended my life while I laid on top of my father’s casket and bled out?” He shrugged, closing his eyes again. “Bridge over troubled water.”
“It’s water under the bridge, asshole,” IRIS grumbled.
“Does it really fucking matter? It’s water and it’s free-flowing. The rest is just semantics.”
“It matters if the phrase is wrong,” IRIS argued.
“The phrase itself is right. The time to use it is wrong,” FNG corrected.
