Page 16 of Savage Reckoning

“You liar!” I march up into his space and poke my finger into the middle of his chest. “Even now, you can’t stop lying. I saw your personal file.”

“My doctored personal file, a file describing a fictitious individual. Ed Baker doesn’t exist. He never did. Neither does the famous Mrs Baker you got so worked up about.’’

“Ed Baker looked pretty real to me.”

“It was a cover ID. My real name is Gabriel Sawyer.”

“So you say.”

“I was operating undercover back then.”

“On a military base? That’s—”

“That’s what happens when sensitive medical supplies are mysteriously disappearing. It was my job to find the leak.”

“What supplies?” I snort.

“Opiates mainly. Some narcotics. It had to be someone in the medical corps supplying an organised ring operating within the military itself. My assignment was to make it my business to hang around there and let it be known I’d be interested in buying.”

“Assignment?”

“Yes. Like I say, I was operating undercover.”

“But, I never—”

“You weren’t a suspect, Megan. Your boss was, in fact, and I was able to prove it. I wrapped up the case not long after you and I… split up. He’s doing ten years for it, probably in your old cell.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Easy to check. I bet your friend, Casey, could hack into US military personnel records.”

I pause, my mouth open. He’s right about Casey. Could any of this be true?

“But why did you…? I mean, you and me? If it was all just an act…?”

“It wasn’t. At least, not for long. I targeted you at first, sure, I needed a reason to spend so much time hanging around the medics, and you were by far the best company of all of them. But somewhere along the way it became… more complicated.”

“You told me you loved me. You convinced me we had a future together. And all the while you were playing some sort of role. If anything, that’s worse than if you were actually married. It was still cheating.”

“I’m sorry. It didn’t start out that way.”

“You were deceiving me all along. I believed we were… we were…”

“In love?” His smile is crooked. “Well, weren’t we?”

“One of us was,” I exclaim, all the old bitterness returning, so pungent I can actually taste it. “You hurt me…”

His grin widens. “I could tell. I still have the scars to prove it.”

“And now you just think it’s funny. You can scoff about it. Are you proud of yourself?”

“I had a job to do. I was good at it. Still am. But I never set out to hurt you. I’m not proud of that.”

“So, what was I? Collateral damage. Expendable? A means to an end?”

“I know how it looks.”

“How it was,” I correct him. “You were deceiving me all along.”

---