Page 25 of Passion and Payback

“Apparently. So they were using him for information, and he was still passing along information to the cell.”

“Yeppers. He didn’t know what they were doing with the information since it was enough to move on the cell, but I think I know.”

“What’s that?”

“I think they were trying to get information from him about other cells. Sure, they all operated independently to prevent that kind of thing, but we’d learned a while ago that many cells, if not most, tend to break that rule. You just have to find the weak point in the system, and it’s usually whoever is giving them information but not part of the cell.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because members of the cell are obvious to anyone looking for them. But informants in the local population? Those blend in and are harder to track. What was so odd about him in the first place was the way he stood out with our intel. Little did we know, Command had a bigger idea in mind.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I learned to take that attitude later, but then? No. All I saw in my head was the revenge I thought was due. For what he helped do to my squad and others, what he helped do to Lucas, and everything that had happened to me because of it.”

“Do you disagree with that?”

“Hm?”

“Now. Time has passed. You’ve got to think about it. Do you regret it now?”

“Look,” I said, not wanting to encourage the discussion but knowing I was in too deep to leave it now. “That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing to do. So many things could have gone wrong, and I’m damn lucky they didn’t. Not to mention, I screwed upthe OPs in that area, and who knows how many people paid the price for that decision.”

“That’s not the same as regretting it,” he noted, watching me intensely.

I sucked in a breath. “Do I regret doing it? No. Did it scare me shitless after I thought about it? Definitely.”

“Because you were capable of it?” he wondered.

“No,” I said, bowing my head slightly. “Anyone’s capable of doing what I did. I’ll never let anyone say they wouldn’t be because all it takes is the right motivation.”

“The right motivation?”

“What I did to that man was bloody and awful,” I told him, trying to hold his gaze so he would understand what I was trying to say, understand the gravity of it. “Rage is not enough. Even hatred isn’t enough. It’s…it’s something else entirely, and I’m not even sure we have a word for it. But it’s something very specific, something that makes you look past all the normal stuff designed to make us avoid doing that shit to another person. It’s an ugly, monstrous thing that lives inside all of us, and you don’t usually see it unless you’re desensitized to violence.”

“Like being a soldier,” he said.

“Yeah. Or also, in my case, you see something so horrible and heartbreaking that it changes something inside you for good.”

“I see.”

The worst part was I believed him. He did see. He had already been talking about the things that had changed in his life since the attack and the loss of Lucas. I would have been shocked if his thoughts hadn’t turned bloody and violent. Hunter had always been sweet, but weak or scared was not something I would have called him. There was a core of iron in him, and as I knew personally, that inner strength was precisely what could twist up inside him and lash out at the world.

“And what scared me,” I said, making sure I still had his attention as I continued to explain, “was the understanding that this wasn’t just a one-and-done thing. What I had done had awakened something inside me that I would have to deal with for the rest of my life. If I didn’t stop myself then, and believe me, it wasn’t easy because he had friends I was sure were helping him, I wouldnever stop.”

“You make it sound alive,” he said with a little laugh, tipping more liquor into his glass and holding the bottle out to me.

“It’s…I don’t know. It feels like it’s conscious sometimes, alright? I don’t know how to explain it. Unless someone’s done it,” I began and shook my head. “I managed to win out over it. I suppose being stationed somewhere else helped a lot. But even then, I got to thinking about other people in the new area who might be just like him, who might be helping to cause us even more pain. And then…well, temptation kicked in.”

“But you managed to do it?”

“I did, yeah.”

“Well, that’s what counts, right?”

“That’s true.”

He smiled at me. “Don’t worry so much, it’s not like you. It’s not like I’m going to judge you for it, Kai. I wasn’t in your position. I didn’t go through what you did. So I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you were wrong when I just…my whole sense of right and wrong might be screwy. Maybe it always has been. But I do know you’re not a monster and never have been. To me, you’re the same man you were before you told me that story.”

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