Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 032

The room was not what any of them had expected.

A pianist in a black tailcoat sat at a grand piano against the far wall, eyes half-closed, fingers moving across the keys with the unhurried ease of someone who had long since stopped thinking about the music. The melody drifted through the air, soft and incongruous, filling every corner of the room with something that almost felt civilized.

At the center of the space sat a card table the size of a billiard table, its surface covered in stacks of transparent chips and several fanned decks of cards. On one side of the table sat a young man with a sullen, heavy expression, the kind of face that looked like it had been set into a permanent scowl. Across from him sat a small, elderly man with kind eyes and a white beard, smiling with the warmth of someone's grandfather. Between them stood the dealer, a woman in a fitted evening gown, poised and striking, her expression professionally blank as she waited.

It looked, on the surface, like an ordinary card game.

It was not.

A few feet from the card table, a middle-aged man hung suspended from the ceiling by a rope of coarse hemp, his wrists bound above his head, his feet barely grazing the floor. His clothes were torn and bloodied. Two men in black suits stood on either side of him, each holding a baseball bat, working in a slow, methodical rhythm. Each swing landed with a dull, heavy sound. Blood had pooled on the floor beneath him. Because his mouth was stuffed with cloth, the man could only produce muffled, strangled groans with each blow.

Then, from just outside the door, a voice cut through.

"What do you think you're doing? We're here to deliver money. You want to explain to your boss why you're helping yourselves to his payment before he even sees it?"

The old man at the table stroked his beard and chuckled softly. "Sounds like your guests have arrived, Julian."

Julian — that was what the old man called the young man across from him — furrowed his brow slightly. He glanced at the dealer beside him. "That the friend of this Mark fellow? Let them in."

She nodded and relayed the instruction through the door.

A moment later, the door swung open, and Soren, Evan, and Hank walked in.

Julian took one look at the bag in Soren's hand and tapped the stack of chips beside him. "Put the money on the table, then take your man and go. And when you get back, tell this Mark that if he can't cover his debts, he shouldn't be borrowing money he has no way of repaying."

Soren looked at the man hanging from the rope. Beaten half beyond recognition, barely conscious, swaying slightly with each labored breath. That had to be Mark Dalton.

The three of them didn't move.

Julian's eyes narrowed. "Why are you just standing there?"

One of the suited men stepped forward immediately, reaching for the gear bag in Soren's hand.

He didn't get there in time.

Soren had already moved. In three unhurried steps he crossed to the card table and set the bag down directly on its surface.

The impact made a sharp, solid sound. Not the soft thud of bundled cash. Something harder. Something with edges.

Julian stared at the bag, then at Soren. "That's not... money."

"Are you the one running this place?" Soren asked, ignoring the question entirely.

"What does it matter whether I am or not?"

Julian rose slowly from his chair. The two men who had been beating Mark Dalton abandoned their work and moved to position themselves in front of him, bats still in hand.

"Doesn't matter much either way," Soren said. He reached for the zipper. "Because I didn't come here to deliver anything."

He pulled the bag open and reached inside. When his hand came back out, it was holding a fragmentation grenade.

The room went still.

Every person in it registered what they were looking at in the same half-second, and the reaction was immediate and visceral. The suited men stiffened. The pianist's fingers faltered on the keys and went silent. The dealer took a small, involuntary step back. Even the old man's gentle smile disappeared, replaced by something careful and unreadable as his eyes settled on Soren with new attention.

Soren did not pull the pin. He simply set the grenade down at the center of the card table, directly on top of the chips, and let it sit there.

The two suited men went for their weapons.

Two shots rang out, fast and clean, barely a breath between them.

Both men dropped their guns before they cleared the holster. The rounds had gone through the center of their right palms. They reeled back, one of them colliding with the edge of the table, both clutching their hands as blood ran freely between their fingers. The screams were short and sharp, more shock than anything else, but the smell of gunpowder hit the room instantly and the remaining guards froze where they stood.

Julian had already retreated behind the nearest bodyguard, his face drained of color.

"Friend." The old man shifted in his chair and spoke in an even, measured tone, as though commenting on the weather. "If you weren't here to pay, you could have simply walked away. There was no need for any of this."

"If I'd tried to walk away," Soren said, the Glock 17 still raised, "I wouldn't have made it out of this hotel."

He gestured with his free hand. Evan and Hank moved without hesitation, stepping to the bag and pulling out the remaining weapons. Evan took the AR-15 carbine. Hank took the Beretta 92F.

Neither of them had ever fired a weapon in a real situation. But they both knew enough: chamber a round, keep your finger near the trigger, and look like you mean it. Right now, that was sufficient.

Three people armed, one with a rifle. And a live fragmentation grenade sitting in the middle of the card table.

Anyone still thinking these three had come to pay a debt had revised that opinion.

Julian found his voice again from behind his bodyguard. "You think this ends here?" His tone had sharpened, the earlier composure replaced by something uglier. "A debt is a debt. That's the oldest law there is. Even if you walk out of this room today, you won't make it out of Bangkok."

"His debt is his own," Soren said flatly. "It has nothing to do with us. Keep Mark if you want. We're leaving."

Julian blinked. "You're not here to get him out?"

"No."

"Then what are you doing here?"

Hank spoke before Soren could. "To be precise, we know someone who knows Mark Dalton. That person sent us here to ask for his help with something. Given the situation we've walked into, it looks like Mark played both sides, and neither of us knew what we were walking into."

The moment those words landed, the man hanging from the rope began shaking his head violently, straining against the rope, producing a frantic series of muffled sounds from behind the cloth in his mouth.

Soren looked at him for a moment. "Take the gag out."

One of the suited men glanced at Julian, who gave a short, reluctant nod. The cloth was pulled free.

Mark gasped hard, pulling in air in ragged heaves. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse and unsteady, but his words came quickly.

"Don't listen to them. They set me up. They rigged the whole game from the start." He looked at Soren directly. "And you, you're Old Sergeant's people. Why would I set you up? Think about it. He told me you came through the Fringe Territories, that you were trying to get out with nothing. If you've got no money, what would I gain by dragging you into this? To get beaten alongside me? Does that make any sense?"

It was, Hank had to admit, a reasonable point. He looked at Soren.

Julian cut in before anyone could respond. "Set you up?" He let out a short, contemptuous laugh. "Did we force you to sit down at that table? Did we put a g*n to your head and make you borrow from us? You got in over your head and now you want to blame the house?"

"You—" Mark started.

"Say one more word about my casino's reputation," Julian said, his voice dropping low and cold, "and I will make a phone call you will deeply regret."

The threat was specific enough that Mark understood it immediately. The color left his face. He dropped his head and said nothing more.

Soren had heard enough to piece it together.

Mark Dalton was a gambler, and not a casual one. The hotel attendant had mentioned his annual spend without hesitation, which meant he was a known regular. At some point, someone at this casino had decided that a regular with money and connections was worth more as a target than a customer. They had set the table, run the game, and cleaned him out. Whether it was wounded pride or something else that pushed him over the edge, Mark had borrowed to keep playing. Then he had lost that too. With nothing left to offer as collateral, he had been detained.

The timeline tracked. That morning, when they had first arrived in Sunvale, Mark had still been reachable by phone, his voice normal, nothing off. After that call, all contact had come through text messages only. Somewhere between that conversation and the first message, Mark's phone had stopped being in Mark's hands.

Soren looked at the grenade on the table, then at Julian, then at the door.

He had what he needed to know.