Page 27 of His Reluctant Savior

“Who’s this?”

Sid took the picture from me. “I’ll tell you, but you better take it to your grave.”

“I will.”

“This is my apprentice.”

“You… teach thisboyto kill?”

Sid glanced at me with an unreadable face. “Your soap box is getting tall, Dalt. He was already a killer before he reached me. I either took him in or let him die. He killed someone close to him, and rightfully so, but she was connected to some important people.”

“She?”

He nodded. “His mother was an abusive piece of shit. His father was useless. I took him in when he was fifteen, and he’s been with me for nearly three years. I’ve been his mentor and a father figure. Easton is… special, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Sid put the picture back down and held out his hand. “Give me the USB,” he said.

“How do you know I brought it with me?”

He gave me a deadpan look, but I was more focused on the blueness of his eyes.

I sighed, dug into the pocket of my jeans, pulled out one of two USBs that I held as evidence, and placed it on his palm. The other was stashed elsewhere.

Sid plugged it into a USB port.

“It all started with that video,” I explained.

He nodded. “You said someone sent this to you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know who?”

“No, and there’s someone who’s watching over me, but I have no idea who. At first, I assumed it was you when I saw you sitting on my car outside the bank.”

He looked at me with furrowed brows. “It wasn’t me. At least we know you have an ally and someone who doesn’t want tobe known.”

I nodded. “My suspicions are the person who sent me the video and who warned me are one and the same.”

“You could be right. They were probably there that night, too.”

“Security detail for the Speaker, possibly?”

He pondered for a moment before shrugging. “Maybe. But why reach out to you personally? Do you know anyone on his detail? Why not send the video to the Department of Justice?”

“I don’t know anyone. But they must have known something I didn’t. The DOJ can’t be trusted. I’m proof of that.”

“Then why didn’t they warn you not to turn anything in to the DOJ that tossed you into this mess in the first place? Okay, so we can rule out the security detail. The person is someone familiar to you and trusts you to send the evidence on to the right people.”

I sighed, racking my brain about who could’ve been there that night that I knew personally, but I came up blank. “I know a lot of people in the government. It’s hard to say.”

Sid pressed play, folded his arms, and leaned into me. We sat close, our shoulders touching like he was drawn to me and hadn’t realized he was doing it. My breath caught for a moment, but I didn’t move.

My eyes reluctantly moved to the monitor to experience the horror about to unfold once again. No matter how many times I watched that video, it still made me sick. I’d lost count of how many times I’d seen it. I recalled every movement, reaction, and tear shed… Even worse, the video had sound.

Jonathan Rush, Speaker of the House and third in line to the Presidency of the United States, stood tall at six feet six inches but was lean like a runner. He was handsome at sixty-two years oldwith salt-and-pepper hair. He was alone in a private room, sipping a drink from a crystal tumbler, sitting in a large cushioned chair, and waiting as he scrolled on his phone.

Fuck, I wanted to close my eyes to the coming violence, but I had every single detail that was about to unfold memorized.

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