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“Where do you want to go?”
It’s a heavy question. We used to be able to wander the world and go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted to. With Snake Eyes exposed, that’s a little more difficult to do.
“St. Louis?” I suggest.
He tilts his head and nods. “Sounds good to me. It’s been a while since we’ve seen them.”
We stand up off the dock. I brush a little bit of dirt off my pajama slacks as we trudge through the solid bushes of weeds between the lake and the house. I have half the mind to stick around and help clear this place out but there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring. There might not be a point in making this place as beautiful as it used to be if we have to drop everything to be on the run at a moment’s notice.
But that’s the life that chose us.
Secrets always see the light of day and something as big as Snake Eyes couldn’t be kept hidden forever. Gun to the head, I’d have to admit that I felt a sudden rush of relief the moment the news broke.
Terrorist group exposed.
We aren’t terrorists. At least, not in the ways most think when they hear the word. We provide a service to those who can afford it. Intelligence. Covert ops. Assassinations. Every major power in the world has dipped their toe into Snake Eyes at one point in time but no one will ever admit it. The Boss has kept a record of every transaction since the group’s inception. Every name, every target, every dollar exchanged. It was called the master file.
And it was stolen.
Fox Fitzpatrick. A sniper from my big brother’s squad. I met him a few times. Quiet, handsome in that boy next door kind of way, but he didn’t belong. Dante couldn’t see that, though. He and Fox were friends, or as close to friends as you can get to someone you occasionally travel the world and kill people with. Drinking buddies, mostly.
When he disappeared nine months ago on a mission, something didn’t feel right. They found traces of his blood in a warehouse in Rome and everyone assumed the Russian mobster he was sent to kill got to him first.
A squad of Snake Eyes agents was wiped out in Russia shortly after, sending up red flags throughout the entire organization. Dante’s squad tracked down their cargo plane in the woods outside of Moscow. The vocal recorder in the cockpit had been destroyed but our tech team managed to retrieve three seconds of audio.
“We thought you were dead.”
“I am.”
It was Fox. Two little words gave him away.
The Lutrova crime family started picking off agents one-by-one after that. They weren’t quiet about it, either. They wanted us to know who they were, what they were doing, and why. No agent was safe.
That’s when we discovered the data leak. When Fox took off, he didn’t go empty-handed. He took the master file with him and he traded it to the Russians to save his own skin.
A traitor and a coward. Just like I always suspected.
Afterward, Dante was sent to Chicago to infiltrate the notorious Zappia crime family. The Lutrovas and the Zappias have a rich history and it was possible the Russians passed their Snake Eyes knowledge on to the Italians. The rest of us got to work. The entire organization united under one common goal: Find and kill Fox Fitzpatrick. We have a special term for when a rogue agent needs to be put down.
It’s called a Code Black.
Months went by and the Boss got impatient. She put more pressure on the leader of Dante’s squad, Mercer, to fix the problem he started when he recruited Fox in the first place.
Mercer and his squad headed to Los Angeles where Fox grew up. Go after his family and lure him out of hiding. It worked but, in the end, Fox’s famous stepsister ended up in the hospital and Fox disappeared again, leaving little trace behind.
If I were a betting woman, I’d wager that they found Fox, but they didn’t live to speak of it. Mercer was taken down by the killer he created. It’s almost poetic.
I think about how easy it could have been for Dante to be there and it makes me sick. They may have been drinking buddies once but I’ve no doubt in my mind that Fox would have put a bullet in my brother’s brain without a second thought.
Elijah pushes open the back door and holds it for me. We step into the house and ancient memories flash in my head the moment I inhale a breath. Sitting at the dinner table with my brothers and our grandparents. Sprawled out on the couch watching cartoons on one of the four channels we got out here. Sprinting down the dock to cannonball into the lake.
A happy childhood to anyone on the outside looking in, but it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, I’ll tell you that much.
“Hey, guys. You hungry?”
I smile at the girl standing in front of the stove. Brown-haired, green-eyed Lucy Vaughn. My big brother’s girlfriend and honorary Hart — until Dante makes it official. And he will if he knows what’s good for him.
Lucy grabs a package of bacon from the fridge and sets it down to pick at an itch beneath the bandage on her wrist.
