As Grier stared across her bedroom at the tattoo that covered Isaac's back, her hands crept up and curled around her neck.
The image in his skin was done in black and gray and was so vividly drawn, the Grim Reaper seemed to be staring right out at her: The great black- robed figure stood in a field of graves that stretched in all directions, skulls and bones littering the ground at its feet. From beneath the hood, two white spots glowed above the hard jut of a fleshless jaw. One skeletal hand was on the scythe handle, and the other reached forward, pointing at her chest.
And yet that wasn't the most terrifying part.
Underneath the depiction, there was a row of lines grouped in bundles of four with a diagonal line bunching each one. There had to be at least ten of those. . . .
"You've killed . . ." She couldn't get the rest of the sentence out.
"Forty-nine. And before you think I'm glorifying what I've done, each of us has this in our skin. It's not voluntary."
That was nearly ten a year. One a month. Lives lost at his hands.
With a quick, slashing movement, Isaac pulled his windbreaker and sweatshirt down--and just as well. That tattoo was terrifying.
Turning to face her, he met her squarely in the eye and seemed to be waiting for a response.
All she could think about was Daniel . . . God, Daniel. Her brother was a notch on the back of one or some of those soldiers, a little line drawn by a needle, marked permanently in ink.
She had been tattooed, too, by the death. On the inside. The sight of him dead and gone--and now the stain of the details of that night--were forever on her mind.
And it was the same for what she'd found out about her father's other life. And Isaac's.
Grier braced her hands on her knees and shook her head. "I don't have anything to say."
"I don't blame you. I'm going to leave--"
"About your past."
As she cut him off, she shook her head again. She'd been on a whirlwind since the moment he'd walked into that attorney-client room back at the jail. Caught up in a buzz, she'd spun faster and faster, from the run-in with that man with the eye patch to the sex to the showdown with her father . . . to Isaac hitting the self-destruct button sure as if he'd pulled the pin out of a grenade.
But somehow, as soon as he'd done that, she felt as though the storm was over and done, the tornado having moved on to someone else's cornfield.
In the aftermath, everything seemed so clear and simple.
She shrugged and kept staring at him. "I really can't say anything about your past . . . but I do have an opinion on your future." Her exhale was long and slow and sounded as exhausted as she felt. "I don't think you should turn yourself in to die. Two wrongs don't make a right. In fact, nothing can make what you did right, but you don't need me telling you that. What you've done is going to follow you around all the days of your life--it is a ghost that will never leave you."
And the dark shadows in his eyes told her he knew that better than anyone.
"To be honest, Isaac, I think you're being a coward." As his lids popped, she nodded. "It's so much harder to live with what you've done than go out in a blaze of self-righteous glory. You ever hear of suicide by cop? It's where a cornered gunman will fire once on a police barricade, and effectively force the badges to pump him full of bullets. It's for people who don't have the strength to face the reckoning they deserve. That button you pushed? Same thing. Isn't it."
She knew she'd hit the target by the way his face closed up, his features becoming a mask.
"The way to be brave," she continued, "is to be the one who stands up and exposes the organization. That is the right course of action. Shine the light no one else can on the evil you've seen and done and been. That is the only way to come close to making amends. God . . . you could stop this whole damn thing--" Her voice cracked as she thought of her brother. "You could stop it and make sure no one else gets sucked into it. You could help find the ones who are involved and hold them accountable. That . . . that would be meaningful and important. Unlike this suicidal bullshit. Which solves nothing, improves nothing . . ."
Grier got to her feet, closed the top of her suitcase, and snapped the brass latches down tight. "I don't agree with anything you've done. But you've got enough conscience in you to want to get out. The question is whether that impulse can take you to the next level--and that's got nothing to do with your past. Or me."
Sometimes reflections of yourself were exactly what you needed to see, Isaac thought. And he wasn't talking about the puss-in-the-mirror kind.
More like the eyes-of-others variety.
As Isaac frowned, he wasn't sure which was more of a shocker: the fact that Grier was totally right or that he was inclined to act on what she'd said.
Bottom line? She was spot-on: He had been on a suicidal bender ever since he'd broken away from the fold, and he wasn't the kind to hang himself in the bathroom--no, no, it was much manlier to be gunned down by a comrade.
What a pussy he was.
