Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
LARKE
Neal hadn’t thought this all the way through.
I still had the knife.
And I couldn’t stand him.
But then I noticed the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the additional sweat on his brow.
A wild spark lit his eyes that didn’t scream dangerous or feral.
It reminded me of the first cruise my family and I took and the look on Wren’s face as the shore grew farther and farther away—fear and sickness fighting for dominance.
I frowned. “Are you being serious right now? Don’t tell me you’re claustrophobic.”
He stumbled backward down the small flight of steps, reaching for me, but he missed and had to brace himself against a wall.
“I’m not claustrophobic. Are you joking? Why would I be…” He looked around but then closed his eyes and tucked his chin against his chest. “I’m not claustrophobic.”
“With all this shit that’s been going on, you’re trying to tell me that tunnels might do you in? Why would you come down here in the first place if you can’t handle a dark, boxed-in, enclosure with no windows and little air?”
He swayed.
Then, he took a seat on the ground.
Usually, I wasn’t one to kick someone when they were otherwise compromised, but I wanted to swipe the toe of my shoe across that wobbling chin of his.
This man was the quintessential bearded dragon, expanding the tissue on his neck to appear larger when, in reality, he was nothing but a tiny and vulnerable reptile.
Are you helpless without your powers, Lord Neal?
I grabbed my flashlight, walked over, and crouched in front of him. “I was investigating you, you know.”
He raised his head. “Come on, Larke. I know what you and your little Class One ‘Destroyer’ were doing. Dez was too insubordinate not to keep an eye on.”
“Why didn’t you do anything about it, then?”
“Because he’s also unstable. With types like him and Ronan, you have to be careful. There’s steps you have to take to indoctrinate men who have the kind of training they do. If you can get them on your side, their loyalty is unwavering, but getting them on your side is the biggest hurdle.”
“It’s because they give their respect only to genuine people. Those who ‘put on’ are generally pushed to the outer edge of the circle. Or eliminated.”
“Dez told you all of this?”
“He didn’t have to.”
He grunted a response.
Inside the federal government, I’d worked with men who had similar backgrounds to Neal and Cerner, as well as Dez and Ronan, for years.
Dez and Ronan saw fake people as a liability.
They knew that men like Neal and Cerner’s “combat skills” or “military history” were almost always fluffed-up nonsense. Unfortunately, however, if the truth wasn’t sniffed out in time, it would reveal itself during the team’s most critical moments, ultimately putting everyone at risk.
Then, those small teams represented more than just the members. They represented loved ones and the countries those loved ones lived in. It was the ultimate “carrying the world on my shoulders,” and with that level of responsibility, bullshit and pretense need not apply.
“I don’t mean that I was investigating you now,” I clarified, and it took everything in me not to knock him over the head with the flashlight. “This was before all this mess happened. You were part of a list of public officials being investigated for treason.”
His eyes opened wide. “Treason? For taking some bribes?”
“From foreign interests.”
“I never took any bribes from foreign interests, honest. I never did anything that would have compromised national security. And, anyway, do you think I did all of that by myself? I wasn’t the only senator.
Then there were AUSAs, judges, and clerks.
With all of the underhandedness going on, I knew someone had to be investigating.
There was no way someone didn’t know what was going on. ”
“I did say a list, didn’t I?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Wait, so you tossed me in Sanitation based on the possibility that I was investigating you back then?”
“I didn’t toss you in Sanitation,” he insisted. “There are rules. You’re unmarried. You have no children. As a woman, that makes you a higher risk intake. And we were right.”
“Have you ever thought that I might not have been rebellious if you hadn’t tossed me in Sanitation?”
“Again, I didn’t toss you in Sanitation. Now, when I learned you were there…yes, I made things a little harder for you, but I stopped liking you long before all of this.”
I remained quiet.
There was no way he wasn’t itching to tell me why.
“Sit,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I stood.
Sighing, he slowly climbed to his feet.
“My father was a shit human being,” he began, leaning his shoulder against the cracked tunnel wall. “It wasn’t until I turned forty that I could admit that out loud. And he didn’t beat me. He barely ever laid a hand on me. He was just so fucking toxic.”
