Page 66 of Psycho
August briefly filled them in on what had happened at the truck stop and what Calliope had found about Devon Nicholls.
“So, we’re saying the Russian has ties to a group of street racing skinheads, who are torturing and killing women for money?” Noah said.
“It seems that way,” Calliope agreed. “I have to do more digging, but I’m guessing that’s the narrative.”
“Tell me we’re taking them all out,” Noah said.
“There’s nowe,” Adam reminded. “You’re benched. I can’t focus when you’re there.”
“I’m going,” Lucas said, giving August a hard look. “Don’t even try to bench me. I passed training at Quantico. I can deal with Kohn. You promised.”
“We take Kohn first,” Thomas said. “Torture what info you can out of him. Find those girls. This room opens back up in five days. We need to make sure they don’t have time to go shopping for a new victim.”
“If he confirms the street gang is involved, we’ll go in and take them out, too. But we do this one step at a time.”
They all nodded.
Thomas looked at each of them, gaze sharp, tone borderline threatening. “This needs to be clean. We’re about to kidnap a Federal agent. We can’t afford any mistakes. In the meantime, I want everything you can find on these gangbangers. Where they hang out. How many there are. We have to be strategic. The last time we took out a large group of people, the investigation took a little too long to go cold. No repeats of last time.”
Lucas blinked at the implication. How often did they go in and eliminate multiple targets at one time? Were they truly talking about casually taking out an entire gang of Nazis?
When they were back in the car, Lucas finally asked, “Don’t you guys ever worry you’ll get caught?”
August frowned. “Worry? We don’t really worry about anything. We’re incapable. It would be inconvenient to get caught. Especially for me. Prisons are noisy, dirty, the lights too bright. My father would be the one who suffers and I won’t have that.”
“What do you mean?”
August briefly took his eyes off the road. “He has a reputation to uphold. He’s proud of our family name, our legacy. In a different world, he’d be proud of the invisible part of our lives, too. But we don’t live in that world. Calliope does a good job of manufacturing alibis, faking social media posts. But the truth is, the sheer absurdity of a man like my father using his own children to exact revenge on strangers is what keeps us safe. It’s too impossible to fathom.”
It was true. Lucas wouldn’t have believed it either if he hadn’t seen it. “Do you really think this will work? That we have a shot at kidnapping Kohn and forcing him to tell us where those missing girls are?”
When August looked over at Lucas again, a chill rolled over him. It was unnerving to see August without the mask. “He’ll talk. They always do. But you need to know that this can sometimes be a long and very bloody endeavor. I understand if you don’t want to subject yourself to it. I don’t mind doing this for you.”
The idea of August getting to be the one to make Kohn scream left Lucas feeling cheated in a way that should have concerned him more. “I don’t want you to do it for me. I want you to show me how to do it myself.”
This time, it was August who looked startled. “You want me to teach you how to torture somebody?”
He did. He really did.
“Yes, please.”
“The key to torturing somebody is figuring out what scares them personally.”
Lucas sat on August’s black couch in a pair of worn gray sweatpants and a faded Quantico t-shirt, a small smile on his face, watching as August paced the room like he was at the front of the lecture hall and not his own living room.
“With some people, it’s cultural, with some it’s psychological, others physiological. We’ve come a long way since the blood eagle and the Judas cradle, both of which were surprisingly ineffective techniques when it came to extracting information. Now, we’ve learned that, sometimes, all it takes is total sensory deprivation. For others, it’s sensory overload. With some, it‘s humiliation. So, knowing your victim is important.”
Lucas raised his hand until August stopped to look at him. He was being such a brat tonight. “Yes?”
Lucas’s smile spread to a full grin. “I appreciate this brief introduction to Torture 101, but I’m a criminologist. I understand the psychological component of torture. I just want you to show me how to enact said torture.”
“Enact said torture?” August echoed.
Lucas laughed. “I’ve taken the class, Professor. I just need the lab. Show me how to make somebody suffer.”
August snickered at the analogy but also at the way Lucas’s use of the wordprofessorwent straight to his dick. They would definitely be exploring that later.
He padded barefoot to the weapons artfully arranged on his wall, choosing a small wicked-looking dagger. It was ancient, hand crafted, expensive, and sharp enough to flay the skin off a man with enough precision so as not to damage the tissue beneath.
