“It’s not for personal gain,” I argued.
He raised his brow. “You don’t want the fame of having the scoop on the club? Don’t want to be the next Hunter S. Thompson?”
I laughed. “No. It’s safe to say that I don’t want to be known. A good journalist exists only in the footnotes.”
“So I’m to believe that your motives are unselfish? You believe you’re doing the right thing, exposing criminals?”
“Everyone’s a criminal. And there’s no such thing as the right thing, so I don’t expect you to believe either.”
The corner of Hansen’s mouth turned up ever so slightly. “You’re going to be difficult.”
My mouth did not move, I wondered if I’d ever smile again, if I’d have enough time to heal to a point where I was capable of smiling. “I don’t have to be. Despite what the past has communicated, I am true to my word. I don’t make a habit of becoming a witness. I only bear witness. Silently.”
It was as close as I was going to come to pleading for my life. With logic. Because if someone like Hansen had decided to kill me, he wouldn’t respond to pleading. He was likely hardened to it. Logic was the only way.
It might’ve been wishful thinking, but I thought I saw something in Hansen. A precursor to an agreement.
But Liam spoke before his president could grant me a pardon.
“We can’t let you go, you understand that, right?”
I gritted my teeth, finally turning my head to regard him. I did my best to empty my expression and hide the reaction to seeing his scarred but beautifully alive face. “I understand that you can let me go, but your chosen lifestyle means you won’t,” I said flatly.
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were a journalist?” he asked instead of treating my words with a response.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you didn’t die in the desert alone?” I screamed, unable to hold onto my composure.
Anger I hadn’t let myself feel bubbled up like lava in my throat, suddenly I itched to sink my nails into the skin of Liam’s face that wasn’t marked and leave scars of my own.
Hansen jerked back, blinking rapidly, as close to a dramatic reaction as he could have. “What the fuck is she talkin’ about, bro?”
Liam looked to his president.
“Yes, Jagger, do clue Hansen in on what the fuck I’m talking about,” I said, voice flat.
Liam glared at me, then to Hansen, opened his mouth. Shut it again. There was a cold fury in his features, but there was something else. Guilt. He was saturated with it.
I still couldn’t bring myself to care.
Maybe I would’ve if I didn’t see his mother collapse under the weight of the sorrow at his funeral. Watched his father retreat further into himself with the loss of his only son, until he spoke sparingly and went gray at forty-three.
If I hadn’t watched his sister develop an alcohol habit that gave her a drunk driving conviction at sixteen because she didn’t know how to stomach her pain, so she swallowed cheap vodka instead.
If I hadn’t lived with visceral agony every single day up until now.
Then I might’ve felt sorry for the boy I loved more than life in such visible pain.
But this wasn’t that boy.
“The cat seems to have snatched Jagger’s tongue,” I said, voice sharp. “No matter. Talking about death comes easy to me, since it’s my job.” I leaned back in my chair with a faux laziness. “You see, the man you know as Jagger, your brother, is also someone I knew as Liam,” I said after a beat. “Who has a sister named Antonia, a mother named Mary and a father named Kent.”
Liam flinched as I said their names, as if he hadn’t heard them in a long time, as if the names were bullets.
I kept speaking. “He went to school in Castle Springs, Alabama, and played football for fun.”
Hansen raised his brow ever so slightly. Maybe because Jagger didn’t have a hint of a Southern accent, though neither did I, press training ensured that I evened out my accent as much as I could.
“He could’ve gotten a full ride on that talent alone but he didn’t want one,” I continued, remembering all those fat envelopes he hadn’t seemed excited about. “He also could’ve walked into any Ivy League college in the country with a scholarship, he was that smart. But he didn’t. Instead he enlisted. Became an infantryman in the army. Served exactly sixteen months thirteen days. Then two soldiers came to Mary and Kent’s door, with news their son wasn’t coming home. I heard Mary scream from my house at the end of the street.”
I heard the scream in my mind, tearing at it. I hadn’t known humans could scream like that. Now I knew. I’d heard a variation of it all over the world. Not from the dying. But from who the dead left behind.