Page 1 of Outside The Wire

1

KAVANAUGH

Shadow.

The last fucking words my father ever said to me.

My father.

Fuck. I sucked in a breath, staring at the casket in front of me as rain drizzled around us, dripping down my face. I hadn’t called him that in years. He was just another man—a scumbag who used everyone around him to get ahead. And yet, in the end, I was pretty sure he was trying to help me.

Maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe he was only trying to help himself. After all, someone was after him. He knew it. He was scared. I saw it on his face and I blew it off, taunted him even. He told me that the moment he let me in on his secret, there would be a target on his back. But they were watching all along. They knew when he met me in the bar that he was going to tell me, and they pulled the trigger before he could tell me everything.

Shadow.

I pushed away the gnawing in my gut. It couldn’t be. I didn’t want to believe that a man like that could turn on his own son and—I took a deep breath as the ceremony continued. Now wasn’t the time to think about any of this. I had a role toperform, and I didn’t want to let down the senator in his final hour.

It was probably ridiculous for me to care at all about any of this. I hadn’t cared while he was alive, so why the fuck did I care now that he was dead?

I squeezed my eyes closed as his lifeless eyes flashed through my mind. All that blood, his brains scattered across the floor…A hand squeezed mine, grounding me when I thought I would lose it. I gripped her hand tightly, knowing it was only temporary, but I took the comfort while I could.

Isla was here for me, as was Riley. My mother was practically comatose, unable to even come to the ceremony, which left it all up to me. IKE was gracious enough to lend me Isla—though I had a feeling it was more Isla telling him this was the way it had to be.

I stood in my dress uniform, feeling completely out of place as government friends and lackeys surrounded me. They were his people. I barely knew the man anymore. But he was still my father, and in the end, he had turned to me for help.

And I failed.

“Kavanaugh,” Isla whispered, drawing me out of my thoughts.

I turned and frowned as she looked at me with troubled eyes. “Yeah?”

“The service is over. We should go back to your father’s house. People will be waiting. They’re expecting you.”

Right. The food. The gathering of everyone to paw through my father’s things and pretend they knew him. The truth was, I wasn’t sure anyone really knew Alton Kavanaugh. He had so many faces, each depending on who he was talking to and what he needed from them. I only knew him as a child, and even that was tainted by his greed and corruption. I thought I remembered a time as a little kid when he smiled and seemedgenuinely happy, but maybe it was a ruse. I guess I’d never know now.

“Give me a minute.”

I released her hand and walked forward as they lowered the casket into the ground. When it stopped, I glanced at the workers and nodded. They stepped back, giving me some privacy. A few people still remained on the other side, still filing out slowly. Removing my hat, I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed as I looked around the cemetery. He would have fucking loved all the pomp and circumstance.

“I guess you still got what you wanted. Even in death, they put on a show for you. Maybe it’s not the way you wanted to go out, but—” I huffed out a laugh. “Then again, it’s probably exactly how you wanted things to end. Your name in the headlines instead of dying quietly in a nursing home somewhere, with no one remembering your name. Mom is a fucking mess. You didn’t do a very good job preparing her for this shit. She can’t seem to function without you telling her what to do.”

Huffing out a breath, I raised my eyes to the sky and wondered what the fuck I was supposed to do now. I wasn’t cut out for dealing with all this bullshit, and I had no idea how to care for my mother, who was so blinded by my father’s fake charms.

“You really—” Something glinted in the distance, just enough to catch my eye. Normally, I wouldn’t think anything of it, but my father had just been killed by a sniper, so I was feeling a tad on edge. The last of the mourners filed out of the row across from me, and then the silver glinted again in the distance, and I just fucking knew.

“Sniper! Do?—”

Pain sliced through my neck as the bullet struck. My hand instantly went to the wound as my knees gave out and I tumbledinto the grave, falling on top of the casket. Blood flowed freely through my fingers, pumping at a much faster rate than it should. If I couldn’t stop the bleeding, I was going to die right here in this fucking grave.

I pressed hard, clenching my teeth as the pain became unbearable. My vision swam as my pulse slowed considerably. Fuck, this wasn’t good.

“Kavanaugh! Fucking talk to me!”

Red. As the sky spun above me, his voice filtered in and out like an echo chamber. Colors moved in swirling patterns and the sharp points of the tree branches became nothing more than fuzzy blobs of brown. I felt my fingers start to slide down my neck, unable to hold them in place any longer.

My breathing grew ragged, but not so painful anymore. It would be just like going to sleep. I just had to close my eyes and everything would be over.

“Goddamnit! FNG, get the fuck over here now!”

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