Page 120 of The Truths that Deceive

My arm is wet and so’s my side. And she’s talking, along with the others, but their voices are far away, like I’m hearing them from the inside of a tunnel.

The room starts to spin and go gray.

Everything gets dim and turns black as I crumple down to the floor once again.

“Calista’s okay. Not a scratch, she…”

I shoot fucking Jones a look, trying not to wince at the pain in my side. “Can I finish bleeding to death in peace?”

“You’re not bleeding to death. Not anymore. The bullet nicked an artery. You’re sewn up and on bed rest.”

I nod. “The bodies?”

“They’ll be found in the wreckage of the car. According to Forensics, the investigation is finished, they’ll have four bodies. One they can’t place, and…”

He doesn’t need to say it. We both know who it’ll be.

Johnny’s off to Washington, news of the explosion no doubt reaching him. But he’s gone. And Jones informed me he called to say all of our conclusions checked out. They’d wanted to question Riley, Brown, and the others in the car, but you can’t ask the dead and expect an answer.

Shit. I lie back, the pain’s throb setting in now that the drugs they gave me for the stitches wears off.

I don’t mind the pain.

It’s confirmation that I saved Calista’s life.

But fuck. I didn’t want her anywhere near there. What we’d learned is that this guy was greedy, depraved, and working the senator. Maybe it was the other way around because yeah, CIA goes bad, all the fucking time. Agents both retired and active can be corrupt. Like people anywhere.

But Johnny CIA turned out to be one of the good ones, and maybe even Riley is too.

Not fucking Eric T. Brown. That bastard, a man I’ve never met before, was the pin holding everything together.

And I regret his death.

Not that he’s dead, though.

How it happened. The fucker should have suffered slowly, in agony, by my hand for calling Calista a cunt, by threatening to brutally rape and kill her. If I’d been able to, I’d have taken him down and skinned him alive with a goddamn mandolin, done things to him that would make Reaper both impressed and a little jealous.

I’d have made the fucker last, screaming to his bitter end.

Instead, he pulled the fucking trigger, and I only had time to shove Calista out of the way.

“She killed him.”

“Yeah, I know.” I open an eye and look at Jones. “Get the fuck out.”

“I’m going to talk to the doctor, then I’ll be back. Don’t be an asshole.”

Closing my eyes again, I try to place the weird emptiness in me that writhes with unease.

Calista killed someone.

Yeah, I know. She’s CIA. She’s trained. Maybe not to go andzap a man in the balls for so long and hard, followed by an assault on the chest and then a shot to the head when he was already down, but she did. And I know why.

For me.

She did it for me.

And that’s something she’s going to have to live with. In her living ‘death,’ she’s going to have to fucking live with it.

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