Chapter 41
“Emmett,” I said, using the first name I rarely voiced. It was always Blake for him, Bristol for me, Reynolds for our CO. Last names or nicknames. Always. Except for Neva. We always called Neva by her first name. She’d been a contractor who worked with our team when Reynolds needed her. Not local, not American. Her origins were murky. My best guess was that she came from somewhere in Eastern Europe. She’d told Blake she was Russian. In the end, it didn’t matter. Neva was who she was paid to be.
Blake hadn’t seen that part. He”d fallen head over heels in love, and he’d stopped asking the right questions.
“I killed Neva,” I said, steeling myself against Quinn”s flinch. “But there are things you don”t know. You were gone after it happened. I needed to explain, but you disappeared. All this time, I thought you were dead.”
“Don”t try to sell me some bullshit story,” he said, his hand curling into a fist at his side. “You were jealous, and you fucking killed her.”
I shook my head slowly. “No, Emmett. I knew you loved her. I never would have—” I shook my head again, my heart aching with pain as my memories flooded back, dragging me to that moment I’d never been able to let go of. I’d pulled the trigger. I’d killed her, killed my friend.
“Fucking lies,” Blake spat out. “Stop with your fucking lies. You shot her. I saw you shoot her.”
I nodded. “I did. I didn’t want to, but I did.”
“You shot her,” he screamed, pulling his sidearm and pointing it at me. “You put a fucking bullet in her heart, and I”m going to do the same to you.”
I stood there, the inevitability of it rooting me in place, the past rushing into the present at light speed, catching up with me at last.
“You’re not wrong, Emmett. I shot Neva. She was my friend. She was your love. And I killed her. I watched her fall to the sand, dead, and I walked away. I’ve regretted it, and what it did to you, every day. I regretted it as I pulled the trigger. And in the same situation, I’d do it again. She was working both sides, Emmett. She turned on us.”
Emmett’s hand was rock-solid on his gun as he stared at me over the barrel.
“Let Quinn go,” I said. “You can do what you want with me. This isn”t Quinn”s fault. She had nothing to do with Neva. She”s not responsible. Make me pay. Not Quinn.”
He didn”t even look at Quinn, his eyes locked on me. “The second she”s out of the picture, I won’t be able to control you. You”ll just have to trust that I won’t hurt her after you”re dead.”
“And how am I supposed to trust you, Emmett?” I asked.
“Stop fucking calling me that,” he shouted.
“Fine, Blake,” I corrected. “I can’t trust you. You attacked her in the woods. You kidnapped her.”
“I haven’t hurt her. Scared her a little, but your girl is tough. She’ll survive. And maybe she deserves to suffer a little for letting a monster like you into her bed.”
“You don’t get to play judge and jury, Blake. There’s too much you don’t know.”
“I know enough. I know Reynolds sent you after Neva with an execution order. Ever wonder where that bastard has been all these years? Nowhere. I took care of him just like I”m going to take care of you.”
I wasn’t surprised. I’d thought about doing the same.
“You know I went after her on Reynolds”s orders, but did he tell you why?” I asked, sure Blake was in the dark.
I’d meant to explain back then, to tell him the painful truth. But by the time I’d dealt with Neva’s body, Emmett had been gone. Officially, he’d deserted, but we were mostly off the books, erased from official records. So in reality, Emmett Blake had simply ceased to exist.
“Do you know why?” I asked again.
He sneered at me. “Because she was interrupting Reynolds’s supply line. Eating into his profits. It’s why you killed her.”
“Maybe she was,” I said. “But I didn”t give a fuck about that. If it had been about money, about his business, I would have let her go. You remember—back then, we were only just figuring out what Reynolds was really up to. The backroom deals using us as muscle to protect his bottom line. Using national security and terrorism and all that patriotic bullshit he was selling to get us to stop asking questions.”
