With my beer in my hands, I was about to take a swig when I saw her sterling silver eyes look back at me. I hadn’t seen her since before I left. She was safe. I knew that much. Yet, I didn’t understand why she was in this red folder. Turning her picture over, I saw more photos, each more harrowing than before and when I got to the last picture, I felt sick to my stomach. Reading the folder, my blood boiled, rage that I’d been cradling close erupted, filling every core of my body. Closing the folder, I picked it up and walked out of the dive bar to find the stranger leaning against a black SUV.
Shoving the folder against his chest, I growled, “What the fuck is this shit.”
“The truth of what happened. They didn’t tell you, did they?” He asked, shaking his head with a grin on his face. Fucker knew that the powers that be never told a low-level grunt like me anything. My job was to kill who they told me to. No questions asked and I was very good at my job.
“I took care of them personally. They are all dead.”
“Not all. You missed one.”
“The fuck I did,” I growled, staring him straight in his face. This mother fucker was really starting to piss me off.
“Ascari is still alive. He knows who you all are. Where the team is. Where she is. I need you to help me bring them in before he finds them all and kills them.”
“Fuck,” I roared. I thought I fucking took care of this shit years ago when I left that fucked up place in my rearview. I did too much, saw too much. I was done. Said as much when I punched my fucking commanding officer in the face before I pulled my weapon on him. I made myself perfectly clear. I was done. I wanted nothing to do with that shit again. But the fucking Marine Corps didn’t agree. They sent me home stateside and watched me like a fucking hawk until my contract was up.
Something about a classified liability.
Like I gave a shit.
When I got my walking papers, I never looked back. That was until Reaper asked me to do him a favor. I should have told that fucker no. That he could clean up his own mess. Yet, I said I would look into it. Just never thought it would actually find me. Which was disconcerting, to say the least. How this mother fucker knew where to find me bothered me. Since I left the hospital, I have stayed off the grid. Left no trace, yet here he was standing before, smug and proud of himself. Regardless of what he was asking, there was no fucking way I could go back there. I burned that bridge, even blew the fucking thing to smithereens.
Sighing, I looked at the man and said, “I can help you get the others, but she wants nothing to do with me. Besides, she’s in a place I can’t go.”
“Let me worry about her.”
Chuckling, I grinned, “You don’t know her like I do, asshole. She isn’t someone you fuck with. Ever.”
“I can handle her.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, looking around the dark parking lot and sighing. I already knew I was going to help. I never left a man behind. Fuck, I really hated my moral code. It was a fucking detriment. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”
“What you do best.”
Fuck me sideways and twice on Sunday.
I should have known the past never stayed dead.
It never did. Now it reared its ugly head and if I didn’t help, a lot of good people were going to die. I didn’t want to revisit my past sins, but they had come home to roost. With no other option, I walked over to my bike and climbed on.
This shit was never going to end.
I just prayed that when it was all finally over, they would bury me next to my wife.
Following the black SUV, I had no idea where I was going. I just needed a fucking direction and I could take care of the rest myself. When the SUV pulled into a nice subdivision some twenty minutes later, I pulled in next to the SUV and looked around.
It was a nice area. Cookie-cutter homes. People just living their lives as if they didn’t have a care in the world, not knowing the shit hole they really lived in.
If they knew the truth, they wouldn’t be so deliriously happy.
“Come on, Corporal.”
Getting off my bike, I followed him into the house. I had just closed the front door behind me when I heard him ask, “Want a cup of coffee?”
“No.”
“Suit yourself.”
The house was open. Just the way I liked it. I hated homes that were closed off. I wanted to see be able to see everything and anyone who would come at me. Call it a learned trait, but after my life, it was always nice to know who wanted to kill you.