Page 67 of Leading Conviction
“No.”
Eagle frowned. “No?”
“I said ‘no,’ soldier. Are those two letters beyond your vocabulary?”
Eagle sputtered, “Butwhy? I’m telling you we’re done. We can’t keep doing this anymore. Get someone else, General. The better part of a decade is our limit. This whole operation has become something we never signed on for. Hell, our contracts are up already.”
“And I’m telling you your limit is when I say it is. I’ve put a lot of time and money into your team and you’ve proven to be quite useful in my little operation.”
Eagle’s pulse skyrocketed as he put the General’s words together.
Shit.
Maybe he hadn’t been paranoid enough.
Eagle cleared his throat, trying to figure out how he could word his next argument. If the General was profiting off of the women Eagle’s team was “saving,” then the man was more than an asshole with a power trip. He was fucking evil.
“Look, sir. I’m telling you that whatever youthinkI know, I don’t. And I’ll keepnotknowing as long as you do this for me, if you catch my drift. My team is tired. We deserve to go home, move on with our lives, buy homes with white picket fences, marry, have two-point-five kids and all that shit.”
He swallowed, knowing what he said next was against everything he stood for, but it had to be done.
“If you can give us that, then I won’t go to anyone. I won’t even tell my own team what we’ve been doing. We’ll come home and live life. They’ll die happy thinking we helped make the world a better place, and I’ll die taking this secret to my grave.” He waited for a second, analyzing the General’s thoughtful face before continuing. “What do you say?”
The General nodded and hope sparked in Eagle’s chest. The man gathered the photographs he’d been inspecting when Eagle arrived and studied them once more before turning one around.
“Funny you should mention kids.”
He shoved the paper to the end of his wooden desk and Eagle leaned forward to take the photograph. His racing pulse stopped cold as the blood running through his veins turned to ice.
“What the fuck is this?”
“That.” General Smithers tapped the photograph. “That is your son.”
Eagle’s eyes widened to the point of pain. He couldn’t tear them away from the photo. It showed a beautiful, raven-haired woman outside of an elementary school with a canvas bag covered in paint stains slung over her shoulder. She walked hand in hand with a blond-haired boy… who looked just like Eagle.
Hannah… with my—
“My son?”
I have a son?
The thought made his chest light with pride until that night with Hannah flashed into his mind.
It’d been a while since he’d thought about the details further than the regret that still tinged the memory. He’d been so excited he’d finally get his chance with her that he’d completely forgotten to put a condom on. And then he’d never fucking talked to her again.
I’m such a piece of shit.
“Yes, soldier, that’s your son. And here…” He pushed another photograph, this time one taken by the angry-looking man in the picture. He sat in the driver’s side of a van at an angle that showed a modest bungalow through the window behind him. “Here is a picture of one of my Russian partners. He took this less than half an hour ago and I printed it out for your benefit. You can’t tell, of course, but he’s sitting outside my daughter’s house with a brick of C-4, ready to plant it underneath the brat’s Braves-themed bed if this meeting doesn’t go well.”
“What the fuck, Richard.” Eagle spat the General’s first name like poison. “That’s your own goddamn grandson. How could you threaten him like that?”
General Smithers shrugged. “Quite easily, I assure you. You see, Hannah is my pride and joy. The sweet, innocent girl you and Hawkins Blackdefiled. I created an operation to steal whores from my competitors to fuel my own enterprise, and I usedyourteam. Not because you are ‘the best of the best’ as you pathetically refer to yourselves, but to make suremyHannah could stay just that.Mine. You think I would want her to keep your bastard child? Surely, you understand there are no limits to what I would do to protect my daughter from vermin like you. Just ask her mother. Or, I guess you could have… before her ‘heart attack.’”
“Her mother?” Eagle asked, swallowing back bile as he choked the information down.
“Poor woman died on the spot. After propofol helped her along, of course.”
“You killed your own wife?Why?”
