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“Raiders,” he corrected, and she nodded to oblige.
“Dangerous man, huh?” she teased.
“Yes, but not to you,” Ashton agreed.
Felicity rolled her eyes, but got into the driver’s side and we all took off, looking for an appropriate lunch venue.
When we’d sat down, the words started flowing between aunt and nephew, and I couldn’t keep up.
“I’d like to hear some stories about your job,” she told him.
Ashton shrugged.
“Sorry. Most of my stories are classified.”
“Oh, nonsense! I’m your aunt! I get special permissions, don’t I?”
He laughed.
“No. And no matter how rich you get, the answer’s still no.”
“Fine, then tell me how you two met.”
We glanced at each other with droll expressions.
“You sure? It’s full of drama and intrigue,” I finally said, butting in.
She laughed.
“Drama and intrigue? I’m already invested. Tell me everything.”
So, we did.
“I don’t know how you manage with all of that hanging over your head,” she said eventually, letting out a long sigh. “But speaking as a parent, it won’t be long before your father comes to his senses. Any real parent’s love is far stronger than any sort of revenge or payback. He sounds like he loves you, so you’ve just got to be patient.”
I agreed, but it was good to hear her thoughts on the subject.
“And? I know you got injured and released from the Marines,” she said, opening that Pandora’s box. “What happened, hun?”
Ashton swiveled his beer glass around as he appeared to be considering her question.
“I trusted the wrong person,” he admitted. “We were hiding until dark so we could take out our target, but then we were attacked by the same man we’d trusted, who’d evidently gathered an army to take us down. We lost three good Marines that day, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
She tisked in sadness.
“But did you fulfill the mission?”
After all this time, and the couple times I’d heard his story, I’d never once thought to ask him that question.
Ashton frowned, but nodded. “We did. It was a high profile target, but true to the plan, we lost three, well, really four if you count me, but still managed to succeed. We were just lucky that the man who betrayed us did so for the target, which meant he was there to make sure we were taken care of. One good shot by our sniper during our retreat got him.”
“What do you mean ‘true to plan’? Surely you didn’t all plan to die.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. But, when we go on risky missions, which are basically all of them, we have to calculate how many of us can die before we need to re-think the mission and go home. There’s an acceptable number of casualties for a mission.”
I was fucking horrified.
“An acceptable number of casualties? You mean you plan for your people dying?”
