Page 109 of Lethal Game

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sophia regarded theman with sober eyes and said, “Can you show me a person who is without blemish, without sadness or fear? We all have flaws. Some people have visible flaws, while others hide theirs. I choose not to hide mine.”

The man stared at her, but for the first time since Con got a hold of him, his face wasn’t twisted with hate and fear. He looked...thoughtful.

“Were you trying to kill the doctor?” Con asked him.

The man reared his head back a little. “No, killing a woman is cowardly. I only wanted to destroy whatever is in that tent.”

Con relayed that information to Sophia.

“It has the tools I need to figure out the sickness that’s killing so many of the people here. Nothing else.”

The man stared at her as Con translated her words. His face relaxed a little, a frown building between his brows.

She sighed. “I admit, I’m not sure what to do next. If people in the camp are upset that he’s disappeared, should we let him go?”

He’d prefer to make the bastard disappear. Permanently. It was guys like this who killed his friends, his teammates. It was guys like this who thought they were on some holy crusade, that their deaths meant something, when all they really were was cannon fodder.

“Do you have a wife and children?” Con asked him.

“Yes,” the man answered.

“Are they sick?”

“No.”

Well, fuck. It would be so much easier if he could just kill the guy and leave him to be found in the desert.

Something on his face must have told Sophia what he was thinking, because she lowered her voice and said, “He’s an important person in this community. You can’t just kill him and drop him in a hole. We need to build trust.”

She was right.

He nodded, then stood and gestured for the local man to get up. “Go,” Con told him in a clear, cold voice. “If you come back and try to attack us again, I will kill you.”

The man lay still and silent for a moment, then scrambled to his feet and backed away, never taking his eyes off Con. After a few steps, darkness consumed him

“I can’t decide if that was a good idea or not,” Sophia said staring after him.

---