Chapter 17
I opened my eyes and felt Bridget’s weight on my chest. The room was windowless and dark, the only light was coming from a nightlight someone had plugged into an outlet by the door.
That someone had to be Layla, or Zane’s wife Ivy, or maybe Garrett’s wife Mellie.
None of the guys would think to do it and I knew damn well none of the holding rooms at the office had nightlights in them.
Zane wasn’t all that concerned with prisoner care on the rare occasion we needed to detain someone overnight.
Mostly the rooms were used when the guys were working and needed a place to crash for a few hours.
This was the third time I’d woken up.
The third time I stared into the dark, feeling like a monumental dick.
You sure as fuck don’t sound like my Theo right now.
Aaron Cardon.
I didn’t feel like Aaron anymore.
Aaron was young and na?ve. He viewed the world in black and white. Right and wrong. There hadn’t been shades of gray or varying degrees of wrong. He was self-righteous and narrow. He’d been out to save the world and arrogant enough to think he could.
I was no longer that man.
I knew better.
I’d seen firsthand why good men do bad things. Why men fight wars. Why women lie and scheme. I understood why mothers were compared to lionesses. I’d seen the lengths a woman would go to, to save her child.
There was no black and white out in the world.
There were no shades of gray.
There was pain and suffering and the result of that was red.
Man or woman.
Europe, Africa, or Asia.
The blood that leaked all looked the same.
Aaron Cardon was well and truly dead.
In his place Theo Jackson was born.
Bridget slid her hand from my stomach up to the left side of my chest and burrowed closer.
“You okay?” she sleepily asked.
No, I was not okay.
“I fucked up last night.”
“How’d you fuck up?” she mumbled.
“I was an asshole and—”
Bridget’s swift movement cut off the rest of my apology. I quickly moved my arm to give her room to slide her knee over my stomach and plant it on the mattress. And finally her hands smacking on my chest forced a grunt from my lungs.
“Listen to me,” she snapped. “You don’t like hearing me call myself a dumbass; well, I don’t like hearing you call yourself an asshole.
Which, you can read from that, I really don’t like hearing you say that you’re not worth the risk.
Is that why you keep waking up, because you think I’m mad about last night? ”
I felt at this juncture there was no point in lying to her since she already knew I’d been restless.
“Yeah, baby. I don’t like how I talked to you in the car.”
Bridget tilted her head to the side and asked, “How’d you talk to me?”
“I snapped at you when you called me Aaron.”
“So?”
So?
I’d been a dick after she’d had a hellacious day, which included her taking a life, and instead of taking care of her I’d made it worse.
“That shit wasn’t cool.”
“If you make a habit of it, I agree. You getting snippy with me when we’re talking about something that bothers you is understandable.
It was a shit day. I shouldn’t have started that conversation but I was never mad that you were short with me.
I was mad because it hurt to hear you think so little of yourself that you think Layla should’ve just let you die. ”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“Then what is it?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this now.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Because you think I’m so weak I can’t take you being snippy, or because it’s the middle of the night and we need to find a better time? Because if it’s the first I promise I can hack it; if it’s the last then we’ll wait until morning.”
I didn’t know what to say to that because actually ‘shouldn’t talk about it now’ actually meant not talk about it all, ever. But she wasn’t going to let me off the hook.
Fuck it .
“I’m grateful Layla was able to get Zane and Kevin to help find me. I’m grateful I’m alive. I’m grateful they’re alive. My guilt runs deeper than that. Easton, Cash, Jonas, and Smith gave up the same ten years I did. And one wrong move on my part washed those years down the toilet.”
“Okay, so I’m confused. In those ten years you never stopped drug deals, or weapons deals, or helped rid the world of scumbags in any way?”
“No, we did.”
“So how was it a waste?”
Logically, I knew it wasn’t. We’d done good work. We’d saved lives. And we’d all come home alive even if I was banged up and hanging on by a thread by the time the guys got there to rescue me.
“We weren’t done,” I lamely said.
“Weren’t done saving the world?”
My body stilled under Bridget.
Fuck, that was like a knife to my chest.
“Theo?” she gently called and slid her hands over my chest and shoulders to curl her hands around my neck. “I want to help you but I don’t know how. I don’t understand where all this guilt is coming from. I’ve spent days with you and Easton; I know for a fact he doesn’t hold a grudge.”
