Chapter 29
JUDAH
“Sit tight,” I said, pulling into a secluded lot at a trailhead. I put the truck in park and left it idling as I unbuckled. This would be quick, so I didn’t bother cutting the engine. I left Amelia in the cab in the trailhead parking lot and moseyed toward the start of the trail.
There was a dog poop receptacle a few yards in that was well shaded under the foliage.
Thanks to federal funding cuts to national parks, the rangers and staff were stretched thin.
Luckily for me, it meant the refuse bin was a premium spot for a dead drop.
No one would dig through dog shit to see what was at the bottom.
I lingered at the stand for a moment, making sure I was alone, before I lifted the lid to the bin and stuck my hand inside.
Thankfully, everyone who had used the bin had bagged up their shit—literally. I felt the thick plastic bag at the bottom of the bin and lifted it out.
I could have kissed whoever on Cole’s team had double-bagged the package. I discarded the outside layer in the bin and tucked the package under my arm for the walk back to the truck.
Amelia was watching intently from the front seat. Her shoulders dropped with relief when I emerged from the trees.
I hopped behind the wheel and handed her the package. She turned it carefully, like she was examining an ancient artifact. “So this is the super-secret package?” Amused eyes twinkled with curiosity. “Is it a bomb?”
“No, smartass,” I said with a chuckle as I pulled out of the lot and turned onto the road. “Aged IDs, train tickets, and bus tickets.”
“Aged IDs?”
“It means they’re fake but the forger added a digital history to the ID. It means you used your ID to purchase those tickets. It’ll show things like speeding tickets. Anything you’ve done in real life is attached to that license. If we get caught and someone runs your ID, it won’t look brand new.”
“It tells a story.”
“Exactly.”
Amelia smirked. “I’ve never had a speeding ticket.”
“Of course you haven’t,” I said as I pointed the truck up the mountain and draped my arm across the back of her seat. “Miss Goody Two-shoes.”
“You sound like Joel.”
“I bet you don’t kill spiders. You trap them and release them outside, don’t you?”
Amelia tried to hide her bashful smile by chewing on her lip. “They don’t deserve to die. I just don’t want them in my bedroom.”
“You’ve really never done anything bad, have you?”
She snickered. “I’ve done you.”
I cracked a grin. “Hell yeah, you have. I’m the worst part about you.”
It was meant as a joke, but Amelia didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.
“I don’t think you’re a bad man.”
“The news would beg to differ.”
“The news doesn’t know you.”
Amelia didn’t either.
Sure, she knew me better than anyone except Cole, but that was a different kind of knowledge. Cole had seen me at my worst. At my angriest. At my lowest. At the point where I hated myself the most.
Amelia had seen me at my softest. I liked the person she believed I was, but our time was running out.
Eventually, she’d realize I wasn’t soft.
I simply became whatever someone needed me to be.
I was no one and everyone at the same time.
I was soft for her because she needed someone gentle.
Someone to care for her the way she cared for everyone else.
When she left, she’d take the small piece of me that was still allowed to feel, and I’d continue my evolution into stone.
Still, I greedily stole her belief in me the way I had taken everything else she loved.
“Is Cole the only person you still talk to? You know? From the Navy?”
The regular mental debate about how much to share with her was quiet today, so I spoke. “There’s another guy. We don’t talk much. But sometimes. Maybe once a year.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why?”
Amelia lazily traced one of the tattoos on my forearm. “Because I think people should be called by their names. I think they should be remembered.”
“Is that why you went by your mom’s name the first night you showed up at the Four Horsemen?”
“Yeah.” A wistful smile painted her lips. “I like remembering her as Angela. Sometimes as my mom. But she was so much more than that. People are never just one thing.”
I took a turn at the downed tree and pressed a little harder on the gas to counter the rain-drenched ground working against the tires as we headed up the mountain. “Shane.” I cleared my throat. “We call him Hutch, though.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
I shifted my grip on the steering wheel. “It’s been a while.”
“Why’s that?”
I shrugged. “He’s got his own shit going on. A wife and a little girl. Made a good life for himself.” I cracked a smile. “You’d like his wife, Beth. She’s a math professor too. He flat-out refused to marry her until after she earned her doctorate so she’d be Dr. Hale instead of Dr. Hutchins.”
