Page 19 of Assistant to the Assassin

to the realm of the dead,

for evil finds lodging among them.”

Psalms 55:15 (King James Version)

My Heart Feels Like a Ghost

In Ian’s plane, the trip from Manchester to Miami will be about five hours long, and it’s evident only twenty minutes in that this will be a painfully awkward trip.

Back when I was in the SEALs, Ian was the closest thing I had to a friend. With every member of my team, there was a respect and fondness I held for them, but something about Ian’s gentle-giant stoic manner made me drop my guard a little more than I did with anyone else. It made the decision to leave the teams that much harder.

I don’t blame him for being pissed. In his eyes, I look like a guy that abandoned his oath and his team because I hated rules, but it runs so much deeper than that, too deep for me to be able to disclose. He’ll just have to live with the assumptions he’s made about me, and I have to live with the fact that I’ve lost his respect.

“How did you know I was in Manchester?” Ian asks quietly, his voice drowned in static from the headsets he and I wear.

I see no point in lying, so I answer, “I’ve kept tabs on you since I left. Besides, you always mentioned wanting to retire someplace you could read and drink tea in peace. Worsley, Manchester is the epitome of that.”

“Great, so because you stalked me and dragged me into your shit, I am now forced to become an outcast like you. Thanks a lot,” he deadpans.

I rub my tongue against the inside of my cheek, trying to check my annoyance. “Is this whole trip going to be a lecture? Because if so, I’m going to jump into the ocean.”

He rolls his eyes. “This is my plane, and I will say whatever the fuck I want in it, especially since I’m carting your ass for free.”

“You think I wanted to go to you for help?” I ask, keeping my eyes trained on the dark sky around us. “Desperation and fear are what brought me to your doorstep, but not for myself, for Beth.”

His eyebrows quirk up at that. “So, Beth is her name. It’s pretty.” He steals a glance at me, something akin to wonder shining there. “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never been afraid of anything. It’s odd to hear you talk about fear so candidly.”

I’m always afraid, I think to myself. I wouldn’t be alive if I weren’t.

“I’ve never had something to lose before,” I say, shocked by my own honesty. I guess some things never change; I still have no filter around Beast. He just has a way of drawing information out of you without you realizing it, something we had used to our advantage against our enemies. No one could interrogate as well as him.

“How did you meet her?” he asks softly, genuinely interested.

“She was an analyst at the CIA. We worked together on a case, and I admired her ability to read my body language and emotions. She saw my assets and setbacks and adjusted accordingly to make us a team. When I went to work for myself, I asked her to come with me, and she said yes.”

“Are the two of you together?”

I shake my head. “That’s not in the cards.”

I see Ian roll his eyes out of my peripheral vision. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met that’s determined to be miserable.”

I huff a laugh at that. “Don’t you think I deserve to be miserable?”

He’s silent for a moment, then he says, “I don’t agree with what you’ve chosen to do as a profession, and I don’t agree with your shredded threads of a moral code, but you’re not so fallen that there’s no hope for you to rise again.”

“Who says I want to rise again?” I counter.

“You probably don’t.” He shrugs. “But the fact that you’re giving up everything to protect the woman you love tells me that you’re still a good man deep down.”

It warms me to know that his good opinion of me isn’t completely obliterated, but I can’t help but hesitate in agreeing with him. “My capability to love has nothing to do with what I am. I know where I’m bound when my life is done. I’ve made peace with it. I am okay with damning my soul if it means I can take down evil people whose retribution is held in the hands of power-hungry politicians and kings. You may think it’s wrong to enact vigilante justice, and in a perfect world, I would agree with you, but when rapists, abusers, sex traffickers, and predators are the very people who make laws and enact them, then evil runs unchecked. I refuse to stand by and do nothing.”

“So as a Catholic you’re perfectly okay with going to hell?”

A question I have asked myself many times since I decided to join this life. “The Bible says a lot of things about what makes you a sinner or a saint, but I think it’s all bullshit. Those rules were written by men, not by God. I believe that God punishes those who mean to harm others, but his justice only comes once someone dies, and how many innocent people will be harmed between now and God’s reckoning? I am fine facing my own reckoning one day if I can force others to face theirs sooner.”

Ian sighs, licking his lips. “With that ideology, you could kill anyone you wanted without remorse. You could justify horrible actions because they’re sinners in your eyes. How many innocent people, especially in America, have died because of that exact thinking?”

My nostrils flare at that. “I’m not a fucking Neo-Nazi that attacks people for being who they are. I’m a bisexual Chinese-Italian American. Those fuckers that use God to attack people like me are exactly the people I want facing God’s judgement.”

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