Free Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed by Shay Savage

my veins from running cold, nor did it stop me from forming fists out of my hands and creating mental images of pummeling Trent into the cold cement floor.
    He wasn’t the first to suggest it.  In fact, the CIA had spent a good week questioning me when I returned from the Middle East.  I answered their questions over and over ag ain, finally losing my shit altogether.  They had their suspicions about another Marine who had been rescued—one that had given up information and ultimately gave away my unit’s position—and wanted to pull me into it as well. Yes, Al Qaeda members tried to get me to turn.  They tried every fucking tactic they could dream up, but I never gave in.
    I never told them a damn thing.
    Loyalty.
    I closed my eyes, drew in a long, slow breath, and then looked back up at him.   Like the handshake, he was doing all of this on purpose—trying to goad me into reacting stupidly.  I wasn’t going to be that easy to break, though.  I’d dealt with a lot worse than this asshole.
    “Do you have anything you’d like to add to the list?” Trent asked as he smiled at me again and waved the paper around.  “There have been an extraordinary number of deaths from long-range weapons since you moved into the area.  Care to confess to any of them?”
    I continued to watch Trent.
    “Maybe he’d like a few names and pictures,” Johnson suggested.
    “I’d like to contact my lawyer,” I said.
    “Nah.”   Trent shook his head.  “Your lawyer can go fuck himself.  I don’t talk to lawyers.”
    Any thoughts I had that these guys might have been on the law-abiding side of the feds went out the window.   Rinaldo had dealt with the feds plenty of times, but I had always been kept out of sight.  He knew any information about me would be dangerous to him, so I was removed from any and all contact.  When they were in town, I went underground until they left.
    Johnson took some notes down on a pad of paper from the briefcase, and Trent leaned back in his chair and kept up the creepy smile.
    “I’ve spent way too much time getting this close to you, Arden,” he said.  “There’s no way I’d muddy the conversation with a lot of lawyer bullshit.  Your boss always did a good job of keeping you out of sight, but he can’t help you right now.  Your lawyer would just be in my way.  Besides, lawyers hate it when I rough up their clients.”
    He laughed, and Johnson cracked a smile.  Trent leaned forward and raised his eyebrows.
    “Sometimes I do it just for fun and not because you won’t answer my questions.  I just enjoy that shit.  Especially when it comes to trumped-up mafia shits who think they’re above and beyond any kind of reckoning, you know?  Well, of course you know; you enjoy a little brutality now and again, don’t you?”
    I knew it was coming.  I didn’t need to watch his han d curl into a fist or follow its movements to my jaw.  I couldn’t have moved enough to get out of the way, and with my hands restrained, I couldn’t defend myself, so I took it in silence.
    The blow cut the inside of my lip on my teeth, and I dragged my tongue across the wound as I looked back up at Trent and waited for another blow.  It came quickly, this time up close to my left eye.  My head jerked to the opposite side as a dull throbbing in my temple blurred my vision enough that the next blow to my jaw caught me off guard.
    I took a slow breath through my nose, gathered some of the blood in my mouth with my tongue, and spit it out onto the table right in front of Trent.  With narrowed eyes, I watched for his next move.
    He laughed.
    “I suppose you got used to that kind of shit, didn’t you?  All that time with a bunch of Jihad-happy insurgents smacking you around.  Probably took it up the ass, too, didn’t ya?”
    I stayed still though I couldn’t help the rapid flutter of my eyelids a t the remark.  If I had still been without sleep, I would have been dragged right back there to the