Page 39 of Secrets

“I was just supposed to kill the oldest brother. He was the only one who could think clearly. The others were a little slow. As it turned out, their mother was actually their sister.”

“Jesus,” muttered Ian.

“Yep. There were like twenty kids in a barn when I got there. I told them to run toward town but to tell everyone they got away. Those kids never told anyone that I was there.”

“What did you do?” asked Gaspar.

“I couldn’t let those men live. They were disgusting. It was why I didn’t care that Tick died. He would have done thesame thing to Millie. Millicent. They lived in this old farmhouse that looked as if one good wind would knock it over.

“It was late at night, so I poured gasoline around the base of the house and lit it on fire. I waited to see if anyone would come out. Sure enough, one-by-one they walked out of that hellhole. I picked them off like ducks in a carnival. Not one of them had a stitch of clothing on.”

“I can get with that form of punishment,” said Nine. But when Jay looked up with tears in his eyes, he knew it wasn’t the end of the story.

“I was just a kid. Seventeen. I was a good shot. A great shot, but I didn’t think it all through. They got out and died, but they had children inside the house tied to their beds. I killed innocent children.”

“Fuck, Jay,” said Ghost. “Listen, you couldn’t have known. We trained for years to think about all the possible scenarios, and we still fucked things up now and then. You’re no different. You had no training. You were a damn kid yourself. Besides, who knows what they did to those kids. Maybe you did them all a favor.”

“It’s the only thing that’s kept me from killing myself,” said Jay. “I just thought, I hope I gave them peace.”

“Jay, no man is free of guilt. Not one,” said Gabe. Gaspar turned to look at his brother, who recently had been laying down some pretty heavy knowledge and peace himself. “Do you pray?”

Jay frowned at the man, then looked at Gaspar and Nine. They said nothing to him.

“I didn’t use to. I’ve found myself doing more praying lately,” he said.

“The Bible would tell us that guilt, sin, is the opportunity for man to seek repentance. Just the fact that you feel some guilt tells me that there’s still a good man in there.”

“I wish I could believe you,” said Jay. “Indiana has the death penalty. Illinois doesn’t, but you can be sure they’ll move me to a prison in Indiana since I did a lot of work there. I won’t have much time to be repentant.”

“We’ll try to help with that, Jay,” said Jean. “Can you tell me how you figured out how to invest in cryptocurrency? It’s a complicated system, and your sister said you didn’t finish high school.”

“I got my GED,” he said. “Dad wanted me done with school and available, but I wanted to have my high school diploma. After a while, I started taking classes online. He didn’t know about it because he didn’t care. Then one day, in the finance class I was taking, they started teaching us about something new.”

“Crypto,” said Jean.

“Yes, sir. I figured this was the only way to hide all the money and make sure that it went to Millicent. Of course, I didn’t realize until later that it could also make her look guilty in everything. For a long time, I thought Fowler could help her. Then when I discovered that he was working with Mom and the others, I knew I was screwed.”

“Fowler resigned from the bureau this morning,” said Ian. Jay looked up at him, surprised by the statement. “I think he knows it was us that got you out, and he’s not willing to risk anything. If that’s true, that means he was alone in the bureau on this.”

“Where is he? Where did he go?” asked Jay. “He might try to come for Millicent.”

“Jay, do you even know where you are?” smirked Gaspar.

“N-no. I mean,” he started looking around the space and out the darkened windows. “No. Why don’t I know where I am? Where am I?”

“You’re in our compound at an undisclosed location. No one knows where it is. No one. Not the bureau, not the agency, not the POTUS. We decided a long time ago that we’d given enough to our country. We weren’t going to risk the lives of our family and friends.

“This property, this compound, keeps us all safe. We have technologies that no one else in the world possesses, which is probably why Fowler bailed on your mother.”

“I don’t care about any of that any longer. I just want my sister to be safe. I’ve screwed everything up. All of it. My life, her life, everything. I can’t make it right.”

“You can help to make it right,” said Jean. “There are some things that you can do that will make it okay. Maybe not for you, but for Millicent and any children she has.”

“What do I do?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“What do I need to do?” asked Millicent.

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