18. Garrison
EIGHTEEN
GARRISON
I don’t know why I did that.
With my head in my hands, I peer at my boots as I sit on the edge of the bed, right next to an unconscious Carsyn. I’m fucking rattled, like waking up after too much whiskey and a lot of bad decisions, yet I’m sober as ever.
I knew sex would calm her. How? Because I know her. I take one look at her face, just a second with my eyes on hers, and I know what she needs. And I saw it in her eyes tonight when she was begging for the needle. I saw the need to forget all this for just a few minutes, and I knew I could give that to her, without the needle. That look in her eyes, not the one begging for respite but the one hungry for me? That was in her eyes too and it’s lived in her eyes since the night I met her. Sure, she’s been scared and I know without a doubt there are times when she truly believes she hates me, but all that aside, she can’t deny the way she hums for me. She can’t deny it for much longer at least. Fucking her senseless was what she needed to quiet her mind, and what I needed, too, to get through this next stretch.
It’s almost over.
I know that Carsyn heard everything spoken between me and Liam. She knows he was a liar, and that he wasn’t who he said he was. It’s a lot to take in about someone you thought was, more or less, a hero. The messenger, in these situations, often gets blamed. Carsyn will be upset with me, and she’ll be in shock, and I’m gonna have to give her more proof once she rests and has time to think.
But it ain’t none of those things that has me rattled. Not if I’m being honest with myself, sitting here staring at my boots holding my goddamn head.
I kissed her gently as she drifted into her paralytic-induced sleep. I came inside of her.
I don’t do either of those things. I never have. I’ve never been able to before.
Glancing over at her, I reach across her bare body, gently tucking the sheet in around her. She hadn’t wanted the needle by the time our bodies calmed our minds, but I had to give it to her.
I needed silence, but the needle was because Valdez and the new guy are on the way over to collect the barrel and weapons. As soon as Liam is off of my property...
I’m ready to wrap this case up, and be done with this agency that arrests murderers while simultaneously asking me to kill. I’m ready to not touch a weapon ever again unless it's for shooting soda cans or hunting animals I plan to eat. I’m ready to live my real life, not exist as someone else inside the most hypocritical agency known to man, an agency that the world believes is all good. I can’t and don’t want to live like this anymore.
And I sure as hell don’t want to become Neely.
A dull throb rolls through my calf, so I leave her room in favor of mine, rustling around until I find the first aid kit. My jeans are rolled up to my knee when there’s a soft knock at the back door, so quiet I almost don’t make it out. Treading through the house and over to the door, I open it up and let Valdez and Abramson inside.
Valdez motions to my leg. “Looks infected.”
I move my tongue over my teeth, irritation crawling over my skin like fucking fire ants. “It’s fine.” I close the door behind them, and they take a seat on the couch, looking on as I replace the clove oil cotton balls with fresh ones, and rebandage myself. After the leg of my jeans are down, I give them my focus.
“What did you get from GM?” Valdez asks.
Before I can answer, Abramson tips his head to the door they just came through. “That him?”
He’s alluding to the barrels on my porch. Barrels containing the chipped and burned remains of Grafton Marks, aka Liam Davis. Sometimes I feel more like a contract killer than an FBI agent. All of the time I question what I really signed up for.
I nod. “Yes.”
Abramson gets to his feet, snapping on a pair of work gloves, less about fingerprints, more about not cutting himself as he loads the barrels into the truck.
He leaves me in my home with just Valdez, who fixes his focus on me right away. “Well? Did you get anything from him? A location or lead on Conway?”
I shake my head, sifting a hand through my hair. Valdez wouldn’t know if I’m lying if the truth was written on my fucking face. I let out a heavy, convincing breath. “I don’t know.” Then I launch into the truth. “Marks didn’t know either. Seems like Conway left all his little moles high and dry on his way out.”
“Why was he coming for Carsyn if it wasn’t under Conway’s direct order?” Valdez asks.
“I think his plan was to use Carsyn as a gift to return to Forrest.” Anger surges through me at the image of Liam walking Carsyn into a dark barn, handing her off into the arms of a maniacal, vindictive Forrest Conway. I’d shoot him again if I hadn’t already. Truth is, Forrest would’ve killed Liam either way. Hell, we know for certain that he was on Forrest’s hit list. Leave no loose ends, after all. “He got left behind. He thought he was more valuable than that, and he wanted to be valuable more than anything. I’m thinking his plan was to get her, get into contact with Forrest, and get his head stroked when he passed her off to him.”
Valdez lets out a heavy sigh. “A turncoat of platitudes.” He looks up at me from where he was staring at the ground in thought. “Though it did cross my mind that maybe he loved her. Maybe he planned on being her white knight and whisking her away from all this. Playing the down and out good boy and all.”
I shake my head. “He was willing to leave her here if it meant he got out. That aligns more so with the idea that he’d at least be free with the whereabouts for Carsyn, and could find Forrest and be a hero in a smaller capacity.” I crack my neck from side to side. “You don’t leave the woman you love with another man. That just doesn’t happen.”
He considers my words, and from the porch, Abramson grunts as he rolls the second barrel off. The barrel containing the remains of the man we’re discussing. Valdez scratches at his sideburn. “What happened?”
He’s asking why I killed Marks if he had no information. Why I couldn’t let him go. “He threatened to kill Carsyn Beckett.” Beckett is who we’re both using as a shiny lure as well as keeping safe. Except in my case, I’m not using her to bait a monster, but they will. That’s why I have to keep her safe myself.
