11. Beck
BECK
IAN MARTIR – LIVE WITHOUT
“Beck,” Van called after me. “Beck, wait!” He grabbed my arm, forcing me to either stop and face him or force my way past.
I stopped, knowing he needed answers—that he always needed answers.
Evander needed logic to make sense of the things around him.
He had a deep curiosity to understand every facet of the world he lived in and the minds of those around him.
It came in handy on assignment a lot of the time, being able to predict the way a person would react to certain stimuli based on their known patterns of behaviour—like, for instance, if they would scream, run, freeze, or return fire if a body was dropped unceremoniously in front of them.
“You can’t honestly tell me you knew that was going to work,” he said, less of a question than a statement. His eyes flickered between both of mine, analysing my every minute reaction and frowning when there was no obvious tell.
The truth was that I didn’t have the faintest idea if that was going to work. But if I admitted that out loud, then he’d never let me hear the end of it; never let me breathe past the guilt of putting our favourite recruit’s life on the line.
I looked past him, meeting the eyes of my other brother.
Dek knew. He got it. He’d understood the trajectory of that decision the second I picked up the gun.
He was firmly Team Sinclair and had known she needed something cataclysmic to snap her out of the pit of grief and guilt she’d fallen into since Fleur Deveaux was murdered in her stead.
He was the one who’d asked me to intervene, after watching her spiral for the last several days.
Our little initiate was slated to secure that coveted sniper assignment—the only other Eagle job on offer since Pearce himself had earned the rank.
Sinclair had worked her little ass off over the last eighteen months to become something more than every other female initiate ever taken into the program. Not one single woman had ever come out as anything other than a Swallow, and now people were starting to pay attention to her—important people.
Commander Varco’s second—a man known only by the codename Mars—had already chewed me out for letting her climb so high in the rankings.
Under no circumstances was a female initiate allowed to outrank Varco’s son by Graduation day—whether they’d earned it or not.
But over my dead body was his son going to be awarded Eagle.
Best shooter would claim that assignment.
It would be institutional homicide for anything less than the best marksman—or woman—to be the one on the roof watching everyone else’s back or undertaking the toughest jobs under the shittiest conditions while the rest of us got to play dress up and drink champagne.
Varco himself had ordered us to remain on campus until our assigned Swallow—our top candidate as he called her—was deemed field-ready. Then and only then were we allowed to leave.
But our leash didn’t extend very far.
He wanted to keep a close eye on us for the foreseeable future. Wanted us nearby so he could deploy us on his own personal vendettas as quickly as he could press the send.
Unfortunately, being good at your job around here often led to unsavoury assignments. I knew that better than most.
I hadn’t decided if Sinclair deserved better than that or not—better than me—but she was adamant that she was not going to become another honey trap killer. And after her little admission in the gym, I could finally understand why it irked her so badly.
Something about that, about sending a goddamned virgin out into the field as a seductress, rubbed me the wrong way. So I answered Van the only way I knew how: lying through my teeth.
“Of course I knew. You really think I’d take a risk like that—that I’d take the chance she’d blow her brains out all over my gym—without knowing for certain that she wouldn’t?”
He jerked back at the acid in my tone, or perhaps the callous words themselves and the visual they inherently painted.
“Of course I knew. But I also knew that she needed a make-or-break moment to decide that for herself.”
Okay, so that last part wasn’t a lie.
We all needed at least the illusion that we’d chosen our own fates.