Under the Knife(92)

Sebastian waved his hands in supplicating loops as his appraising eyes roamed up and down the kid’s lanky frame, then to a gap in the nearby stand of bushes. Yes. That would do nicely.

Sebastian considered using the small device in a holster, strapped for ease of access to the small of his back, hidden underneath his untucked T-shirt. A nifty bit of engineering: Finney had discreetly procured it from one of his business interests—a company quietly developing the next generation in law-enforcement products. Urban pacification, that kind of shit. They called it a conduction gun. Like a Taser, it fired electrodes that delivered shocks. Except it was smaller than a Taser and able to render its victim both helpless and temporarily unconscious.

Sebastian, however, rejected it as an option. This road was sparsely traveled, but they were out in the open, and why chance some random passerby spotting him? Besides, Finney wanted to teach the kid a lesson, and the conduction gun was ill suited for that. He needed it to be more personal.

Two feet apart now. Sebastian caught a whiff of weed from the kid.

The kid’s eyes narrowed, perhaps sensing something amiss, and he leaned forward, shifting his weight toward Sebastian.

But it was already too late.

“Look, young man—”

It was easy.

Too easy.

So easy it gave Sebastian a sick feeling in his stomach.

Add beating up stoned teenagers to the lengthening list of things for which he’d never signed up.

It was all over in seconds.

Sebastian moved like a ghost. He dropped toward the ground as his right foot swept out toward the kid’s legs. At the last possible moment, before striking the kid’s exposed right knee, he coaxed—begged—his leg to swing a hair too wide, to harmlessly redirect the force of what would otherwise have been a crippling, bone-splintering blow that would have shattered the kid’s leg and likely ended his skateboarding and surfing days forever.

A few blurred movements later, the kid was lying on the ground in the bushes, Sebastian’s knee planted on his chest, the selfie stick in Sebastian’s hand. The kid’s board lay on the ground next to them, wheels up. The wheels spun for a few plaintive revolutions and stopped.

The kid stared up into Sebastian’s face. His mouth was open in a perfect O of surprise.

Then the pain hit.

His expression changed. His mouth remained a perfect O, but the kid’s eyebrows shifted. That’s what did it, all that was needed to transform the O of surprise (eyebrows up and separated) to an O of pain (eyebrows down and drawn together).

The kid clutched his right leg and started to moan.

“My knee. You broke my fucking knee, man! You broke it!”

The kid had gone down awkwardly.

Sebastian examined the kid’s leg while keeping his knee on the kid’s chest. He ran his hands along the leg’s length and across the knee. The kid moaned a little louder when he squeezed the patella, the circular bone at the front of the knee joint, but otherwise checked out just fine. Everything was still connected and in the right place.

Sebastian bent over him, his nose inches from the kid’s face.

“No, I didn’t,” he growled. “Your leg’s not broken, junior. But your knee’s sprained. You’re going to have some swelling, and a nasty bruise. Might even be on crutches for a few days. But you’ll be just fine. Too bad for the rest of us.”

The kid started to cry.

Typical bully bullshit.

What a pussy.

“Listen, junior.” Sebastian slipped on his best badass-motherfucker glower and pushed his face way down into the kid’s. Got right up into it with him.

The kid’s tears were replaced with an expression of terror.

“That leg is nothing compared to what I could do to you for real,” Sebastian hissed. “I tried to be nice, but you had to show me some attitude. Fine. That dude in the car with me back there?”

The kid’s eyes, wide as dinner plates, swiveled toward the road and back. He nodded.

“That’s right, junior. He’s an important dude. And you were disrespecting him. He wants me to hurt you. Really hurt you. Like, make sure you’re sipping-your-meals-through-a-fucking-straw-for-the-next-six-months kind of hurt you.”

The kid cringed and slid his jaw back and forth.

Sebastian almost laughed.

“But I’m not doing that today, junior. I could. And I will, if I ever catch you and those buddies of yours riding your boards around here again. I will personally disassemble you, piece by piece, if I so much as see you riding a fucking tricycle down this street. Do you get me, junior?”

“Yes,” the kid whispered.

“Good. Same goes with talking to anyone about our conversation. Don’t even think it, junior. Make up whatever story you like, as long as it doesn’t involve me, or this little chat we’re having right now.”

The kid started to sob.

Sebastian left him there, bawling, and stepped out from the bushes. He glanced up and down the still-deserted road and brushed the dirt from his clothes.

The kid’s buddies would come back for him, eventually, once they’d realized that their cameraman had dropped off the grid. The kid would make up some story: no doubt something involving an impressive skateboard maneuver gone awry.

On some level, he admitted to himself, an unexpectedly satisfying encounter. There was even a small chance he’d turned the kid’s attitude around. But it mostly made him uneasy: another potential loose end, another variable in the equation.