He dragged his hands through his hair, and I watched, in real time, as he grew more accepting of our suffocating surroundings.
My grip on the knife tightened.
“He had his demons with his father, my grandad, and I get that, but there were times this man would take cases of beer, a pack of smokes, and a prostitute into his room and stay holed up there for weeks. I don’t know how my mother managed to last until I was ten, but she left, and she didn’t take me with her. ”
I loathed this man.
But he didn’t deserve abandonment.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I offered.
“That, Larke,” he said. “That’s why I stopped liking you.”
“Compassion? Burn me. I’m a witch.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Because it’s stupid and makes no sense.”
He stared at me, his mouth working as if he was chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Just so you know, this isn’t the moment where I’m going to make some big reveal that I’ve secretly been in love with you the whole time.”
“Good.”
“But—”
“Eww.”
“Will you let me…” He made another path through his hair with his fingers.
“Look, I remember the exact day you joined the U.S. Attorney’s office.
I’d heard about you, heard about how good you were.
Then, when I met you, I thought you were a bit too…
how should I put this? Too pretty. Like the hair and the makeup and the suits. ”
“Too pretty to be qualified?”
“And to be as smart as you are.”
“Are you joking?”
“I wish I was, but I’m not.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I thought we were the same,” he continued. “Unlike many of our colleagues, I didn’t have family money or a family name to get by on. So, I used my looks—”
“But you’re not attractive.”
“—and my charm. Good lord, do you have zero filter?” The paths in his hair morphed into a fistful of strands and frustration. “In my circles, I’m above average.”
I shrugged. “To each their own, I guess.”
“And that was part of the problem,” he said, voice hardening.
“You’re smart, knowledgeable, passionate, and pretty.
You didn’t ‘get by.’ You worked for it, and it made me face some difficult shit, like how I was drowning.
How often I felt like I was in over my head.
I got really good at using politician-speak to avoid showing my cards, never answering questions directly, and talking in circles.
I’d built my life around always having an answer, even if it wasn’t an actual answer, and there you were, answering questions.
Knowing things. Never a hair out of place or a loose thread. Always poised.”
“I had no choice,” I hissed.
“Neither did I!”
“Yes, you did. You got to where you were as a subjectively handsome idiot who bullshitted his way through answers. Do you think anyone would take me seriously if I did the same? I was good at what I did, and I still had to listen to people whispering about whose dick I had to have sucked to get where I was.”
“But you made me face a truth I wasn’t ready to face,” he continued to argue.
“That I was a fake. My big words were empty. My knowledge? Rudimentary, at best. You were what I was pretending to be, and when you showed up, that became obvious. I started to admire you. I was attracted to you in a weird, respectful kind of way.”
“You think being attracted to a woman out of respect and not sex is weird?”
“You’re turning my words around.”
“Or, they make no sense. Maybe it’s not only your legal knowledge that’s ‘rudimentary.’ I think it could also be your command of the English language.”
I waited for him to lunge.
Unlike Dez, I’d never killed before, so I needed a reason, an excuse—an indisputable act of self-defense. Instead, he sighed again, his shoulders falling, making himself smaller.
“Let me get this straight.” I shined the light directly into his eyes, forcing him to take several steps backward. “You hated me because I put in the work to get where I was, and you…didn’t?”
“No, I admired your work ethic,” he clarified. “My feelings for you changed when you didn’t accept my charm. When you didn’t fold like I was used to people folding. It made me want to destroy you.”
“Because I might one day see through you.”
“I understand that now. I didn’t understand that then.”
“And yet, you claim you didn’t bring me here.”
“I didn’t. The drones were deployed to force people toward the trains. I didn’t know you were here until I saw the Sanitation roster, and you don’t have a common name. I knew it was you.”
“Why’d you want me to suffer in a place where suffering was already present?” I asked.
“Because it put you at the bottom of the bottom,” he said. “You were so low that you could never be more than me, in any regard.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, instead of therapy, you decided to kill people.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Your actions led to numerous deaths, whether through making medicine and adequate care hard to get or killing dissenters.”
“We have to ration medicine.”
“Antibiotics? You couldn’t spare a round of antibiotics to knock out a simple case of strep?”