Aria and I walked her out and waved as she drove off.
The entire time I ran through my nightly routine, my brain wouldn’t shut off. While bathing Aria, I thought about why a guy who worked with computers didn’t have one in his house. He’d told me he worked with networks, getting them set up and linked together, yet his house was void of one—aside from the internet that only his phone and the TVs were connected to.
While putting her to bed, I dissected his words about his family. He hadn’t told me much, so there weren’t many things to pick apart, but what he had told me didn’t make sense. His grandfather had passed away, but as far as I knew, his parents were still alive. So it baffled me why this house wouldn’t have gone to one of them, or even an aunt or uncle. It was paid for, free and clear, in his name for ten or so years, yet he’d only recently moved in. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t lived here with his wife.
With my head on my pillow, the lights turned off, nothing but the moon highlighting my room, I began to question it all. Everything about it from the very beginning up until this moment, disbelieving every second. And by the time I woke up the next day, I had myself convinced that it was all a scam, that I’d put my daughter in a situation that would scar her for life.
I needed to keep her safe.
I had to leave.
10
Cash
From the moment I’d touched down on Monday, nothing went the way I’d planned. I was informed during a briefing in the car from the landing strip to the steel box that my job had been completed. Apparently, early Sunday morning, my mark had squealed, sang like a motherfucking canary. I didn’t believe it. There was no way he’d given everything up in less than forty-eight hours. Not before I’d gotten to him. Rarely did we get information that soon. So, hearing this one folded while in the presence of the babysitters didn’t sit well with me.
“I’m telling you, Cash, we didn’t do anything more than we always do on our shifts. He sat in the hotbox”—Kryder had hitched his thumb over his shoulder to the room made of one-way mirrored glass—“with nothing but a saline drip. Same as always.”
“Why didn’t anyone wait for me to get here? Twenty-four hours…that’s all it was.”
Kryder just shook his head with his hands propped on his hips while I’d stood there, feeling slighted by my own team. “Listen, man, I don’t know what to tell ya. He was ready to talk, and we were there to listen.”
“You’re not a damn psychologist.”
“Quit being a baby, Nicholson.” He’d smirked and slapped my arm. “You can take the next one.”
“Gee, thanks, fucker. Maybe if you’d quit being an ass-kisser, trying to butter Daddy up to make him love you as much as he loves me, I’d be able to do my job all the time.” It’d been a joke between us for years, although this time, I’d meant it a little more than usual.
“We all know who his favorite is…and it’s not you.” Then he’d patted me on the shoulder and headed out, his time in the field done until Friday.
They’d given me the transcripts, as well as the video footage that would be buried once this was over, and let me hide out in one of the control rooms to pore over it all. I’d spent all my time behind that desk, flipping through file after file, reading line by line, every single word of the entire interrogation.
By Tuesday afternoon, Rhett Toll, my direct supervisor, had sent me back to the safe house and ordered me to take a shower and log some sleep before coming back. It wasn’t until then that I realized I hadn’t spoken to Jade since Sunday night. I’d sent her a text before crashing, only to see her in my dreams. I’d shrugged it off as lack of sleep, undue stress at work, and simply not talking to her like I had since the beginning. And when I’d stepped back into the steel box late Tuesday night, I made it my mission to get the answers I sought so I could go home and let Jade turn me back into a human.
Hearing his confession made me sick, physically. I’d seen blood, more blood than it would take to paint a town red. I’d witnessed death—both innocent and deserved. Not much got to me after nine years on the job. Except him.
But then I’d think of Jade and Aria.
One minute, those images would blend with the ones we had on the vegetable strapped to the chair in the hotbox, and it’d send me straight to the edge of insanity. But in the next minute, I’d close my eyes and picture Jade and Aria, and it calmed the beast within. It saved my soul for one more hour. One more day. The way Jade’s blue eyes shone in the sun like a beacon of light brought me peace. The way Aria would giggle so hard she couldn’t catch her breath, her hands slapping her knees with her tiny body hunched forward, afforded me comfort. Those were the things that kept me going, that slowed the need for revenge.
I wasn’t God. I never even claimed to be working for Him. I wasn’t part of some cult who believed they heard His voice call upon them to murder people. I was well aware of where my directives came from, and who had sent down the orders. I knew who hired me and who I answered to. None of which were God or Jesus. They weren’t Allah or Buddha, or any other god, for that matter. They were people, like me, who sacrificed their souls to save the innocent. And when it became my time to answer for my sins, I’d tell the guard at the pearly gates the same thing—I did what I felt I had to do in the war on evil.
If I were wrong, then I’d have to answer for it.
But if I were right…then I’d burn in hell with a clear conscience.
I wore the image of the archangel Michael across my back as a reminder that even good had to sometimes wield a sword.
“Everything check out?” Rhett leaned against the doorframe into the control room.
“Yeah.” I wiped my eyes, suddenly feeling the exhaustion setting in. I picked up my phone—which was nothing more than a paperweight that kept the time while inside the steel box—and noticed it was nine o’clock on Wednesday night. I’d been at it for close to twenty hours since my last nap and shower.
“I told ya they handled it. You coulda been home most of this week takin’ it easy. But no.” He dragged out the word, shaking his head. “You had to be a stubborn ox and hold up my cleanup crew.”
“I just can’t wrap my head around him breaking like a twig in a summer breeze. How can we be sure he didn’t play us and give us a bunch of shit, feed us nothing but fabricated lies that would lead us away from the scent trail? That’s what gets to me the most.”