“I was a horrible CIA operative,” I admitted. “I had no business working for the agency.”
“Okay.”
“I joined because I wanted to make a difference. I want to save the world . I had no real understanding that to do my job effectively I had to live in a world where people were sacrificed like they were nothing. I had to make deals with people that were morally bankrupt—murderers, thieves, rapists—to get information on worse men, and those deals included payment and immunity. One of those payments I made was to the man who killed Kira’s brother.
It was years before, but I’d had dealings with him.
I knowingly made a deal with a man who had killed villages of people because I needed information on a terror group who were making a dirty bomb with plans to unleash it in Mumbai.
That bomb could’ve potentially killed hundreds, untold injuries, decimated buildings.
But there I was moving my chess pieces around the board, hating every minute of it.
I did my job, I played my part, but I was no longer committed to the cause because I no longer believed in it.
There was no saving the world. I was simply the arrogant jackass who thought that I could do better than those who were already working the job.
Turns out we need those men to make those plays, but I wasn’t the man for the job. ”
When I was done rambling, I tipped my head back and focused on the ceiling.
“I get it.”
She did?
How the hell did she get something I couldn’t understand? My guilt came in waves. There were months when I could think logically about the last ten years, then there were months when I walked around sick to my stomach.
“When you were making those deals with those men did you ever think to yourself if you just put a bullet in the man in front of you you’d rid the world of a, fill in the blank…murderer, terrorist, rapist?” Bridget questioned.
“Every. Single. Time.”
“Kira’s brother didn’t die because of you,” she whispered.
Without thinking my hands went to Bridget’s hips.
I needed her off of me.
I couldn’t breathe. I closed my eyes.
The room spun.
Guilt flooded in and my mind filled with visions of Finn Winters. A good brother, a good man whose beheading had been broadcasted for the world to see.
I could’ve stopped that. It would’ve meant Kira’s brother would still be here.
But he was dead because I’d followed orders.
“Theo?”
I had to get the fuck out of that room.
“Come back to me, honey.”
“Get off.”
“I will, as soon as you open your eyes.”
My eyes snapped open, Finn’s face disappeared, and the room came back into focus.
Bridget scrambled off of me but didn’t go far.
“That’s the last fucking time we talk about that.”
She came up on her knees, looked down at me, and pointed.
“You’re crazy if you think that’s gonna happen.”
What the fuck?
“You did not kill Kira’s brother. You didn’t cause his death. You saved lives.”
I did an ab roll, bringing me face-to-face with Bridget. “I got people killed.”
She had nothing to say to that so I continued.
“I fucked with people’s lives. I treated them like they were nothing.”
Still nothing from Bridget. She just stared.
“I could’ve saved Finn.”
“Like you could save the world?”
I jerked back and narrowed my eyes.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
“You said you were arrogant by thinking you could forecast the future and somehow know that a man you were making a deal with was years later going to kill Kira’s brother. That isn’t arrogance. That’s called having a God complex.”
What the fuck?
Unfortunately she went on, “Did this man tell you his plans? Did he tell you he was going to—”
“Cut Finn’s head off,” I supplied.
Bridget jerked back and wrapped her arms around her middle.
“Theo,” she murmured.
Fuck .
“Does Kira know?”
“That her brother’s—”
“No,” she cut me off. “That you feel responsible for Finn’s death.”
I clenched my jaw until it ached.
“She has no idea,” she wrongly guessed.
“Fuck yeah, she knows.”
“Obviously, she doesn’t blame you.”
“So? That means nothing.”
Kira not blaming me didn’t mean shit. I still played a part in her brother’s death.
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’m not going to change your mind—”
“So you’re giving up on me?” I scoffed.
Bridget scooted back, eased herself to her side, and adjusted the pillow under her head.
“Lie down, honey.”
When I didn’t move, she patted the bed next to her and repeated, “Lie down.”
I rolled back down.
A second later she hooked her pinkie with mine.
“I’m never giving up on you,” she vowed.
“I’m just smart enough to know when to retreat.
I’m also smart enough to know I’m not going to solve years’ worth of pent-up guilt in a night or a week or a month.
That’s going to take time to unravel. Bottom line is, we’ll untangle the rest inch by inch for however long that takes. ”
Bridget fell silent.
I didn’t fill the silence.