I knew he didn’t have a gun, or he’d have already fired off rounds. And I wasn’t there to kill him, only to teach him a lesson, so I didn’t draw my pistol.

“What do you want?” he hollered.

Given that he kept announcing his location, he clearly had zero tactical training. He didn’t even know the basics a kid would learn playing Call of Duty. It took me less than thirty seconds to make visual contact.

He came at me swinging a pipe. He may have lacked common sense, but he had balls to try and take me on.

I knocked him out within a minute. Now I’d have to drag his heavy ass down multiple flights of stairs if I wanted to have that talk.

After taking a moment to catch my breath, I transmitted over comms, “He’s detained. You feel like helping me carry two hundred pounds of dead weight down some stairs?”

My teammate, who also happened to be my best friend and brother-in-law, responded, “Weren’t you just complaining the other day that you need to get in more cardio?”

“Sex,” I grunted. “I was talking about sex.” The only kind of cardio I enjoyed. “Now get your ass up here and help me.”

Hudson laughed. “Roger that.”

Back at our security office in Chelsea, I let Hudson kick things off with Daniel so I could shower and change. I had a date later, and with any luck, it’d end with my preferred type of cardio.

Once dressed and in the basement, I stepped inside the observation area. While Hudson did his thing in the interrogation room, I went to the bar cart and poured a drink.

I picked up the bag of pills Hudson must’ve found on Daniel. The white tablets had a green four-leaf clover stamped on them. I’d heard rumors that a new dealer was flooding the streets with E as underground raves began making a comeback. But mixing MDMA with fentanyl? That made it even worse.

Now that we knew about these pills, we couldn’t overlook there was a new guy in town, a bigger fish than Daniel, selling fentanyl-laced ecstasy tablets.

I tossed the bag in disgust, went to the window, and knocked, letting him know I was back. Palm to the glass, I sipped my whiskey while looking on.

Daniel was shirtless and barefoot, his wrists bound overhead, and his ankles tied by rope, feet touching the floor. I assumed Hudson had already given him hell for what he’d done to Blair. The stain at the front of his jeans suggested he’d pissed himself. Doubt he got his rocks off on being interrogated, but who the hell knew?

“Trust me when I say you’d rather talk to me than the man on the other side of the mirror.” Hudson stared at him through the eye holes of his balaclava ghost mask.