Amelia smiled wistfully out the window. “So she’d earn it under her own name and not his?”
I nodded.
“I love that. He sounds like a good man.” She nudged me with her elbow. “A lot like you.”
Frankly, Shane had been more fucked up after leaving the Teams than I had been, but he’d managed to fight his way out of the darkness. I chose to linger in the grayscale, content to live in the bleak haze of numbness.
“Was he in the same . . .” Amelia hesitated and flipped through her mental files to find the right term. “Platoon?”
I chuckled. “Team. And no. He and Cole were on the same team. Hutch medically retired and Cole joined my team.”
“Right. You told me that much.” She stared contemplatively out the window. “I thought the military had fancier terms for groups of people than ‘team.’”
Sweat from my palm slicked the steering wheel. “The SEALs keep it simple.”
Amelia’s eyebrows jumped to her forehead as her head whipped around. “SEALs like . . . like Navy SEALs?”
I tipped my chin in a singular nod.
Realization dawned on her. “That’s why it felt like you were a pawn in a war game.”
I nodded again. “I thought I had made it. Proved myself. Earned the title. The ranks. All the shit that came with making it into the Teams.” The sinking feeling in my gut that happened every time I thought about all I had seen and done was back, stabbing me over and over again. “I wasn’t cut out for it.”
“Why?”
“Because I cared too much.” The pitying sentiment I had been told time and time again by higher-ranking officers had never left the trenches of my mind.
“In an . . . existential way. The more missions we ran, the more I struggled to compartmentalize what we were doing. If it would actually make a difference in the grand scheme of things. We were puppets with someone else pulling the strings. That someone never had to grapple with injuries and nightmares and regret. They didn’t lose people.
They didn’t see the damage their orders caused.
Not like me and my teammates did. They were spoiled brats who huffed when they lost a toy but replaced it like nothing ever happened.
We weren’t fighting for freedom and the greater good.
We weren’t working to make the world a safer place.
We were just tools to carry out the whims of selfish monsters. ”
A heavy breath pushed past her lips. “Caring too much seems like it should be a good thing.” Her hand slid into mine, and she laced our fingers together. “But I can see how it would make the job hard.” She stroked the pad of her thumb over the back of my hand. “Is that why you don’t like guns?”
I nodded.
“Seems like not carrying a gun would make it hard to be a mobster.”
I forced a smirk. “Good thing I’m not a mobster.”
Thankfully, she didn’t push anymore. That’s one of the things I loved about Amelia. She didn’t just seek information to know it. She sought to truly understand it.
The rest of the trip back to the cabin was quiet, tense. Both of us felt the impending shift in the dynamic. The challenge that lay ahead. The risks. Though neither of us wanted to admit it, this plan could go very, very wrong.
We could get caught using fake IDs.
Someone could recognize us.
We could lose in Vegas.
Valentine could catch us—if he was ballsy enough to leave his territory.
Or worse.
Much, much worse.
While I went through the pattern of parking the truck beside the cabin and covering it with a tarp and leaves until it looked like it had been there a while, Amelia took the grocery bags inside.
I found her at the kitchen sink, studying the hair color boxes like she was preparing for a test. I moved the bedside table and slipped down into the cellar for the rest of the supplies I needed.
Amelia lifted an eyebrow when she spotted the clippers. “What are you doing with that?”
“Shaving my head.”
Her gasp nearly sucked all the oxygen from the room. “Absolutely not.”
I cracked a smile. “It’s just hair. It’ll grow back.”
She reached up and raked her fingers from the front of my scalp down to the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes and groaned as the skittering goosebumps eased some of the tension in my muscles.
“I like your hair,” she quietly admitted as she twined her arms around my neck and looped strands of my hair around her fingers.
I licked my lips as I studied the slope and curve of her mouth. “Will you buzz it for me? Please?”
Her hands moved from my neck to my temples. I leaned into her left palm and closed my eyes.
I was exhausted.
Years of running from myself turned to chasing purpose in all the wrong places. That turned into me working for Valentine, then running from him too.
But with her . . .
“You’re the most peace I’ve had in years,” I confessed. “I’m never able to sleep more than a little bit at a time. But you give me a place to rest.”
Amelia eased up onto her toes, held my head in her hands, and kissed me. “I’ll shave your head if you’ll sleep in the bed with me tonight.”