Page 46 of Reaper
“Fine,” I said to the piss-soaked banker.“Give me your phone.”
He looked at least as terrified at handing over his phone as he had while dangling forty stories over thin air.“What?Why do you need my phone?”
“Because it’ll be faster than beating all your account information out of you,” I said.“Now hand over your fucking phone.”
He patted his pockets, then turned even paler.“I think it fell out of my pocket.”He pointed at the side of the building.“When you…”
Goddammit.The hack just got a little harder.“Whatever.Give me your full name and social security number.We can get what we need from that.”I made sure Becks could hear the information through our mental link as he recited the info I needed.
I glared down at the terrified little man.“Go forth, and sin no more.”
“Huh?”
“Get the fuck out of here and don’t do any more criminal shit,” I said, laying as much menace into my voice as I could manage while trying not to laugh at the pitiful bastard.He didn’t deserve my rage.He was just some hapless shithead that got caught up in shit he couldn’t see the bottom of.If I should be mad at somebody, it really should be me for falling for Pete’s crap.I felt a little proud of myself for realizing the transference that was happening.It didn’t make me any nicer to the little fuckwit, but it felt like some tiny bit of personal growth.
Yeah, Harker, that’s what counts.Not developing any level of impulse control, but the realization that the person you’re torturing might not deserve it,Becks said.Maybe next we work on getting you to a place where you don’t torture the wrong person in the first place.
Baby steps, love,I replied.Baby steps.Besides, I got us the information, didn’t I?That’s gotta count for something.
Just get your ass back home while Xia traces this moron’s financials.
I turned my attention back to Stoller, who was trying to find a way to sit on the rooftop and not stew in his own filth.“I’m leaving.You wait five minutes and then you can get off the roof.If you try to come down before that, I’ll know, and I’ll kill you.Understand?”
He nodded, and I whistled the tune toThe Andy Griffith Showas I walked to the stairs.
36
Xia had about half her “supervillain secret lair” set up in the formerly empty apartment between the unit where Becks and I lived and the one we left cleared out as a “war room” when we needed to have a lot of people sitting around a big table trying to figure out what to do.Which happened more often than you’d expect now that we worked for the federal government.Turns out when you’re part of a massive bureaucracy, you need a big-ass conference table.
Xia’s place was a dimly lit one-bedroom with a couch along one wall, blackout curtains completely covering the sliding glass balcony doors, and an array of six massive monitors fastened to one wall.She sat at an L-shaped desk in one corner, and there was a long couch by the kitchen as a token effort to pretend people might ever come visit her cave.Luke and Becks were already there with Nameless when I arrived, and Xia looked up from her keyboard at my entrance.
“Oh good!You’re finally here.What took you so long?It’s the middle of the night, it’s not like there was traffic?And why did you stop for twelve minutes on South Boulevard?You were almost here, and then you just…stopped.I was tracking your phone, and I texted you, but you didn’t answer.I’ve been waiting, and I don’t like waiting, Harker.”Her words tumbled over themselves like pebbles in a rockslide, and it took me about ten seconds to actually parse what she was saying.
“I stopped for takeout,” I said, holding up a bag.“Wings.The manager owes me a favor after I exorcised an imp that was spoiling his chicken a couple years ago, so he kept the kitchen open late for me.”
“Good call,” Becks said.“I’m famished.Now that we’ve gotthreepeople who either don’t have to eat or can’t be bothered to remember to buy groceries, there’s nothing to eat on the entire floor.”
“In my defense, I was trapped in an underground cage fighting ring for like two weeks,” I said.
“I keep plenty of sustenance on hand,” Luke said.“It’s not my fault you can subsist on neither whole blood nor Fancy Feast.”
“I just moved in two days ago,” Xia said.“But if you got any nuclear face-melting hot wings, I’m all about ‘em.”
“Dig in,” I said.“I got four dozen wings, assorted flavors.”
“Garlic Parm?”Becks asked.
“Of course,” I replied, handing her a styrofoam container of wings and her extra crispy fries.I pulled out a cardboard container of teriyaki wings for myself, along with some celery, and handed the super-hot ones over to Xia.I didn’t expect her to go for the thermonuclear warhead wings, but I’d gotten eight different flavors, so she was in luck.“What did you find out from Piss Boy’s info?”
Everybody stared at me for a second before Xia asked, “Piss Boy?”
“The dude I hung off the roof.I can’t remember his name, but he soiled himself in every way imaginable, so I just called him Piss Boy in my head.”
“Oh,” she replied.“That makes sense.I’ve been calling him Douche Bro in mine, but given the type of people you seem to run into on this job, that might not be specific enough long-term.By the way, his name is Jameson Stoller.”
“Don’t care,” I said around a mouthful of chicken.
“I get that,” Xia said, licking her fingers.“But I saw somebody on some TV show say that details matter in an investigation, and that made sense, so I thought that one might, too.”
