The Administration Series (117 page)

He didn't seem to.

Once Jonny had tired himself out somewhat with fighting, Toreth hit him — not hard, but strategically. Then he let him drop, so that he landed heavily, sobbing for breath.

Toreth smiled at the sound. "Oh, we're only just getting started."

Jonny began swearing at him again, weakly. Toreth switched it off. It didn't matter, any more than it mattered when prisoners did it at work, except as a measure of how much progress he was making.

He gave himself five minutes. Long enough to do what he wanted to, not so long that someone was likely to come along and interrupt them. From here on in, the plan was simple — maximum pain and minimum damage. No marks at all, ideally.

As time went by and the swearing faded out into breathless whimpers, he had to expend less effort in keeping physical control, and so could devote more concentration to stretching the limits of non-bruising violence. Striking with impersonal efficiency, he found the old lessons coming back easily. Drugs and direct nerve induction were better tools, but the physical contact had a certain satisfaction.

Especially here. Especially with this cowardly fuck who'd hurt Sara. He felt his temper slipping, caught it, and carried on.

Finally, he checked his watch. Time up. He moved back, leaving Jonny crumpled on the floor by the wall, and gave him a few minutes to recover.

"Get up."

Unsurprisingly, there was no response, so Toreth pulled him to his feet and slammed him against the wall, then took a couple of steps back. Jonny stayed leaning on the wall, wiping tears of pain from his cheeks.

When the bastard was breathing more easily, Toreth said, "I want the ring."

He looked up, caught a breath. "What?"

"You heard me. You took a ring back from my friend. I want it."

Jonny shook his head, dazed and sullen. "It was — it was my great-grandmother's engagement ring."

As if it made any fucking difference. "She'd be proud of you. Get it." Toreth took a step towards him. "
Get it
."

"All
right
." A more pleasing edge of panic. "It's in there."

"Well, go on."

Jonny tried to stand up straighter and stopped, still leaning heavily against the wall. "I can't," he whined. "Please. It's on the dressing table."

Toreth weighed the situation up, deciding not to take the risk. If he left Jonny alone, he'd take the chance to call for help if he could. Rich corporate kids were trained what to do in situations like this — he'd even trained a few himself.

He grabbed Jonny's arm, and hauled him upright despite his anguished protest. "My heart bleeds. Move."

Once in the bedroom, the box was easy to spot. Toreth opened it and checked the contents, keeping one eye on the other man. Empty. He'd been half expecting that.

"One last fucking chance, or I take the rest of the debt out of you."

Jonny hesitated for a couple of seconds, some of his former manner creeping back already and sorely testing Toreth's resolve over his time limit.

"It's in the drawer," he said reluctantly.

Remembering his training, obviously: cooperate and keep calm. Pity. "Then you'd better open it slowly and not do anything I don't like the look of. No, don't put your hand inside. Good. Now step away. Sit down on the bed."

There was only one likely box, and Toreth took it and checked the contents. Finally. He closed the drawer.

"I'm leaving, now." It was an anticlimax, unexpectedly dissatisfying, because Jonny was still sitting, watching him with a competing mixture of fear and hatred. Not unconscious and bleeding. He wasn't going to come round alone in a dark flat and have to crawl across the floor to call for help because some pathetic, obsessive, jealous —

Stick to the plan, he told himself firmly.

"You're thinking about the comm. Before you call anyone, you might want to see if there's any significant evidence that I laid a finger on you. And then you might also want to think what you'll say about
why
I was here. Talk, and what you did to my friend comes out, too. Even at Justice we'll have to do something about her complaint then."

That should have been it but, as he started to walk away, Jonny struggled to his feet, took a couple of steps across the room towards him, and found his tongue again. "Don't think you're going to get away with this."

Toreth stopped dead, turned back slowly. "What the hell did you say?" he asked quietly.

