“A bit. I don’t think he has a job or anything around here yet. At least, not a job anyone knows about. But he’s already ruffled a few feathers.”
“How long has he been in town?” I asked.
“A couple months. Was renting a place closer to town until this past weekend when he moved next door. But people are talking.”.”
“People around here talk if you wear white after Labor Day for Christ sake.”
“Either way, the rumors aren’t good. He’s gruff and rather unfriendly. He cussed out old man Dillard the other day, apparently.”
“In his defense, we all want to cuss out old man Dillard,” I said.
“Beside the point.”
“No, exactly the point. Have you actually met this man? I mean, gone up and shaken his hand?”
“No, but I know—”
“Then you can’t judge him by the rumor mill. This town talks. It always does. And sometimes, it has a good reason to talk. But usually, it doesn’t. Just a bunch of bored old biddies with nothing better to do than make up some juicy stories to pass around the knitting circle,” I said.
“You still need that security system,” Nicole said.
“I’ll wait for that winning lottery ticket, and I’ll get one,” I said.
“Mommy, when’s the pizza gonna get here?”
I looked up and saw Lillian’s beautiful blue eyes staring back at me, full of her father’s spirit and calm.
I felt my heart leap against my chest as I smiled at her.
“Soon, booger. Soon.”
I watched a smile spread across her cheeks as a knock came at the door.
“Pizza delivery.”
“Just a second!” Nicole said.
“I can get dinner,” I said.
“Nope. You need to save up for that security system. I’ve got dinner tonight,” she said.
Nicole meant well.
She always did.
She always knew what was best for me.
I just hoped she wasn’t right about the mysterious man from out of town.
CHAPTER 2
GRAHAM
I sat bolt upright in bed, sweat pouring down my face.
Another fucking nightmare.
It was the same dreadful day that replayed like a broken record. Like a curse.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked at the clock on the bedside table.
Four in the damn morning.
I got up and walked to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes made me look much older than my thirty-eight years. I rose to my full height of six three and studied my reflection. My dark brown hair was tousled from sleep, and my deep blue eyes were haunted.
All I made time for these mornings was my therapy of hitting the weights hard to take out my frustrations. My efforts resulted in well-muscled arms and a sculpted chest that narrowed to a V at my waist. I scrubbed a hand over my beard and sighed deeply.
It was the third time I had the nightmare in one week. Over the past year-and-a-half, the nightmare played out in my dreams and woke me from a dead sleep.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to go back to bed, I climbed in the shower to wash the sweat and the haunted memories from my body and mind. The soap and water cascaded down my broad chest and thick thighs, and I scrubbed myself as if I could physically remove the memories.
It never worked.
Nothing worked.
I didn’t want it to work.
I coveted the pain.
The torment.
Pain was my way of seeking redemption. Redemption that I knew would never come.
I was living in my own personal hell, in the third town I’d moved to since that horrible night. I had to leave the place I’d once called home. It reeked of too many memories.
Too much guilt.
Too much innocence lost.
I walked to my kitchen to brew coffee, needing to kill time before Daniel would be awake in a few hours. He’d be up by five am his time. The Agency engrained that in him, just like it had in me.
Now, I was up before sunrise every damn day, but not because I had someplace to be. My mind was overwhelmed with memories that haunted me.
My little boy, Kason, had been sick that morning. He’d woken with a fever and his eyes crusted shut. I was pretty certain that he’d had pink eye, and my wife, Cary, had wanted to take him to the doctor to get checked out.
If I closed my eyes, I could still see the look of concern on her beautiful face. I could see the worry in her liquid brown eyes. I’d held her close to me and tried to tell her that everything would be fine.
Oh, how wrong I’d been. That was the last time I held her.
I remember sitting on the edge of my boy’s bed for a few moments, smoothing the dark blonde hair away from his flushed face. I bent down and kissed him before going to jump in the shower for work.
Little did I know when I left the house that morning, that it would be the last time I’d ever see them alive. If I’d only taken the day off to go to the doctor with them. If I’d only done any number of things differently that day, they’d still be alive.
I felt my heart begin to race, and I paced back and forth in my kitchen. I huffed a deep agonizing breath out into the air. It was happening again. A panic attack.
I needed to find something to do other than replay that nightmarish day in my mind or I was going to drive myself nuts.
Talking to Daniel would help. Daniel had become my closest friend through our years of field work at the Agency and he was the only one from my old life who I still communicated with. He’d been the only person who witnessed my downfall from start to present. Everyone else was locked out of my life for good.
It was better for them. Safer.
Daniel took care of most of the funeral arrangements.
A funeral I could hardly even remember.
I wanted to be left the hell alone.
Isolated from the world.
Bourbon tasted better than coffee, and the tears I should’ve been shedding came in the form of holes in my bedroom wall.
The police department in DC was filled with half-brained idiots. They called the shootings a simple home invasion and dropped the investigation after only a few weeks due to lack of evidence. It was a fucking joke.
The alarm system had been disabled, and the windows broken from the inside out. Nothing in the house was missing, and nothing was overturned as if someone was looking for something.
Home invasion was the cover-up. Something was off. And because I hadn’t seen it sooner, my wife and son paid the ultimate price. In the end, it was my fault. I should have seen it coming.
Fuck. I could have stopped it.
After months of drinking away my guilt, I put down the bourbon and packed up my shit, leaving my badge and my gun on my desk at the Agency. I didn’t even leave a resignation letter or speak a word to any of my co-workers who tried to voice their bullshit words of sympathy. I didn’t need anyone’s fucking pity.
I walked out on the CIA, never turning back. I changed my last name and altered my date of birth and took off for parts unknown. The agency would not be happy with my leaving, as I had not been properly debriefed.
I knew things they didn’t want anyone else to know and, leaving in such circumstances, they figured I might have gone rogue.
That in combination with my skills made me a threat. I could take on ten men at once and leave them all unconscious without breaking a fucking sweat.
Fuck them. Let them feel threatened.
Not one fucking case was opened to get to the root of my family’s killers. The Agency accepted the word of the damn police department. That told me something was wrong with the whole situation. The family of one of their highest-ranking agents was murdered in a home with the newest and best security system at the time, and they didn’t care to look farther into it? I hated everyone in that damn office for not taking it more seriously. We were trained to believe that nothing that happened around us was random or coincidental.
That left me to do the digging myself. I went over everything that had led up to that day in my head over and over. An operation had gone south not long before. Had someone I’d put away come at me for revenge? The endless unknowns were enough to keep me up most nights.
I wasn’t going to rest until I found out.