14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” Kathleen blurted. “I wanted to say that you’re amazing.”
She sounded sincere to Finn’s ear. But he had never been good at reading people.
She was utterly confusing to him.
Only a handful of times before had Finn kidnapped someone as part of his work, ordinarily to lure in his actual target. Without exception, those he had taken had been hostile and angry.
Instead, she radiated a calmness that had lowered his guard. When she caught his hand like that, Finn had a fleeting memory of someone else he couldn’t quite remember doing the same. For that second, the memory was intensely present, and he felt sensations that were overwhelming and impossible for him to decipher.
Finn thought he recognized at least one of the feelings when he pulled his hand away from her: sorrow. He didn’t know why, though.
Until that moment, he wasn’t certain what to do with her. His mission was clear. And yet, for the first time since he began working for Command, he’d felt a bone-deep reluctance to follow orders.
Finn knew what happened to Agents who didn’t follow orders. They were sent to maintenance, and they came back as different people.
He didn’t want that to happen. He wanted to remember his name.
Finn couldn’t say exactly what had decided him. Maybe it was the way she was so surprised—happy?—that he knew the food she liked best. Maybe it was the way she ate, the picture of delighted relish, so different from how he ate.
The realization had come over him, solidifying into certainty. He wanted her to live, even if it meant the mission failed. It gave him a strange thrill. He had never before defied Command or his Handler. It felt freeing, a rush of unfamiliar emotion.
No judgments should ever be made from emotions, the Handler whispered. The shark does not feel fear, it only feels hunger and seeks to sate that feeling. To act purely from emotion is weakness.
The staged photographs of her death would appease the Handler, but sooner or later, they would discover the deception. The tracker implanted inside him would lead them right to him—and her—so he took it out to give him options.
Her concern for him was an oddity. The Handler often asked if Finn was defective, but he understood that was not what she meant when she offered to tend his hand.
It made him feel reckless. It made him want to share. The surprise in her eyes when she witnessed how fast he healed had evoked a warmth that spread through him.
And then those words. What are you?
Finn didn’t know how to answer that.
You are a tool of Special Operations Covert Command, the Handler had told him. What you do protects the United States of America from her enemies. Without you and the other Agents, chaos would descend. You serve Command and the United States.
Finn never had cause to doubt that… until now. “Who is Wilson?”
“You know him?” She leaned forward, her gaze sharpening.
He shook his head, turning so he could see her in his periphery. Her lips thinned, a tightness around her eyes. All he knew was there was no fear in her.
“Governor Wyatt Wilson,” Kathleen said. “He’s a dirty politician—as dirty as they come. I have reason to believe he had a rival killed so that he could secure himself a Senate seat in November. The ones that had him killed—they were the triad members that you…” She stopped, her eyes ticking to him for a second, then down to her bound hands, “The men you killed at the Imperial Silk Palace.”
Finn remembered the five targets. The way she had tried to shield the last. It made his muscles tense, not in readiness to fight, but for some other, unfamiliar reason.
His gaze narrowed. “Why did you try to save him?”
“Who?”
Finn didn’t know the target’s name, only the face. He struggled to articulate it.
Kathleen studied him, her gaze softening at whatever she saw. “Liang?” She paused. “The man with me under the table?”
Finn nodded, relieved she understood.
“He was my prime suspect. Without him, I can’t nail Wilson. I needed him alive.”
He had taken that opportunity from her. It didn’t feel right that he had. Before he could think too much about the implications of betraying Command or the Handler, he said, “Wilson was the one that sent me after you. My mission is to kill you.”
Kathleen stilled, absorbing that. The way she looked at him wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. He liked that she was looking at him, that she wasn’t afraid. “What do you plan to do?”
“The photos will delay things. But they will learn that I did not complete my mission. They will bring me in for maintenance. Then they will send me after you again.”
It was the most words he had said in what felt like years. Talking to her came naturally. The words didn’t stick in his throat as much. He didn’t have to worry that she would think him defective.
He could simply speak.
“Who are they?” she asked. “And what is… maintenance?”