"You won't get away with it. Don't you know who my father is?" All anger now, and barely shaken arrogance. "I'm going to have you crucified. You and your stupid whore. She was
mine
and — "

Rage and reflexes took over. Seven steps to close the distance, a couple of seconds to brush his resistance aside, and then Toreth had him down on the bed, knee on his chest and left hand around his throat.

He had a moment of clarity to savour the utter shock in Jonny's eyes, although it was only a moment. Then plans and time frames and subtlety all flashed over into white-hot fury, and he hit Jonny and kept on hitting. Not with a great deal of strategy this time, but with significantly more enjoyment. The crunch of knuckles against flesh and bone jarred through him, hot as fucking, and even the dimly felt pain in his knuckles only fed back into the rage. It wasn't until he finally registered that all resistance to his assault had ceased that the haze cleared and he could make himself stop.

Panting, he assessed the results. Jonny lay on the bed, barely conscious and bleeding enough to satisfy any comparisons, a halo of blood spatters around his head speckling the pale duvet. So much for the 'no marks' resolution, but the injuries seemed to be mostly cosmetic. That was something, at least.

Fuck.

Fuck Jonny for being so stupid, and fuck himself for losing control. He knew better and he'd been trained better. He took a few deep breaths. Damage limitation was needed, and quickly, or he would be seriously screwed. Stay in charge; make it look planned.

Jonny moaned and coughed, saving Toreth the trouble of slapping him back to full consciousness. He waited until his eyes opened and focused on him. Then he dug his fingers into Jonny's throat again and the man gulped desperately for air, gagging on the blood trickling into his throat from his broken nose.

Toreth leaned down and put every ounce of menace he could summon into his voice.

"Listen to me very,
very
carefully. If you tell
anyone
what happened here, I'll fucking kill you. You can run and hide wherever the hell you like; it won't make any fucking difference. Say one word, and I'll know about it. And then I'll find you." He shook Jonny for emphasis. "
This
was just a taster. One word, to anyone, and by the time I'm finished with you, you'll be begging me to let you die. Is that one hundred fucking percent clear? Well?
Well
?"

Deeply satisfying as the expression of absolute terror was, Toreth realised that if he wanted an answer he would have to loosen his hold enough to let Jonny speak.

"Yes," he croaked.

"Good. You'll keep your mouth shut, and you'll stay the fuck away from my friend. If you even fucking
look
at her, I'll be back. She's nothing to do with you. You don't own her. You never did.
Understand
?"

Without his noticing, his grip had tightened again. Jonny nodded wordlessly, struggling for breath.

"Are you sure?" Toreth forced his fingers to relax. "You don't look very sure to me. I'd hate you to forget this in the morning."

"No . . . no. Yes. I'm sure. Please."

The little shit was crying properly now, which went a tiny way towards making up for having to watch Sara do the same thing at the hospital. Toreth held him down for a while longer, as he snivelled and choked out pleas and promises. A shame Sara wasn't here to watch. Finally, he let go and stood up.

"Anything else you wanted to say before I go?"

Jonny shook his head minutely, frozen in place on the bed. Toreth knew the look well: not daring to believe it could really be over, that he might live.

"Good plan." He paused in the doorway, checked the ring was still in his pocket, and smiled with no humour whatsoever. "Don't forget, now."

He let himself out of the house without hearing any movement from the bedroom, and walked out of the development without meeting anyone. Still miraculously unobserved, he made it back to where he'd left his clothes and changed. The gloves were ruined, and he'd have to get the uniform cleaned before he returned it.

Standing in the pleasantly cool night air, he considered what to do next. It had been a stupid lapse of self-control but, despite fucking up his original plan, he felt reasonably sure that Jonny wouldn't report this to Justice, or anyone else who mattered. There was more than an outside chance, though, that word of the too-visible damage would get back to his father anyway.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about that now. Time enough to worry when, or if, it happened.

Even though it was a long way to his flat, he wouldn't risk catching a taxi from near here, not now. Warrick's place was much closer. His right hand had begun to hurt like fucking hell, so he picked up his bag left-handed and started across the campus.

