Scott Angler was pissed off.
He was pissed off at their fucking thin-skinned captain for reassigning Jimmy Suzuki and leaving the whole engineering department a rudderless mess. If the fucking lights hadn’t gone on the fritz again, if full lighting had come on when it was supposed to and they weren’t still drenched in that dim fucking red light like a block of Copenhagen whorehouses, he might have noticed something was off.
He was pissed off at Arthur Gaines for not standing up to his boss and straightening some of this shit out.
He was pissed off at Selena Kirkland for letting that dick run this ship his way and not jumping all over his Yankee blueblood ass.
He was pissed off at Jackson for…fuck, he couldn’t focus well enough through the haze of shock and pain to work out exactly what the fuck he was pissed off at Jackson for but let’s just say for being fucking Jackson.
Mostly he was pissed off at himself.
He was pissed off that he’d let himself be blinded by his own certainty that Finn was the psycho they needed to worry about, that he’d been so goddamn cocksure of himself that he let his attitude override his instincts.
He was pissed off that when Lew got to Jackson’s office and he showed him the jersey and goggles and explained what Monica had told him, and Lew said, “What else did she say?” he didn’t pick up the edge in his voice.
He was pissed off that he’d let Lew get behind him, whack him on the back of the skull with a pistol butt, and shove a needle into his neck.
He was pissed off that he and Lieutenant Halsey were not going to do breakfast in Hawaii together.
And it was his own goddamn fault.
And now here he was, trussed like a boar, his skin hanging in strips off his face, about to die—and for no good fucking reason.
He hadn’t been afraid to die in the bush or on the battlefield. He’d gone into the shit willingly. Fuck it, he’d gone in eagerly. The thought that there might be an IED out there with his name on it, or a 7.62 round, a mortar shell, hell, a rusty bayonet carving up his guts, he truly and heartily did not give a three-inch shit. Dying out there in the thick of things, giving his life to help make his country a better place or at least maintain its status as toughest and meanest motherfucker on the block, that would be an honor.
But being wasted here? Now? By this piece of dirt?
It was an embarrassment.
Gave new meaning to the word “waste.”
So Stevens, that twisted little fuck, thought the threat of extreme pain would terrify him into talking, telling him where she was. And, when that didn’t work, that actually inflicting some of that agony on his person would inspire an even greater terror, a terror impossible to deny.
His mistake.
It didn’t terrify Scott.
It just pissed him off more.
“Okay—okay,” he groaned.
His capacity to speak was nearly gone, frozen out of him by whatever drug Stevens had shoved into him. Succinylcholine, probably, a partial dose, not enough to paralyze him, just enough to turn him into oil sludge. He was losing strength and mobility—but not feeling. No, he felt every bit of it. When Stevens made those little horizontal incisions in his forehead, then grabbed the little skin-tabs and pulled, peeling his face like strips of flypaper, old Scottie felt it, all right.
He felt it plenty.
Maybe Lew was right.
Maybe it would make him talk.
“No more…” he whispered. “No—more. She’s…”
Just to breathe was an effort.
His tormentor paused, hands in his lap, then cocked his head and leaned in closer to hear. An undisguised look of triumph on his face. I win, that look said. I knew you’d talk.
Scott marshaled every atom of will he could to speak one last time. It felt like pulling up a tree stump with his bare hands. He took a breath, then another, then croaked out the words.
“She’s—crawling—up your ass crack—you pathetic dipshit.”
He tried to laugh, but all he could pull off was a faint wheeze.
It would have to do.