Page 104 of Striker

“You father’s sins.” Reaper lifts the corner of a piece of paper, then glances at me. I could swear it’s like he doesn’t wantto show me the contents, but that would be a foolish thought. I’m here because of whatever that file contains.

“Sins that can be linked to him?” I ask. My father is good at covering his tracks. Hell, I’m good at covering his tracks.

Reaper doesn’t answer. He picks up a thick sheet from the file and lays it on the table, sliding it in front of me.

I lean over to examine the picture. A large wooden lodge with a green metal roof, massive sheets of glass for windows, and thick pillars framing carved wooden doors take up the entire image.

My brows knit. “That’s my father’s lodge.” Even though I’ve never been, he has enough pictures of him and his friends on this same front porch that I recognize it. Although after Cora’s parents died, he removed all the framed photographs of them from the walls.

“It is,” Reaper says and sets down a picture of my father next to a large buck hanging upside down from a pole. “His members only lodge.”

That unease I felt walking down here roils in my stomach. “Why are you showing me these?”

Reaper places another image in front of me. “Our father used the land for the final test when he started the school.”

My head jerks up to him.Father? School?

“The final test,” Reaper says. “The wilderness, Father called it. It was how we proved ourselves. How we showed our father we were ready.”

“Ready for what?” I ask. But I take in his uniform and his mask and I already know. Ready to be killers. Guns for hire. Trained to kidnap, kill, do whatever. I’ve heard of men like them, mercenaries that will take any job that pays high enough, not caring about politics or justice.

Not caring about fairness or morals.

Money. That was it. Money and power.

But the one lesson my father taught me that sticks more than the others was once you accepted money for doing a job, a part of you was always in debt. Rune always said just because you were paid for it doesn’t mean things are settled. Someone still knows what you did for money. Or worse, what you paid someone else to do.

My gaze slips down to the images, my head whirling with questions. “So Rune knew about this…” My mind trips over the word. “This school and…”

“The wilderness,” he says for me. “We would complete our final task of surviving on our own, with no weapons, nothing but the few clothes on our backs for a week. We would have to…” his voice trails off, but then he says, “Father would use the land and Rune would turn a blind eye, promising no interference.”

I shake my head, none of his words settling. “I don’t understand.”

“Rune and our father used to be close,” Reaper says, laying down another image.

This one looks different from the others, so I lean over, trying to make out what I’m seeing. At first, it’s just shades of black and cream and slashes of rusty red. Placing my hands back on the table, I stand, leaning over the image, trying to make sense of it. Then I see it.

My hand flies to my mouth, and I stumble back, my legs hitting the chair.

He catches it before it falls over. “Sick, yes?”

My gaze snaps to Reaper. Bile rises in my throat and for a second I think I might vomit, so I sit back down, inhaling slowly through my nose.

Reaper places another image next to the first. Like I can’t control my eyes, they move to it and I regret it immediately, but I can’t look away.

“You said they were close?” I ask, my gaze snapping to him, his words finally breaking through.

“Yes. Past tense.” Reaper lays out another picture, and this one is worse than the others. I grip the table, trying to keep focused on his words.

“Friends?” I say, my eyes bouncing from the images to Reaper, trying to sort through my memories but coming up blank. I know all my father’s friends and associates. “You saidusedto be.”

Reaper’s eyes seem to darken, like they’re suddenly full of shadows. “Close friends until our father took a job he would later regret.”

Reaper slips another image onto the table and I can’t look at anymore, so I focus on Reaper’s mocking skull mask and black eyes.

“Then,” his eyes flicker away and I swear I see something flash in them, but he lays another image down. “Rune had an idea.” He slides another picture toward me and I suck in a breath. “He thought of a way to make the wilderness a little more exciting.”

Bile stings my throat. He places another and another until I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t help. They are all I can see. Pieces. Fragments. Bits of people chopped up, limbs torn from carcasses. Bodies riddled with bullets. Pretty floral nightgowns soaked in blood, molded to small breasts and creamy thighs.

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