The FBI wants Forrest to know she’s missing but within reach, so he keeps looking for her. In my opinion, his choice to stay is not just his big balls and swollen ego, but his desire to find her so he can take her with him wherever he goes. Knowing how he treated his own daughter, I believe Forrest Conway wants Carsyn Beckett to rape and torture, and to torment Colton and Kinleigh with that knowledge… for as long as he can.
The Bureau initially assigned someone else to the task of infiltrating Forrest Conway, but I got the job instead, and not just because I can grow a good fucking beard. I already knew how to ride horses, I am a great shot with a variety of weapons, have experience on the open land, and my time spent with the Masters Hands MC has my poker face goddamn solid.
I wanted out before this case, but I couldn’t watch Carsyn get mishandled, the same way Kinleigh was mishandled all those years. I couldn’t be a Valdez, watching from afar. I had to make sure that my very last case was handled right, and that the last person I protected for the Federal Bureau of Investigations actually was kept safe.
After all, Kinleigh was supposed to be safe. Neely was supposed to make sure of that while also watching Forrest.
We all know how that turned out.
Valdez arches a brow. “Thought she was chained ,” he says, enunciating the last word as he nods toward the bedroom where Carsyn is currently lying in bed.
I nod. “She is. When I went out, I extended her chains so she could come out and talk to him. Thought maybe she’d figure him out on her own.”
“Who Carsyn Beckett believes Liam Davis truly was means nothing for our case.” Valdez blinks at me, knowing me better than I want him to. “You set him up so you could kill him.”
“I wouldn’t play with her life,” I reply harshly, because what he’s implying isn’t true. “The Bureau wants her alive at all costs, until there’s a location on Forrest,” I remind him.
He doesn’t argue but instead says, “I hope there was no value on his head. If he could’ve been used to lure Conway back–”
I cut him off because what he’s offering up is fucking ridiculous. Forrest come out of hiding because of Liam Davis? No way. These suits don’t know Forrest the way I do. “Marks was a mole. He sat in her house, tending to Kinleigh Conway, who was, by the way, on death’s fucking doorstep, and took all of what he learned in that family’s darkest hour, and told their worst enemy.” I shake my head. “I didn’t set him up.” Am I lying to myself about setting him up so that I could kill him? More importantly, does it matter? “If the FBI is gonna make me a fucking murderer, I’m gonna use that the way I see fit.”
Valdez has never been an operative or a field agent. He’s never gone undercover, changed his name and appearance to fit in with monsters, to take them down from the inside out. Never. He doesn’t know what taking a life feels like, even if that life is bad.
It’s heavy; on the daily, I drag around hundreds of pounds of invisible weight with me, under the guise of serving my government, protecting the people who live here and all in all, keeping the country free and safe from monsters.
But I had to become one to know them, to infiltrate and catch them.
I don’t want to be him anymore.
“I’m done after this,” I tell him, as if he hadn’t picked up on my attitude in the last four years. When I was assigned to the Garrison Conway persona, all I wanted to do was take down Wyoming’s largest sex trafficking ring.
But I’ve seen things. I’ve heard young girls cry for their mothers and legally been unable to help. I’ve witnessed a father rape his daughter. I was wrong about being an agent. It doesn’t make me feel accomplished anymore, it only brings depression and nightmares.
“You knew what you were signing up for,” Valdez reminds me, ever the yes-man. He loves his job as a suit and tie wearing agent. Aviators, shiny shoes, and a big, black car, pretending he’s the main character of some crime TV show–he makes me sick.
I knew becoming a field operative agent would be taxing to my wellbeing mentally and emotionally, but I had no idea the toll it would truly take.
“I did. But it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to change my mind. This isn’t the mafia, Valdez. I can leave this thing and have a life. And that’s what I intend on doing.”
He leans back, pressing his shoulder blades into the couch as he sizes me up. He thinks I’ll change my mind. I’m sure of it. I’ve wanted to leave the FBI one other time, and obviously I did not.
Things are different now, though. I’m different.
I have a reason to leave, and maybe someone to leave for.
“I suppose this next bit doesn’t quite matter as much now but, you have one month to button it up here. To find Forrest and turn him over. One month and if you can’t do it, they’re gonna relocate you, put you in Maine on an illegal whaling operation.”
“Don’t worry,” I assure Valdez as Abramson returns, his nose red from the cold. “I’ll find Forrest.” Valdez has no idea that I have a vested interest in seeing Forrest die. Carsyn isn’t safe until he’s dead. If I don’t get the job done, they’ll reassign someone to watch over Carsyn. Who will keep her safe? A guy like Neely? Fuck no. I don’t trust the FBI, not with her especially.
Forrest must be brought to punishment. And no prison cell will cut it.
“Loaded up.”
Valdez gets to his feet. We don’t shake hands. “We’ll be in touch.”
I walk behind them until they’re on my porch, then the door is closed and locked.
Back in the kitchen, I open the drawer and pull out my laptop, as well as the USB drive I stashed there. After Carsyn knocked herself out, I cleaned up the scene, and after running a dead body through a wood chipper then burn pit, I needed a shower. The USB went from my pocket to the drawer. Taking a seat at the kitchen table, I plug the drive into the computer and sift through the information for the first time. About five minutes in, Carsyn’s weak voice passes through the closed door.
“Garrison?”