But that being said, he wasn't sure how coming forward would work. Who did he talk to? Who could he trust? And while he could see himself going all- info on Matthias and that second in command, he was not going to give up the identities of the other soldiers he'd worked with or knew about. XOps had gotten out of control under Matthias's rule and that man had to be stopped--but the organization wasn't entirely evil and did perform a necessary and significant service to the country. Besides, he had a feeling that if that boss of theirs was put away, most of the hard-cores like Isaac would dissolve into the ether like smoke on a cold night, never again to do what they had done or speak of it: There were many like him, those who wanted out but were trapped by Matthias one way or another--and he knew this because there had been so much comment on Jim Heron's release.
Speaking of which . . .
He needed to get to Heron. If there was a way to do this, he needed to talk it over with the guy.
And Grier's father as well.
"Call your dad," he said to Grier. "Call him and get him back here. Right now." When she opened her mouth, he cut her off. "I know it's a lot to ask, but if there's another solution here, I'm damn sure he has better contacts than I do--because I've got nada. And as for your brother--shit, that's rat awful and I'm so very sorry. But what happened to him was the fault of someone else--it was not your father's doing. That's the thing. When you're being recruited, they don't tell you everything, and by the time you work out the reality for yourself, it's too late. Your father is way more innocent in this than I am, and he's had to lose a son over it. You're angry and you're devastated and I get that. So is he, though--and you saw it for yourself."
Even though her face went hard, her eyes welled up, so he knew she was listening.
Isaac grabbed the phone on the bedside table and held it out to her. "I'm not asking you to forgive him. Just please don't hate him. You do that and he's lost both his children."
"He already has, though." Grier swept a quick hand over her tears, wiping them clean. "My family's gone now. My brother and mother dead. My father . . . I can't bear the sight of him. I'm all alone." "No, you're not." He jogged the receiver at her. "He's just a call away--and he's all you've got left. If I can man up . . . so can you."
Sure, he was taking a chance in presenting the idea of coming forward to her father, but the reality was that Childe's interests and his were aligned: They both wanted him the fuck away from Grier.
Staring into her eyes, he willed her to find the strength to stay connected to her blood, and he was very aware of why it was so important to him: As usual, he was being selfish. If he did come clean to some judge or congressional hearing, he was going to stay breathing for a while, but he'd be essentially dead to her as he got swept up into a witness protection program of some sort. Therefore, her father was the best shot she had at being protected.
The only shot.
Isaac shook his head. "The bad guy in this is the one you saw in the kitchen back at my apartment. He's the true evil. Not your father."
"The only way . . ." Grier wiped her eyes again. "The only way I can be anywhere around him is if he helps you."
"So tell him that when he gets here."
A moment later she straightened her shoulders and took the phone. "Okay. I will."
As a burst of emotion hit him, he had to stop himself from leaning in for a quick kiss--God, she was strong. So very strong. "Good," he said hoarsely. "That's good. And I'm going to go find my buddy Jim now."
Turning away, he went down the back stairwell, and rounded the landings with speed. He was praying that either Jim had returned or those two hard- asses out in the backyard could bring him in from wherever he was at.
Bursting through the kitchen, he hit the door out into the garden, opening it wide--
Over in the far corner, Jim's buddies were bookending a glowing cell phone, looking like they'd been kneed in the balls.
"What's wrong?" Isaac asked.
The pair glanced up and he immediately knew by those tight expressions that Jim was in the shit: When you worked on a team, there was absolutely nothing more gut-wrenching than if one of you got captured by the enemy. It was worse than a mortal wound in yourself or a teammate.
Because the enemy didn't always kill first.
"Matthias," Isaac hissed.
As the one with the thick braid shook his head, Isaac jogged down to them. Pierced was looking green, positively green. "Who then? Who has Jim? How can I help?"
Grier appeared in the open doorway. "My father will be here in five minutes." She frowned. "Is everything okay?"
Isaac just stared at the two guys. "I can help."
The one with the braid shut that right down: "No, I'm afraid you can't."
"Isaac? Who are you talking to?"
He glanced over his shoulder. "Friends of Jim's." He looked back--
The two men were gone, as if they had never been there in the first place. Again.
What. The. Fuck.
As the creep-o-meter on the back of Isaac's neck went wild, Grier walked over. "Was there someone here?"
"Ah . . ." He looked all around. "I don't . . . know. Come on, let's get inside."
Ushering her back into the house, he thought it was entirely possible he'd lost his damn mind.
After locking the door and watching Grier reengage the alarm, he sat down on a stool at the island and took out the Life Alert. No response yet and he hoped Grier's father got here before Matthias hit him back.
Best to have a plan.
In the silence of the kitchen, he stared at the cooktop as Grier took up res across the way, leaning back against the counter by the sink. It felt like a hundred years had come and gone since she'd made him that omelet the night before. And yet if he followed through on what he was contemplating, the next few days were going to make that seem like the blink of an eye in comparison.
