Page 35 of Passion and Payback

I nodded, thinking for a moment. “The pipe probably wasn’t necessary, but the knife was a good idea. The cops probably aren’t going to look too heavily into the death of a known drug dealer. They’re pretty good at making enemies, and it’s way too much work for them to hunt down a specific killer when there are dozens of potential suspects.”

“I wouldn’t be high on the list?” he asked in the same tone someone would ask about the difference between shirt fabrics.

“If this had happened a few months after you were attacked, probably. But over two years later? When you’ve done nothing but quietly live your life? No, they’re going to see the mess, talkabout how the city keeps going to shit, and then chuck him into the ground and move on, probably glad someone did the hard work for them.”

A new light flashed into his eyes as he looked at me. “Their hard work for them.”

I gave him a dry smile. “Come on, Hunter, we grew up in this city. You know how many dirtbags, dealers, rapists, and killers there are. Too many get away with never seeing the business end of the law. What good cops are left end up burned out as they watch all their work go to shit or go nowhere. The burned-out ones don’t care anymore. The corrupt ones are always looking for the next one to line their pockets and keep the wheel turning.”

“I wonder how many pockets I emptied tonight,” he wondered casually.

“Enough to piss some people off, but not enough to make a difference,” I told him with a shrug. “In the end, the cycle’s going to keep going. Someone else will take the bastard’s place, and the wheel turns again.”

“Kind of a shame, isn’t it?” he asked with a shake of his head. “Having people out there who get away with all this shit.”

“We’ve known that since we were kids, Hunter. Nothing short of death will stop some of these shitheads.”

“Yeah. I wonder how many other people they’ve hurt…ruined.”

“They?”

“The other three.”

“The…three that attacked you and Lucas.”

“Yes,” it came out as a hiss, and that strange light returned to his eyes.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, feeling I had no choice but to give him the truth. I didn’t think the truth would do him much good,but a lie would serve him even less. “Probably more. They’ll probably do it again. They’re protected, you saw that.”

“That I did,” he said, draining his glass and setting it down with a thoughtful expression.

“Hunter…” I began, wondering where his head was at.

The light cleared as he looked at me, and some of the familiar Hunter returned. This one was nervous and worried, but it was still the man I recognized. “You don’t seem bothered by what I just told you.”

“Oh! Oh, trust me, I’mplentybothered by just about everything you told me. From the truth of the night of your attack all the way down to you being in that goddamn alley by yourself.”

“Yeah, I figured I’d get chewed out for that.”

“At some point in the future,” I told him with a brief flash of a smile. “But if you’re asking if I’m bothered by the fact that you ended someone tonight…well, yes, I am bothered, but not in the way you might be worried about.”

“I don’t even know what I’m worried about,” he said with a snort. “Trying to figure out what’s going on in my head is like trying to solve a puzzle, and someone keeps knocking the table.”

“Look,” I began, moving toward him now it felt like he was ready for someone to be closer. “I hate that you had to go through that tonight. I hate that you had to deal with the horror of facing that bastard alone. I hate that you were attacked. And most of all, I hate that it came down to you having to choose between your life and his. But I don’t hate that he’s dead.”

“Me either,” he admitted softly. Then, the icy fog around him broke, and he slid his arm across the counter, turning his palm upward. “I don’t know what to do.”

“What you need to do is try to eat something on top of that alcohol and everything else that happened tonight,” I told him,taking his hand and giving it a firm squeeze before easing off. “Then you need to get some rest because you’ve had a long day.”

“I keep thinking there was something else I should have done.”

“What do you mean?”

“Should I have left him there? Should I have tried to hide the evidence?”

I noticed he wasn’t worried about the legal trouble that could easily come from killing someone. Not that I thought he should be worried. I had meant it when I said there was little to no chance of anyone tracing the killing back to him. But it made me think he wasn’t bothered by the moral problems of having taken another life. Either that, or he’d convinced himself he wasn’t bothered. I knew killing someone, especially up close and personal, that violently, had a way of coming back on you even when you knew what you’d done was the only option and possibly even right.

“No, you got the hell out of there and kept attention off you. Let him rot there until someone finds him and the cops get involved. I give it a couple of days after that before they lose interest in trying to figure out who did it.”

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