Chapter 28 #2
I’m choosing to believe York is on my side, but that could be extremely naive.
William is against me, and while I thought Carter was leaning in my favor, this conversation might have tilted him the other way.
August is the opposite; he was leaning toward getting rid of me, but now I think he has a new appreciation .
. . but I’m up the creek either way because they’ll never come to a consensus.
“Okay,” William pipes up and leans into the table. “Our turn.” He pushes his glass back, and I raise a brow at him.
“You’re alone,” August says. “For a while now, I’d guess. No family.”
“I don’t think you lied about being recruited out of college,” Carter adds. “But based on what we know of the Raven program now, you aren’t a civilian, although I can’t figure out where or who the Ravens trained with.”
“You never formally served,” York adds, “and whether you have a body count or not is very hard to determine, but I’m leaning toward at least one, although it may have been unintentional.”
“Your OCD is just the tip of the iceberg and more likely than not, a red herring to cover up who the fuck knows what.” William glares and then shoots his drink.
Not bad. Although, no, I haven’t killed anyone, and the OCD is real, but it isn’t the whole picture.
I am alone with no family left to speak of, and I was recruited from college just not for Raven.
I was recruited by Central Intelligence, like every Raven.
We were hand-selected for the Raven program on graduation, and the program was still actively recruiting until all this shit went down with Babylon.
“Not bad.” I nod. “The ifs and buts drive you crazy, though, don’t they?” Smiling, I finish off my drink and slide the glass away. Four shots are a lot for me. “Well, boys, this was fun. When the vote comes in and you do decide to kill me, don’t wake me up for it.”
I slap my hands on the table and push myself up.
A vote is a pretty generous assumption. It’s more likely that there won’t be one and one of them will just decide what’s best unilaterally.
That’s what I would do if our roles were reversed .
. . not that I’m going to take it lying down, as I inferred.
Tired, I leave them behind and find my way to the study where York is supposed to sleep.
I have no interest in taking his room, and it feels more prudent to be where I can hear and see more.
Removing the cushions from the couch, I pull the bed out and flop down on it.
Maybe they will be able to kill me in my sleep because the vodka is definitely making me feel dull and groggy.
I pull the gun out of the back of my pants and slide it under my pillow as I hug it.
“You didn’t say anything about me,” Carter says from behind me.
I shift onto my side and find him standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. “Jealous?”
“Maybe a little. Shit.”
I laugh quietly and put my face back into the pillow. The reason I didn’t read Carter in front of the others is because I’m afraid to push him too far over the other side of the line from me. He’s a swing vote.
“You’re a rich kid,” I say, turning my head to him.
“Generational wealth, I’d guess. Educated, but not at UCLA.
Probably Cambridge. I’d wager your family has an estate that looks an awful lot like a castle somewhere in the motherland.
You joined the military as a ‘fuck you’ to your parents and everyone else that wanted you to go into business and take over the family estate. ”
He rolls his lip between his teeth.
“And I think you chose explosives because as much as killing doesn’t bother you, you’d rather be removed from the actual act. I don’t know if that’s a sign that you’re trying to salvage your humanity or if it’s just proof of indifference.”
His head bobs, and he looks at the floor. “Well . . . I asked for it, I guess.”
Glancing up to the ceiling, he turns on a heel and walks back down the hall. I drop my face into the pillow. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but vodka doesn’t care. Leaving the gun under the pillow, I drag myself up and head to the bathroom.
William slams into me outside the bathroom door, and I hiss, pressing my hand to my arm.
He steps into the bathroom ahead of me and grips the door. “By the way, if I wanted you dead, I would have taken the head shot because I am very good at it.”
“So what?” I point to the wound in the back of my arm. “This was just a love tap?”
“Hey.” He shrugs with a grin. “You’re the one that started running.”
The door closes on my face, and I lean my forehead against it, taking a cleansing breath as my head swirls.
Not wanting to wait, I wander down the hall and up the stairs to the other bathroom, which is empty, and I take the time to wash my face and scrub my teeth with one of a dozen new toothbrushes I find under the sink.
York is waiting outside when I exit, and I’m not sure I have the energy. It must be five or six in the morning by now, and I have had so little sleep.
“Have you always been this good at making friends?”
Whatever is going on between us is a bit too complicated in this environment, and despite myself and the help of vodka, I wish that wasn’t the case. At least in the woods we only had one tent, so our proximity was forced . . . and therefore acceptable, I guess.
Even then, there was no overt affection around the others.
So, this is much the same except we don’t have the excuse of only one place to sleep anymore. I wrap my arms around his waist and breathe him for a second, before letting him go. “I need to sleep.”
“Me too, but I saw you took the couch from me.” He runs his hand down my back.
“I upgraded you.” I pat his chest and head down the stairs without looking back.
In the living room, I flick off the lights, even though the sky outside is graying with dawn, and slide out of my pants before crawling onto the bed and collapsing.