Running through his brain, he tried to think of what he could say about Matthias. He knew a lot when it came to his old boss . . . and yet the man had purposely created black holes in every operative's mental Milky Way: You were told only what you absolutely, positively had to know and not one syllable more. Some shit you could deduce, but there were vast patches of huh-what? that--
"Are you okay?" she said.
Isaac looked up in surprise, and thought he was the one who should be asking that of her. And what do you know, she had her arms around herself--a self-protective pose she seemed to fall into a lot when she was with him.
"I really hope you can patch it up with your father," he replied, hating himself.
"Are you okay?" she repeated.
Ah, yes, so both of them were playing dodge 'em.
"You know, you can answer me," she said. "With the truth."
It was funny. For some reason, maybe because he wanted to practice . . . he considered doing that. And then he actually did.
"The first guy I killed . . ." Isaac stared down at the granite, turning the slick expanse of stone into a TV screen and watching his own actions play out across the speckled surface. "He was a political extremist who had bombed an embassy overseas. It took me three and a half weeks to find him. I tracked him across two continents. Caught up with him in Paris, of all places. The city of love, right? I took him out in an alleyway. Sneaked behind him. Slit his throat. Which was a messy mistake--I should have snapped his--"
He stopped with a curse, well aware that his version of talking shop was hardly like some tax attorney yammering on about the IRS code.
"It was . . . shockingly uncomplicated for me." He looked at his hands. "It was like something came over me and put a lockdown on my emotions. Afterward? I just went out to eat. I had a steak with pepper--ate all of it. Dinner was . . . great. And it was while I was having that meal that I realized they'd chosen wisely. Picked the right guy. That was when I threw up. I went out the back of the restaurant, into an alley just like the one I'd murdered that man in an hour before. You see, I hadn't really believed I was a killer until it didn't bother me."
"Except it did."
"Yeah. Fuck--I mean, hell, yeah, it did." Although only that once. After that, he was good to go. Stone-cold. Ate like a king. Slept like a baby.
Grier cleared her throat. "How did they recruit you?"
"You won't believe it."
"Give it a shot."
"sKillerz."
"Excuse me?"
"It's a video game where you assassinate people. About seven or eight years ago, the first online gaming communities were getting big and integrated play had really caught on. sKillerz was created by some sick bastard--no one's ever met the guy, apparently--but he's a genius at graphics and realism. As for me? I had a head for computers and I liked"--to kill people--"I liked playing the game. Pretty soon there were hundreds of people in this virtual world--with all these weapons and identities in all these cities and countries. I was at the top of all of them. I had this, like . . . knack for knowing how to get to people and what to use and where to put the bodies. It was just a game, though. Something I did when I wasn't working on the farm. Then, about . . . about two years into it . . . I started to feel as though I was being watched. That went on for, like, a week, until one night this guy named Jeremiah showed up at the farm. I was working the back rails, mending fences, and he drove up in an unmarked." "And what happened?" she asked when he paused.
"I've never told anyone this before."
"Don't stop." She came over and sat beside him. "It helps me. Well . . . it's disturbing, too. But . . . please?"
Right, okay. With her looking up at him with those big, beautiful eyes, he was prepared to give her anything: words, stories . . . the beating heart out of his chest.
Isaac rubbed his face and wondered when he'd become a sap--oh, wait, he knew that one: the moment he'd been escorted into that little room back at the jail and she'd been sitting there all prim, and proper, and smart as hell.
Sap.
Wuss.
Nancy.
"Isaac?"
"Yeah?" Well, what do you know--he could still answer to his own name and not just a bunch of ball-less nouns.
"Please . . . keep talking to me."
Now he was the one clearing his throat. "The Jeremiah guy invited me to come work for the government. He said he was with the military and they were looking for guys like me. I was all, `Farm boys? Y'all looking for redneck farm boys?' And I'll never forget it . . . He stared right at me and said . . . `You're not a farmer, Isaac.' That was it. But it was the way he said it--like he knew a secret about me. Whatever, though . . . I thought he was a moron and I told him so--I was wearing mud-soaked overalls and a John Deere hat and work boots. Didn't know what the hell else he thought I was." Isaac glanced over at Grier. "He was right, though. I was something else. Turned out the government had been monitoring sKillerz online and that's how they found me."
"What made you decide to start . . . working . . . for them?"
Nice euphemism.
"I wanted out of Mississippi. Always had. I left home two days later and I still have no interest in going back. And that body was of a kid who'd run his motorcycle off the road. At least, that's what they told me. They switched my ID and my Honda for his and there you go."
