Elliot
ELLIOT
It took the better part of two hours for to comb through everything Clay had brought him. By the time he finished, it felt like his head was going to explode. Clay hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there was a lot of information. The man had returned after about half an hour and been silent ever since.
When he was finished, he fell back against the couch and let out a slow, deep breath. Clay appeared, placing a tall glass full of clear liquid and ice in front of him. took it, hoping it contained alcohol and took a deep drink.
He coughed as fruit and bitterness hit his tongue. “Oh, what the hell is this?”
Clay smirked as he sat down in the chair. “Flavored vodka and tonic water.”
“God, people drink this? It’s like bitter strawberries.”
“I drink it. The bitterness keeps me from drinking too quickly.”
wrinkled his nose. “Better just to drink water if you don’t want to get drunk.”
“Sometimes, I want to get a nice buzz, but I can’t afford to get drunk. You never know.”
was familiar with the sense of paranoia, just not when he was stateside. Sure, he still liked to put his back to a wall or face a doorway, but he at least let himself get drunk once in a while. The only times he was ever as paranoid and watchful as Clay seemed to be was when he was deployed.
“I guess you’re always ‘on,’ aren’t you?” asked, taking another sip.
Booze was booze, after all.
Clay gave him a humorless smile. “Sleep with one eye open. Also, walk around with eyes in the back of your head and trust nothing.”
“And no one?” asked.
“Trusting other people can be quite the hazard in this line of work,” Clay said.
knew better than to ask if that same thing applied to him. More than likely, Clay would answer honestly. wouldn’t have blamed him for not trusting him. Hell, it wasn’t as if had trusted Clay. After seeing everything in front of him, though, didn’t feel he had any other choice but to believe him.
“Kinda funny that you thought I needed to do my own research before you showed me this,” said, motioning toward Clay’s laptop.
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“That was quite the exhaustive packet of information you had there. So either that was true, or you and your...agency have a lot of free time to try and fake all that.”
Clay chuckled. “We certainly have money and resources, but it would have been an elaborate scheme for them to make all that up. A good chunk of the information we receive comes from the client.”
Which just begged even more questions. Who knew about Anthony’s business so much that they could get all this information? There were pictures galore of the temporary places where kidnapped people were brought and held. Anthony overseeing them, meeting with other people who had their own files filled with their infamous hand in the trafficking. There had been stolen expense reports, carefully monitoring Anthony’s whereabouts.
And the transcripts.
“I guess that’s how he’s been doing it when I was with him,” murmured.
“What’s that?”
shook his head. “If I ever wondered how Anthony was doing all this when I was around, some of these transcripts answer it.”
“Ah, yeah. I guess having secured contact with his...procurers and buyers certainly makes maintaining his image easier,” Clay said.
Worse than that, his public image and job positioned him perfectly to find more people to grab. His charities, plus those he helped, had contact with and information on plenty of people, most of whom were alone or wouldn’t be missed. wondered how many charities Anthony was involved in specifically dealt with the destitute and lonely.
“Selling people,” muttered, taking a bigger drink.
“I see it all the time,” Clay said softly.
So had . Plenty of groups during deployment weren’t afraid to buy and sell people for their own gain. At least those people were fanatics or just plain desperate. Anthony, though, there was no reason, no justification. Not even pure greed could cover the fact that he was using his position as a man of compassion to kidnap people and sell them off to be enslaved for life.
“You know, I thought I’d seen the worst of people and could pick them out if I was around them long enough. But not once did I pick up on the fact that he was doing something like this,” admitted, staring at his glass.
“No, I bet not. He’s had a lot of people fooled.”
“He should get an Oscar for his performance.”
“I’m not sure they have one for ‘terrible person who pretends to be good’ in a real-life category.”
“I suppose there would be a lot of candidates.”
Clay snorted. “Well, I suppose that’s what death row and people like me are for.”
And there was the elephant in the room. Now that couldn’t deny the truth of what Anthony was, what was he supposed to say to Clay? They had never discussed what would happen once made up his mind after seeing the information. Could he really just stand aside and let Clay kill Anthony? Then again, it wasn’t like he could turn in the information about Anthony either. There would be so many questions.
looked at him. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“Of my job?”
“Of the life. You can’t drink too much. You can’t trust anyone. You have to constantly deal with the worst of humanity and then kill them. Doesn’t it get exhausting? Don’t you find it all too much sometimes?”
Clay ran his fingers over his glass thoughtfully. “Did you? I can’t imagine you saw meadows and a bounty of human compassion overseas.”
shook his head. “No, but I wasn’t alone. I had my team with me, my brothers. And back here, I have my sister.”
“Ah, I think I heard you talking to her, Ana?”
smiled, drawing out his phone and pulling up a picture. “Yeah, that’s her. We met in the same foster home years ago. Even then, she wasn’t one to be told no. She decided we were going to be friends, and so we were. Now we think of each other as siblings.”
“Well, that explains the lack of family resemblance,” Clay said, frowning at the phone.
“What’s wrong?” asked.
Clay handed the phone back, shaking his head. “It’s just...I made that comment last night about my life being better for not having passed through the system. And yet, now I’m finding out you were one of those kids.”
smiled, tucking his phone away. “I was. For as long as I could remember, there was just me and my mom. Then she took us to go live with my grandfather. They died within a year of one another, and then I was in the system.”
Clay winced. “Sorry, shouldn’t have said that.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. Sometimes it was a shitty way to grow up. But there were good people too, and they’re the ones I try to remember. Plus, if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have met Ana, and as much as she likes to give me hell, I love her to pieces.”
