Excerpt: Touch

"Five bucks." Liam growled, and dug in his pocket for his wallet. "Five bucks says that I get him to talk in ten minutes." He slapped the bill against Marcus' chest and slammed the door shut behind him.
Liam took a breath and stepped in the room. He had to actually blink before he could speak. The man looked like so many of the men that had been in his bed. Marcus would be watching, Liam knew, and that was the only thing that got him pulling from the pool of anger he had in chest rather than the helpless-victum pit. He lifted his eyes and smiled. The man was watching him. Jake. Might as well be Dick. He sat down heavily, and slowly opened the folder.
"Hey, baby..." The man's voice dripped honey, and he leaned over to make some crass remark. "Wanna..." Nothing else came out because Liam's hand calmly covered his mouth.
The man's voice made Liam's skin crawl, he wanted to die, but he'd had to function through that feeling many times before. "Shhh, let me speak, honey."
The sickly sweet tone mada Marcus frown from the observation room. The man looked like he was going to laugh, but he nodded his head, so Liam let his hand drop.
"Ever been fishing?" Liam asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
"No, but..." Liam's finger rested on the man's lips again.
"Shhh, my turn to talk." He purred. "You take a worm, and shove it on a metal hook." Liam made the motion with a tiny smile. "Then you throw it in the water, and hope for a fish. If you get a big fish, great... but if you get a little fish, sometimes you rip it off the hook, and drop them bleeding back into the water. How often do you think those little fish survive? Their mouths all bloody, swimming around with so much bigger..." His fingers toyed with the man's sleeve coyly. "Meaner fish." Liam's eyes rose, and they pinned Jake with their innocent depths, asking silently if he would protect him from those kinds.
Jake gulped, and his eyes widened. "I... I don't know."
"Not often." Liam promised through pouting lips. "Sometimes I leave the fish on the line, you know? Put it back in the water on that hook. You get bigger fish with bigger bait."
"What do you want to know?" He asked quietly, looking around nerviously. "Just... don't throw me back."
Liam smiled winsomely. "Atta boy." He encouraged with a pat over the arm he had been playing with. Casually he dug out a pen and pad of paper from on top of a filing cabinet they had in the room. "Start with the names of everyone that worked there. Where we can find them."