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“Is it—what he did with Hunter Meridian, what he went looking for with him—is that what you two…?”
“Yes.” Travis looks me right in the eye, clearly not ashamed and fully willing to defend himself. “I’m his dom and his boyfriend.”
I stir the microwaved rice around the flimsy plastic plate, processing that. It’s a confirmation more than anything, since I had already suspected as much. Still… it’s a lot.
“You’ll keep him safe.” It’s not a question or a request. It’s an order. A threat.
Travis looks me right in the eye when he responds, deadly serious. “Always.”
“Okay.”
He fiddles with the tab of his energy drink can for a moment, his eyebrows pulling together. “Speaking of Hunter, we ran into him at the art gallery.”
“You and Carter? Ran into Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“In a completely different town than the town Carter first met him in? A completely different town than the one where we found him?”
Travis rolls his eyes. “Slow down. I can already see you starting up a conspiracy theory in your head. Remember what Ace said? He’s a professor at Carter’s college and has a place there too. One of the subs Carter met at the party is in Hunter’s friend group. He’s an art student who was having an exhibit at the gallery. It was a coincidence, but it checks out.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You just don’t like him.”
“Well, that too.” I shoot him a look. “Wait, do you like him? He and Carter…”
He makes a face. “Yeah, I’m aware. I mean, they didn’t—but they—yeah. But I still like him. I think we might start hanging out with him and his friends a little. I think it’d be good for us.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure how I feel about that. He’s right, it is good for them. Good for Carter. I already know he’s making friends from his job and school. It makes sense he’d make friends in the… kink community.
I’m still going to take a much closer look at Meridian first, just to be sure Trav’s instincts are right and there’s nothing suspicious going on.
“Landing in ten,” Keats announces from where he’s exiting the cockpit. He slumps down in a chair and cracks open yet another energy drink.
“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack, old man,” Jake teases.
Keats looks him right in the eye and starts chugging his drink. He doesn’t stop until it’s gone.
“Gonna be one of those kinds of missions,” Travis mumbles.
I sigh. “Looks like it.”
Sometimes I forget how good I am at the game of pretend. It’s easy now that I’m not practicing it all the time like before. But then Travis says he doesn’t want me to interrogate Quinton because he wants to keep me clean, and I remember. He looks devastated by the idea of me leaving this mission sullied, so I don’t have the heart to tell him that I’ve done much worse than what he probably plans to do to the man. Instead, I let him believe his version of the story. It’s better for him.
Besides, it gives the selfish bastard in me time to text Nolan. We’ve fallen into a conversation that’s strangely part-flirtation, part-memes, and part-genuine. I don’t see Quinton breaking any time soon, so I figure it’s not entirely terrible of me to allow part of my attention to stray to my phone.
Keats and I sit and watch Travis’s first round of interrogation while Jake pulls guard duty for the exterior of the building. Travis has barely begun before Keats looks over at me and asks, “Why didn’t you correct Travis?”
“About what?”
“About not being clean.” When I look over at him with a frown, Keats raises a single brow at me. “He may have buried his head in the sand and focused on his own shit, but I’m fully aware of everything you’ve done over the years, Mais. He asked you if you’ve ever killed someone up close. If you’ve ever looked into their eyes, felt their pulse, smelled their breath as you took their life.”
“He also asked me if I’ve ever raped someone, and I haven’t.”
He rolls his eyes. “Just because you haven’t done that doesn’t mean you haven’t done shit. I mean, you let him paint you as this desk jockey who hasn’t seen any real action. Who hasn’t made any sacrifices. It’s bullshit.”
“It’s not.” I look at the screen displaying the scene between Travis and Quinton. Travis is wailing on him, looking slightly deranged. “He needed this.”