“I could tell from the way you talked to her. Wasn’t sure what her relationship was when I heard you talk, but I could tell you were close.”
cocked his head. “You ever have anyone like that?”
“Me? Not really,” Clay said with a shake of his head.
“Nothing, no one? Not even before you got turned into a badass assassin?”
Clay laughed at that. The sound was unexpected but not unpleasant. “Badass? Heh, yeah, there was someone when I was really little.”
“Sibling?”
Clay shook his head. “My parents didn’t have any more kids, well, that I knew of. God knows my father could have kids all over the place, and I wouldn’t know. And before you ask, it wasn’t either of them. They were wastes of space who considered me an even bigger one. I was one of those kids who had the honor of never being forgiven for the sin of being born.”
“Oh,” was all could manage.
“But the woman across the hallway from us, she didn’t think so. We lived in the apartment across from her right up until the day my parents got killed,” Clay told him.
“Jesus, did you?—”
“See it?” Clay finished for him. “Yeah, I saw it. I guess they owed too much money or something. I would have thanked the three guys who did it, but they were too preoccupied with dragging me away to make up for my parent’s debt.”
’s eyes darted down to their laptops. “You were sold.”
Clay shrugged. “I was lucky. I was sold to the Agency. They prefer getting their operatives at a young age. Makes them easier to train.”
“Brainwash,” corrected with a frown.
Clay looked up, his gaze distant. “Yes, I suppose that’s a better definition. The better to train them and make them believe as you want them to. For me, I was just glad not to be in a cage anymore or afraid one of my parents would go into a rage and take their anger out on me. It wasn’t until I was made to hurt people for the first time that I understood who was in charge of me.”
Clay’s voice was becoming bitter as he spoke. chewed his bottom lip, wondering if this was the first time Clay had ever talked about his life to anyone. As selfish as it sounded, he preferred it when Clay mentioned the unnamed woman who had lived across from him.
“What about the woman you mentioned, the one across the hall?” asked.
A flicker of light returned to Clay’s eyes. “Mrs. Collins. She always insisted I call her Mrs. even though her husband had died before I knew her. Told me she would always be married to him, and a little thing like death wasn’t going to put a stop to that.”
couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds like a real romantic.”
Clay shook his head but didn’t try to hide his slight smile. “Oh, she was. She never talked about my parents, or about the shitty apartment building we lived in, or the shitty neighborhood we were all trapped in. Instead, she talked about other places and other people. Her family used to be pretty rich, and her husband hadn’t been too bad off either. I don’t know what led her to live alone in that apartment, but she’d seen a lot.”
Little by little, watched as the coolness around Clay melted away. He had glimpsed it in small doses before, but it was the first time thought he was getting to see the Clay behind the training, the worry, and the danger.
“She had all these pictures from all over the world. I couldn’t even tell you where she’d been, they were so numerous. She always told me the one thing she kept close to her heart from her travels was the people. Mrs. Collins was insistent that I always look for the people in the world who are good and want to do good.”
“She sounds like a lovely woman,” said.
Clay looked up, smiling sadly. “She was, she really was. She always said the solution to the world’s problems was love and compassion, not violence and anger. Boy, what would she say if she saw me now?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think you’re doing too bad,” said.
At that, Clay gave a derisive snort. “Right, killing people for money, I’m sure she’d be brimming with pride. God, I don’t even know what happened to her. I’ve always been too afraid to look.”
“Well, maybe she wouldn’t be happy, but I think she’d see what I’ve started to see.”
Clay watched him warily. “And what’s that?”
“Someone who’s doing the best with what he was given. You might not be the person you thought she’d want you to be, but you haven’t lost yourself totally. Considering what you went through, it’s kind of a miracle you give a shit at all.”
“You are not the first person to act as if there’s more there than there is,” Clay said, tone chilly.
winked. “Maybe I’m just being a little romantic myself, but yeah, I think there is. If you didn’t give a shit, you’d go after anyone just for the sake of getting the job done. But you don’t. You go after people who, legal technicalities aside, deserve a bad end. You also try not to let other people get caught in the crossfire, and you...well, you didn’t have to do everything you’ve done to help me.”
“I hardly consider shoving this information in your face as helping,” Clay said dryly.
“It is. Because I’d rather know the beast than continue plodding away behind it blindly, helping it,” told him, meaning every word.
Clay stared at him for almost a full minute before turning his gaze back down to his glass. “Once, I might have told you you were being delusional. Once, I might have even believed you were full of shit. But honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t some truth to it.”
“Maybe there’s a way to turn this around?”
Clay looked up again, frowning. “What? , I know you haven’t decided what to do with the information, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m here for a reason. That I’m after your boss for a reason.”
“And I get that, I do. But you’ve sat there and told me you’re not even sure what you’re doing is right anymore. Deserving to die or not, maybe not killing Anthony might be the first step to finding your way out of this life,” insisted.
Clay chuckled, shaking his head. “And what, just let Anthony go?”
sighed. “He can’t continue to get away with this. I know there’s a better way of going about this than blindly doing what you’ve always done. You just told me things have started being different for you.”
“For one reason or another,” Clay said cryptically, searching ’s face.
“Then why not continue? Why not continue this new path and make a new life for yourself?”
Clay sat back, gaze softening. “There’s only one way out of this life for people like me.”
hesitated. “And what’s that?”
“I die,” Clay said with a grim smile.