“Maybe you were only just figuring it out,” Blake spat out. “I fucking knew! I told you what was happening and you said I was paranoid.”
I nodded. Dark, sticky guilt was heavy in my chest. He was right. I”d been clinging to patriotism, clinging to the belief that I was the good guy. Even then. Even when the evidence had been in front of me. “You think I would kill Neva over money?” I asked. “Over fucking orders? She was my friend.”
“I loved her.” The words were torn from Emmett”s throat, his agony slicing through me.
I absorbed his pain. I deserved it. Because I knew. I knew what it was to love in a way I hadn’t then. I’d thought it was mostly about sex. And some of it had been. But now I knew that with the right person, sex was love. Laughing together, falling asleep together. It was all love. And I’d taken that from him. But he hadn’t known the truth.
“You didn”t know who she was,” I said. “You can’t stand there and tell me that you knew she was working with the cell that set those IEDs. She gave them our route, the timing. Everything. And they spared our vehicle, didn’t they? Shot out our tire at exactly the right moment and slowed us down just enough. Didn’t you ever wonder how they took out seven of us, and we came out untouched?” I paused, remembering the horror and betrayal I’d felt at her actions once I realized. I looked at him.
“That”s a lie!” Finally, Blake’s composure broke. His voice cracked, his hand stabbing his weapon in the air at me, his finger too tight on the trigger. “That”s a goddamn lie.”
“Not a lie,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could while staring into the barrel of his weapon. “Did you ever, in all these years, ask yourself what would have driven me to kill Neva?”
“You did it to line your fucking pockets, just like the rest of them,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I shot out, my calm dissolving in an instant. I’d never sold out my team or my friends. Never.
I had to get my temper under control. I couldn’t risk Quinn, but God damn it?—
“Fuck you,” I said again. “You”re right. We were as good as brothers. So you should have known that I never would have hurt her. I fucking tried to take her in without any damage. It wouldn’t have gone well for her. She would have spent years in a cell unless she’d had the intel to make a good deal. I honestly don”t know what would have happened to her, but she could have lived. She didn’t give me a choice.”
“She never would have betrayed me,” Blake said. “Never. You”re a liar.”
I shook my head. “She?—”
I sucked in a long breath, trying to force my tight lungs to expand. I had to get him to see the truth through his pain. It was our only chance of getting out of here alive. And beyond that, Blake deserved to know the truth. I exhaled in a rush of breath, knowing I was going to hurt him again, and spit out the words.
“Blake, she didn”t see it as betraying you. She saw it as ensuring your future together. She diverted the team with bad intel, sending us straight into the path of those IEDs, and she got paid a fuck-ton for it. She was going to use the money for you. For the two of you.”
Blake”s eyes slid shut, his face contorting in pure misery. I knew what he saw behind his closed eyes, knew the visions that haunted him. We’d lost seven men that day. I still had nightmares. The concussive boom. The flash of light, the dust, then the silence. Body parts everywhere. My friends, my brothers, gone in an instant.
Something about it had always felt off. The timing, the last-minute route change. I’d known from the second I came to on that dusty road, that it hadn’t been a random attack. And I”d started to dig. I’d been coming around to the idea that Reynolds was dirty. After that day, I started to investigate as fully as I could and still stay under the radar. I’d uncovered so much more than I’d wanted to know. I”d only scratched the surface of everything Reynolds was up to, and in the process I’d uncovered Neva’s duplicity.
“I confronted her,” I said. “Before you saw me kill her. Before you came into the room, I confronted her. I”m sorry, man. I know you loved her. She loved you. She did. She swore it was all for you. It was enough so you could both get out.”
“No. No, no, no.” Blake”s head rocked from side to side as if he was trying to shake off the truth settling into his heart. “I don”t believe you.”
Although the gun was still pointed at me, I no longer saw an enemy. I saw my broken friend, a man I’d loved like a brother, having his heart broken all over again.
