Remote by Donn Cortez Read Free Book Online Page B

before replying.  Jack was the most focused man Nikki had ever met, utterly committed to his cause.  She knew he believed in what he did to the depths of his soul, that he had stared squarely at the consequences and accepted them without blinking.  She had more respect for him than any other person alive, but she wouldn’t hesitate to contradict him if she thought he needed it.  Jack was as lethal as a bullet, but even the most accurate gun sometimes needed to have its sights adjusted. 
    “Okay,” she said.  “But this starts to go south, we bolt.  Got it?”
    “Got it.”

C HAPTER S IX
     
    Malcolm Tanner locked both deadbolts behind him when he got home.  He lived in a high-security Portland high-rise, but he always felt better once those steel shafts slid into place with a solid double- thunk . 
    He hung his jacket up in the closet, undid the laces on the hiking boots and pulled them off.  He padded into the living room on thick wool socks, flipping on lights as he went. 
    The apartment was a luxury suite on the uppermost level, with five bedrooms, a Jacuzzi in the master, and a kitchen built mostly from black marble, stainless steel, and smoked glass.  He never used it, but it was impressive nonetheless. 
    The view was impressive, too, but he rarely bothered looking; the heavy drapes were closed now, as they usually were.  He sank down in the long, modular couch and grabbed the remote for the oversize flatscreen mounted on the wall, above the fireplace.  He turned it on, flipped to the correct channel, then leaned over and tapped a few keys on the open laptop on the coffee table. 
    The flatscreen gave him a security-cam’s view of the cell in the cabin.  Gordon “Goliath” Mason had collapsed to his knees, but the chains were arranged in such a way that he couldn’t hang himself, or bash his head against the floor or walls.  It was as close as he could currently come to resting, though sleep was out of his reach; both the methamphetamine coming in through the IV drip in his thigh and the constant barrage of music through the headphones made unconsciousness impossible.  Tanner had refilled the saline supply while he was there, so Mason was safe from dehydration for at least the next few days.
    What state Goliath’s mind would be in by then he really didn’t know.  But then, he didn’t really care, either.
    He switched to picture-in-picture, making Goliath a tiny figure in a little box in the corner of the screen.  That was satisfying, but it was even more satisfying to put on a Japanese game show at the same time—it diminished Goliath even further, turned his captivity into a joke. 
    Tanner had been fascinated by the genre known as batsu gemu —“penalty games”—for some time.  It wasn’t just the cruelty involved—though there was plenty of that—it was the element of degradation he really enjoyed.  The part he found the most fascinating was that the people willing to undergo ritual humiliation as well as pain weren’t even doing so out of a motivation for profit; the games were structured as the punishment for losing a bet.  And what did the winner receive?
    He got to see his rival suffer. 
    Social sadomasochism, Tanner thought.  Nothing gained but the thrill of gloating as your enemy is mocked and tormented in front of the whole country.  They should introduce this to Wall Street—half the guys I know would sign up in a flash, and half of those would probably hope they’d lose.
    He watched a row of men in kimonos as each in turn tried to recite a Japanese tongue twister.  When one failed, a weighted bar between his legs swung up and smacked him in the groin.  Tanner grinned, watching a groaning victim collapse to the ground.  It’d be better if there was some blood, but you couldn’t have everything.
     Not on television, anyway. 
    He got up, went to the bar and poured himself some Scotch.  It was a forty-year old single malt called Bruichladdich, one of only