Warrick changed his dinner plans and casseroled something that would keep in the oven until needed. Then he filled an hour or so creating the alibi which Toreth had obliquely asked him for, making up edits for the building entrance and flat surveillance records, which would prove to the absolute satisfaction of anyone who might be curious that Toreth had been there all evening. Once prepared, they would only take a few minutes to finish and install in the building's security system.

After that, he spent ten minutes on unnecessary tidying around the flat, until he began to annoy himself and instead went back into the office to do some work. That was the wonderful thing about coding; it could take his mind off anything. It absorbed him sufficiently that he didn't really feel the time pass. Even so, he hit the button to open the door to the building before Toreth had time to take his finger off the comm.

He let Toreth into the flat and closed the door without comment.

"Have you got any ice?" Toreth asked. He didn't look in a significantly better frame of mind than he had at SimTech.

"What do you — " Then Warrick caught sight of his hand. No cuts he could see, but badly bruised and starting to swell. "Come into the kitchen."

Toreth helped himself to a drink while Warrick crushed ice cubes and wrapped them in a plastic bag. Then he handed the ice pack over and dropped a couple of whole cubes into Toreth's drink.

"Are you hungry?" He tried to sound unconcerned, keeping his impatience to know what had happened out of his voice.

"No." Toreth pressed the ice onto his hand and hissed through his teeth. "Fuck, that smarts."

"Would you like painkillers to go with your alcohol?"

"Yes."

"I'll see what I've got."

All he had was standard over-the-counter tablets, but Toreth accepted them and professed gratitude. Warrick sat in silence and watched him drinking and slowly unwinding from whatever it was that he'd done. In an abstract sense, he was aware that seeing Toreth like this should probably scare him, or at least worry him. Dilly would've had fifteen kinds of fits. He wasn't frightened, though, and all the worry he had was for the man in front of him. He must remember to find out the times for the security tape.

Eventually, Toreth spoke, startling him. "I trashed your gloves. The ones you gave me for the New Year before last. Sorry."

"It doesn't matter." Doing what to whom? "It'll give me something to buy for your birthday. You're a hard man to choose presents for."

Toreth didn't smile. "I don't think I said thanks for the information."

"Any time."

Toreth nodded. Then after a short silence he cleared his throat and said, "Warrick?"

"Mm?"

He swirled the watery remains of his drink and then drained the glass. "Warrick, I wouldn't . . . that is, I'd never . . . "

Warrick couldn't remember ever hearing him sound so uncertain. "You'd never what?" he prompted after a while.

"I — " Toreth shook his head. "Nothing. It's not important." Putting down his glass, he looked across the table, focusing on him at last. "Did you say something about food?"

Warrick smiled, relieved. "Yes, I did."

He'd ask about it later. Or tomorrow. Or maybe not at all.

Sara was trying to eat a breakfast of unappetising hospital porridge when Toreth called in to see her on his way in to work. She hadn't slept very well, not entirely because of the bruises, and she'd been hoping he'd come.

"You look much better," he said, closing the door behind him.

"Liar." She noticed he had an elastic bandage covering his right hand.

He followed her gaze. "Sprained it at the gym." Sitting down by the bed, he offered her a small box. "Souvenir."

She took it, opened it, and when she saw what was inside she dropped the box on the bed as if it had burned her. The ring fell out and Toreth caught it as it slid towards the floor.

"I don't want it," she said, sickness tightening her throat again.

"Then smash it. Or throw it down a drain. Or sell it and go on holiday. Up to you." He held it out again, and she took it reluctantly.

"I think I'm going off antique jewellery," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "New only, from now on." She turned the ring over in her hand. "He gave it to Daedra's sister as well, you know. She told me when she came round yesterday after work. She said you, er, hadn't spoken to her."

"She wasn't very helpful," he agreed.

"Mmm. He must have been royally pissed off when he lost it."

"Royally," he said with great satisfaction.

It probably wasn't a good idea to talk about it too much, here, but she had to ask. "Was he . . . sorry?"