Brand screamed, but no one heard it. Gray's hand covered his mouth.
The pain went on forever. Brand had never known there could be this kind of pain.
Finally Gray withdrew the lighter and pushed it back into the socketall the way.
"That hurt, I bet," Gray said. "I know about shit like that. My daddy used to burn me with the radiator."
Brand couldn't answer. His eyes were wet. He was crying, maybe for the first time in his adult life.
"Used to brand me, I guess you'd say." Gray chuckled. "I don't got all night, Sarge. You wanna tell me what kind of game you crooked-ass cops are runnin' on me?"
He tried one more time to resist, not out of bravery but self-preservation. He was sure Gray would kill him if he heard the truth. "Nobody's playing any games."
"Pissing me off, Sarge." The lighter popped out again, recharged, and Gray grabbed it. It found Brand's ear, drilling partway into the ear canal, sending hot wires of agony straight into his brain.
Brand wanted to tell this man everything, but he couldn't stop screaming long enough to get the words out.
The lighter withdrew. The left side of Brand's head throbbed with pain. He thought his eardrum had been ruptured. Something oozed out of his ear and down his cheek.
He was crying againbig, racking sobs interspersed with shallow wheezing.
"Gonna talk?" Gray asked. His voice seemed far away. Brand figured he'd gone deaf in one ear.
I'll talk, he tried to say, but his mouth wouldn't work properly, and no sound came out.
Gray interpreted the silence as resistance. "Still holding out on me? Okay, then. Let's say I try putting this hot little number in your fucking eye." Gray popped the lighter back into the plug.
That did it. Brand recovered speech. "No, don't, I'll tell, I'll talk, don't amp;" All one flood of words, undignified and desperate.
"Knew you would. Gotta say I'm a little disappointed, though. I thought you'd take longer to crack. You ain't much of a man, are you, Sarge?"
"I'll talk," Brand said again.
"I got that." Gray smiled down at him. "So go on. Tell me a bedtime story."
He fought to control his breathing. He was deathly afraid that he would lose his voice again, and Gray would punish him for the pleasure of it.
"It wasn't me. I didn't amp; I wasn't in the office today."
"Then who was?"
"Wolper. He's the one. He's been dirty for years. I met him at the academy, worked with him on and off"
"I don't want your bio. Who's Wolper?"
"Lieutenant in Newton Area. Where I work."
"You say he's dirty. Dirty how?"
"He takes payoffs."
Gray snorted. "What cop doesn't?"
"I'm not talking about a free meal at the taco wagon. I'm talking about major funds changing hands."
"Whose funds?"
"The Gs'. They're a street gang"
"I know who they are. I keep my ear to the ground. San Pedro Street Gangstas. They run a serious posse, deal an ass-load of drugs. Right?"
Brand nodded. "Right."
"You're saying this lieutenant, this Wolper, is tight with the Gs?"
"Has been for a long time. They pay him off every couple weeks. But lately he's been taking more chances. Getting bigger payoffs, I think."
"Son of a bitch got greedy?"
"I think it's his ex. She's always after him for money. Wants to send their kid to a special school or something."
"Yeah, blame it on the girl. I hear you."
"Whatever she wants, Wolper's pretty tapped out. He's doing things to raise money that he wouldn't have done before."
Talking wasn't so hard now. He was breathing almost normally. The pain in his cheek and his ear had receded to a spreading numbness.
"And what do the homeboys buy for their hard-earned cash?" Gray asked.
"Protection. Wolper's the watch commander. If he knows something is about to go down on his shift, he can deploy patrol units to other parts of the territory. Try and clear out the area where the action will be, give the Gs a better chance to get in and out. After the incident is called in, he can work it so the response is slower than it has to be and a little less organized. Nothing obvious. Just enough to give the Gs an edge."
Gray was watching, nodding. Brand felt a prickle of hope. Maybe he could give this crazy bastard what he wanted. Maybe Gray would let him live.
It was funnya few minutes ago, he'd been thinking how much he hated his life, and now he wanted nothing more than to prolong it. Half-dead, disfiguredit didn't matter; he wanted to live.
"And there's other stuff," he added, trying to be helpful.
"Like?"
"Sometimes evidence goes missing from the storage rooms. A whole case has gotta be thrown out. Typical police bungling, everybody thinks. Wolper always shrugs it off. 'You can't spell slapdash without LAPD,' that's what he says."
He thought this was goodslipping in a little humorand he was alarmed when Gray's eyes narrowed. "Wait a sec. Was this the asshole that was with you at the arcade tonight?"
Brand sensed a new danger here. He wanted to lie, deny it, but he was sure Gray would see right through him, and then the lighter would come out again amp;
"That's right," Brand said. "That was him. He was escorting Cameron. If he hadn't been with her amp;"
But Gray wasn't listening anymore. He drew a gun from his waistband, yanked Brand into a sitting position. Brand looked at the gun, and the words This is it lit up in his mind like a neon sign.
"Slide over," Gray said. "I'm driving your car. Mine's got too much heat on her."
A reprieve. The psycho wasn't going to shoot him. Not yet.
Brand obeyed the order, risking a question as he slid into the passenger seat. "We going someplace?"
Gray tossed him a grin, and in that grin Brand saw a wildness, a ferocity that was almost inhuman. "Straight to the doc's office, Sargeburning rubber all the way."
Chapter Fifty
Wolper wheeled the swivel chair close to Robin and stared intently into her face. "You really can't move, can you? Not a muscle."
To test the statement, he reached out with one hand and touched her face. She felt herself flinch internally, but her body registered no reaction. He dragged a fingernail lightly along her cheek.
"Amazing," he said, his voice low.
She willed herself to move. Lift an arm, twitch a finger, anything. It seemed like such a simple thing, the contraction of a muscle in response to a mental command, but now the communications line between her higher cerebral functions and her body had been broken, and there was nothing simple about it.
She wasn't tied down, wasn't encumbered in any way. She was free to get out of the chair whenever she wished, if only she could get her limbs to respond. She couldn't. She was paralyzed by the electromagnetic frequencies inhibiting her motor functions.
She had designed the MBI program to minimize the risk of seizure by suppressing motor response. Now she was trapped by her own technology.
He kicked the swivel chair backward and stood up. "I've got to admit, Doctor, it makes things very convenient for me."
She noticed he'd stopped calling her by her first name. He had, in fact, been strangely reluctant to do so from the beginning. Perhaps he needed to depersonalize her, distance himself from his victim.
He got out of the chair and surveyed the room, taking a letter opener from her desk.
Cut my throat, he's going to cut my throat amp;
But he made no move toward her. He looked up at the ceiling, then climbed onto the sofa underneath the smoke detector. With the letter opener, he began to pry the detector loose.
She knew, then. She knew exactly what he was going to do. She remembered his talk about throwdown guns, untraceable because the serial number had been eradicated. If he'd had a gun like that, he would have used it on her. He didn'tnot with him, anyway. If he cut her throat or strangled her, he would get blood on himself or leave hair and fiber evidence.