“I”m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing I’ve done that I regret more. I wish I’d known what she would do. I wish I’d planned it differently. But a part of me didn’t believe what I’d discovered. A part of me still thought she might have an explanation. But she admitted it. Then you walked in, and she?—”
I let out a breath, my throat locking up, heat prickling the backs of my eyes at the memory. I hated remembering the moment her eyes had shifted, and I’d seen her change, seen her calculating how her future would play out.
“She didn’t want you to know. And if she’d let me take her in, everything would have come out. She knew I didn”t want to hurt her, even if she deserved it, but I wasn’t going to let her go either. Not after what she”d done.”
For a minute, I’d thought I had her. Then the door had opened, Emmett had walked in, and her face— The grief. The remorse. Neva had pulled her weapon, pointed it at me, and I’d pulled my trigger first. I still didn’t know if I’d been faster or if she’d let me get the shot off.
“You want me to pay?” I demanded. “Fine. You can make me pay. I killed her. I didn’t have a choice, but that doesn’t absolve me. But let Quinn go. She”s not a part of this.”
“She makes you happy,” Blake said, the words both an accusation and a plea.
“She does,” I said. “For the first time, maybe since my parents died. Yeah. She makes me happy. She makes me glad to be alive. You want to take that from me? Then take me out. But let her go.”
Blake”s hand came down on the top of Quinn”s head, his fingers draped over her forehead like a fleshy spider, tightening over her skull. My gut tightened with them. Blake’s head dropped, his eyes fixed on Quinn.
With a slow exhale, his hands fell to his sides. He slid his sidearm back in the holster, snapping it closed. “Why didn”t you tell me? Why wouldn’t you have told me?” he asked, sounding lost.
“There wasn’t time,” I said. “She was getting ready to run when I figured it out. I was looking for you, looking for her, and I found her first. When it was all over, you were gone. I thought you were dead. I looked for you. After I got out, I went after Reynolds, fucked with his operation so he had to walk away, and I looked for you.”
“I didn’t want to be found,” Blake said, shaking his head, his eyes still on the floor.
I knew the feeling. “And I stopped looking. I couldn’t live with it,” I said.
I hated thinking about those days. I’d been lost, on the edge of giving up completely. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the light fading from Neva’s, her blood spilling from her chest. I saw all the deaths I’d caused, and questioned every single one. It was too much for one man to carry.
“I”m sorry I couldn’t bring her in alive,” I said. “I”m sorry I found her first. I”m sorry about fucking all of it.”
Blake sagged, still on his feet but diminished. He lifted a hand to dig in his pocket and I tensed, looking to the couch, gauging how fast I could get to my weapon. Before I made a move, a blade flashed, and Quinn slouched forward. She lurched to her feet. The knife flashed again, freeing her hands. She reached up to pull the duct tape from her mouth.
“Hawk,” she said the second she could speak.
I shook my head. I still had to get her out of here. “Go!” I said. “Run back to the house and find Kane.”
“I”m not leaving you here.” She looked at me, incredulous, and my heart ached.
My Quinn. Brave. Loyal. Strong and smart. It was that last part I was depending on the most.
“Go back to the house, Quinn,” I said.
“I”m not leaving you here, Hawk.” She scooped up my weapon from the couch and slid it into my holster, taking a position just behind me.
“At least yours is loyal,” Blake said, his voice thick with bitterness.
I shook my head. “Neva was loyal to you in her own way. She just wasn’t loyal to your cause.”
“Turns out I wasn’t loyal to my cause either,” Blake said with a defeated shrug of one shoulder. “Considering that our cause wasn’t patriotism, it was actually Reynolds”s bank account.”
“We didn’t know,” I said, voicing the excuse I rarely accepted myself. I was only just able to accept the idea of absolution for me. How could I give it to Blake?
Quinn’s arm slid around my waist. She leaned into me, watching Emmett Blake with sharp eyes.
“So,” she asked, “what do we do now?”