“Command protects the homeland against all threats, foreign and domestic.” Those words were familiar. Drilled into his head throughout training, plastered on every wall in the dorms and training rooms in Cloverton House. Trying to describe maintenance was harder. “Sometimes, we become defective. We don’t operate at our full potential. Maintenance resets our training. Our memories are taken, but we operate at peak efficiency once more.”
Finn didn’t fear much, but he was sure some of his apprehension at the idea of going through it must have been apparent.
Kathleen’s lips parted, fighting to find the words. That was a feeling he knew intimately. It wasn’t fear in her gaze but something similar. “That’s… that’s barbaric. You can’t want that.”
It was true, he didn’t. But it wasn’t a thing he was allowed to admit. He wasn’t allowed to want—yet she spoke as if it were natural that he should. He tried to answer, but the words died in his throat. The threat of the Handler loomed over his shoulder.
Finn settled for shaking his head.
“Will you tell me your name?” she asked.
“I’m not allowed a name.”
Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “But you have one.”
He nodded.
“Will you tell me?”
“They call me the Hound.”
Her forehead creased. “But that’s not your name.”
He hadn’t spoken it aloud in years. It was an inviolate rule. What if this was a setup? He had been careful, but what if this place was bugged? He had to be sure.
Finn’s burner phone had a frequency scanner, something he had programmed himself, and he turned it on. He walked every inch of the bathroom, checking the light fixtures and fittings. He even checked inside the toilet tank.
The whole time, he could feel her watching him. She said nothing. The heat of her gaze reminded him of the feeling when she had taken his hand. It felt wrong to want it, but he did.
Once Finn completed his inspection, he took the battery and SIM card out of his phone, setting both on the edge of the sink. He opened his mouth. It felt like a burden. It was like he could feel the Handler’s disapproval at his intention to disobey.
It took every shred of will he had to voice the two words. “Finn Kingsley.”
Her smile was a brilliant light, bathing him in warmth, easing the tension in his muscles. “Hi, Finn,” she said. “I’m Kathleen. I’m very happy to meet you.”
His throat closed up. It felt like he had said too much, exposed himself unnecessarily. The urge to flee washed over him.
Emotions are weakness.
“Can I hold your hand again?” she asked.
It was as if she sensed his mental turbulence and knew precisely the right thing to say. Finn wanted to feel that again. He wanted, desperately, to wash away this sense of being raw and vulnerable.
Two steps took him closer to her, and he lowered himself to the floor. He held out his hand, and she wrapped hers around it.
She smiled at him again. “Thank you.”
The same wash of memory rushed over him, but this time, he anticipated it, and it didn’t overwhelm him. He remembered this feeling now, the tug at the corner of his lips, the sense of peace and warmth as his muscles relaxed. He was still aware of everything around him, yet it felt acceptable just to look at her face, to see the easy smile she gave him.
She squeezed his hand.
Finn’s heart rate shot up. The correlation was obvious. That simple gesture spiked adrenalin, but not because he felt in danger. It was almost dizzying.
And he wanted more. More of this feeling. More of her.
He wasn’t allowed to want, but he did, and it felt utterly right for once.
Finn wasn’t sure how long they sat there, his hand in hers, simply gazing at each other. He was acutely aware that the longer he delayed, the more likely the Handler would reach out to him or check his tracker. It would mean she was in danger, and he very much did not want that.
When he pulled his hand free of hers, her smile slipped. For a second, he almost relented. But he had a mission to finish.
“Finn?” she asked as he stood.
He would explain later—if he could. The awareness of an unfinished mission consumed him. He took all the items on the sink—the tracker, the phone, and its parts—putting them into the pocket of the jacket he picked up.
“Finn, please talk to me.”
He couldn’t. Nor could he explain why, either. He took her in with one last glance, and whatever she saw in his expression kicked her heart into a fast beat he could hear. He walked out the door, locking it behind him.
He needed to get distance from her, send the photographs, and find someone to plant the tracker on. He wasn’t sure what he would do after. Always, he relied on the Handler to tell him what to do. To tell him what mission was next.
Maybe, for once, he could figure out what he wanted to do.