"What about your family?"
"My mother . . ." Okay, he had to really clear his throat here. "Mother had moved on from us before she died. Pop had five sons, but only two with her. I never got along with any of my brothers or him, so leaving was not a problem--and I wouldn't approach them now. Past is past and I'm okay with it."
At that moment the front door opened and from down the hall, her father called out, "Hello?"
"We're back here," Isaac answered, because he didn't think Grier was going to: As she checked the security system, she suddenly looked too self- composed to speak.
As her father came into the room, the man was the opposite of his daughter: Childe was unraveled, his hair messed up like he'd been tearing at it with his hands, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy, his coat off-kilter.
"You're here," he said to Isaac in a tone full of dread. Which seemed to sugget whatever mind game Jim's buddy had played out front hadn't just been for show.
Nice trick, Isaac thought.
"I didn't tell him why I wanted him to come," Grier announced. "The cordless phone isn't secure."
Smart. So damned smart.
And as she remained quiet, Isaac decided he'd better drive the bus. Focusing on the other man, he said, "Do you still want a way out?"
Childe looked over at his daughter. "Yes, but--"
"What if there was a way to do it where . . . people"--read: Grier--"were safe."
"There isn't one. I've spent a decade trying to find it."
"You ever think of blowing the doors off Matthias?"
Grier's dad went stone still and he stared into Isaac's eyes like he was trying to see into the future. "As in . . ."
"Helping someone come forward to spill every single thing he knows about that fucker." Isaac glanced at Grier. " 'Scuse my mouth."
Childe's eyes narrowed, but the McSquinty routine wasn't in offense or mistrust. "You mean testifying?"
"If that's what it takes. Or shutting them down through back channels. If Matthias isn't in power anymore, everyone"--read: Grier--"is safe. I've turned myself in to him, but I want to take it one step farther. And I think it's about time the world got a clearer picture of what he's been up to."
Childe looked back and forth at him and Grier. "Anything. I'll do anything to get that bastard."
"Right answer, Childe. Right answer."
"And I can come forward, too--"
"No, you can't. That's my one stipulation. Set up the meetings, tell me who to go to, and then disappear from the mess. Unless you agree, I'm not going to do it."
He let dear old Dad put up a fight about that and spent the time looking at Grier in his peripheral vision. She was staring at her father, and though she stayed quiet, Isaac was willing to guess that the great chill was defrosting a little: Hard not to respect her old man, because he was dead serious about blabbing--if given the chance, he was prepared to spill everything he knew as well.
Unfortunately for him, however, the choice wasn't his. If this plan went tits up, Grier didn't need to lose the only family she had left.
"Sorry," Isaac said, cutting off the chatter. "That's the way it's going to be--because we don't know how this is going to go and I need you . . . to still be standing at the end. I want you to leave as few fingerprints as possible on the rollout. You're already more involved than I feel comfortable with. Both of you. "
Childe shook his head and held up a hand. "Now, hear me out--"
"I know you're a lawyer, but it's time to stop arguing. Now."
That gave the man pause, as if he wasn't used to being addressed in that kind of tone. But then he said, "All right, if that's what you insist."
"It is. And it's my only nonnegotiable."
"Okay."
The guy paced around. And paced around. And . . . then he stopped right in front of Isaac.
Holding up a hand to his chest, he formed a circle with his forefinger and thumb. Then he spoke, his words crystal clear and tinged with appropriate anxiety. "Oh, God, what am I thinking . . . I can't do this. This is not right. I'm sorry, Isaac . . . I can't do it. I can't help you."
Just as Grier opened her mouth, Isaac caught her and squeezed her wrist to shut her up: Her father was now surreptitiously pointing in the direction of what had to be the basement stairs.
"Are you sure," Isaac asked him in a warning tone. "I need you and I think you're making a huge mistake."
"You're the one making a mistake, son. And I'd be calling Matthias right this second if you hadn't already done it yourself. I will not be a part of any conspiracy against him--and I refuse to help you." Childe let out a curse. "I need a drink."
With that, he turned away and headed across the room.
At which point, Grier grabbed the front of Isaac's windbreaker and yanked him head-to-head with her. In a nearly silent hiss, she said, "Before either of you even thinks of hitting me with another round of classified-info crap, you can shut it."
Isaac popped his brows clear to his hairline as her father opened the door to the cellar.
Shit, he thought. But she obviously was not going to budge on this one. Besides, maybe being involved would help her and her father patch things up. "Ladies first," Isaac whispered, indicating the way with a gallant hand.