Page 107 of Crossover

Hardly.

Noble was risking your life to save a stranger’s. Noble was taking a career even though it collected its pay with fragments of your soul, haunting your dreams with the faces of monsters you willingly faced. And slayed.

In my book, Daniel had been the ultimate hero.

But a true hero would never help a mass murderer, no matter the conditions.

“Why?” I pressed again, leaning forward.

Daniel’s lips thinned as he avoided my gaze. “You think I wanted to do this?”

“No one had a gun to your head,” I said, the irony not lost on me as I kept my finger on the hairpin trigger.

“No,” he said. “Much worse. They put a gun to myfamily’sheads. If I didn’t cooperate, they’d be killed.”

“Just like you’re doing to mine,” I pointed out. And as for his family, “You’re a leader in the CIA. You had a powerful organization behind you that would have helped you and protected your family.”

“I thought the same thing at first,” Daniel said. “When he approached me and demanded I help him, I told him to go to hell. Repeatedly. I even documented his harassment and reported it. But when he got to my son.” He paused. “When he caused the accident that almost took my son’s life, everything changed.”

I remembered Daniel’s son’s crash. It had shaken Daniel to his core, visiting him in the ICU, and after, Daniel had seemed sullen and withdrawn. At the time, I’d chalked it up to the emotional aftermath of almost losing a child, but looking back now, I could see the clues I’d missed—that Vosch had a metaphorical gun aimed at Daniel’s loved ones.

“It’s funny how, when the gun is pointed at the people that you love the most, you’ll do anything to protect them,” Daniel said. “Even things you thought you’d never do.”

“Helping Vosch wasn’t protecting them; it was giving him more power. You should have escalated it, reported it to another organization if you needed to.”

“Vosch had moles everywhere. If he found out I was working against him, my family would be the one to pay the price.”

“They could have surrounded your family with armed security.”

“Did armed security stop my team from getting into Hunter’s home?”

How dare he bring that up.

“They could have gone into witness protection.”

“Possibly,” Daniel agreed. “But what if someone in that organization had a gun totheirfamily’s heads?”

“This is what criminal masterminds do,” I reminded him. “They incite fear and prey on it like vultures. The key to not letting them win is to not surrender to the narrative that they have all the power.”

Daniel flashed me a sad smile. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple.” My voice rose. “We all have choices to make in this world, and you took the easy way out. You’re a coward.”

He said nothing.

“Ivy told me everything you said when you held her in the basement,” I said through gritted teeth. “You were not a scared man, reluctantly surrendering to orders in that basement. You were in complete control and showed no remorse.”

“When a human being finds themself in a catastrophic situation, they go into survival mode. That’s what I’ve been doing.” Daniel rubbed his temple with his free hand.

“Is that what you tell yourself at night?”

“It’s the truth.”

“It’s a cop-out. You’re just like them,” I accused. “You have your reasons for why you’re willing to hurt innocent people, but the end result is the same. You’re a traitor to this country, to your family, and to me.”

I didn’t expect my words to penetrate the dark shield around his soul, but I could see the regret in his eyes. Maybe the old Daniel was still in there somewhere after all.

“Why did you have me kill Ivy’s father?” I demanded. Ivy and I had our suspicions based on what Daniel had told her, but I needed to hear it fromhim.

---