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"What did you do, Allen?" I demanded again, voice a growl.
"Cleaned up your mess."
"Allen..."
It was pointless.
The line was dead.
I kept running, heart hammering in my chest.
I was still four streets away when I heard it.
When everyone heard it.
An explosion.
I could hear screams from the couple coming out of their house at my side as I froze, gaze moving up, looking for the dust plume, begging to any god that might be listening that it not be there.
Though I knew it was there.
It wouldn't - couldn't - be anywhere else.
Allen was cleaning house.
If he couldn't get Armen through an extradition, trial, and sentencing, well then, he was choosing to take him out another way.
Officially, the CIA no longer engaged in assassinations.
Unofficially, of course we still did it.
Only an idiot would think otherwise.
We wouldn't be able to stay near the top of the intelligence game if we didn't.
And Allen had just signed off on one.
No.
Not just one.
He was taking out Armen, but also the entire house staff.
And Mack.
Mack.
My legs gave up on holding me up as the weight of her life - of her death - weighed down on my shoulders, buckling my knees.
They slammed down on the hard ground as my heart just disappeared from my chest with a searing, sharp pain that had my hand raising, rubbing at the empty space in my chest.
The sirens were already screaming, rushing to the scene. I could picture them wading through the rubble, looking for survivors.
But if Allen had called someone in to rig the house to explode, it was a pro. Someone like me. Someone who specialized in it.
There would be no survivors.
And there would be no way to prove it was an actual bomb.
It would come back that there was some sort of gas leak in the furnace, oven, hot water heater, the dryer.
The dryer.
She'd told me she would catch up on laundry.
Fuck.
Goddamnit.
I should have picked her up from work.
I should have told her to just come over.
I should have selfishly taken one more night.
I could have saved her life.
It was a long time before I gained my feet again, turning, heading back to my hotel because there was simply nothing else for me to do.
I walked back up to my room in a blur.
It wasn't until the door closed behind me that the words seemed to really penetrate.
Mack was dead.
I'd killed her.
I wasn't sure what I picked up and tossed first.
But the next thing I was fully aware of, I was standing in a ruined room, everything breakable smashed, pillows ripped open, drawers strewn about, bath products scattered.
And someone was pounding on the door.
"Fuck," I hissed, slamming my forehead into a wall hard enough to make my vision bank out. At the sound of a keycard in the door, I smashed it again, feeling the dizziness overtake me for a long moment as men charged in, took control of both of my arms, dragged me out.
I was pretty sure I was being cursed out in Armenian the whole way down the elevator and out the front door.
But it didn't matter.
Nothing fucking mattered.
Tossed out the main entrance, I stumbled forward a few steps, trying to take a breath through the screaming pain in my system, wondering how it was possible to harbor it all in one place.
Then I heard a voice.
"Wasted an hour. Better get to the airport," it told me, shoving a bag to my chest.
And there was only one person in this country who knew who I was, why I was there.
The man who'd killed Mack.
My head whipped over, only catching the profile of a man as he lowered himself into a car, a smirk pulling at his lips.
Pleased with himself.
He was happy he had killed Mack, had removed one of the very few forces of good from the world.
I knew I had to go.
I knew I had a job that didn't allow for insubordination, wouldn't let me drown in my misery, wouldn't be okay with me not climbing on that plane I was scheduled to be on.
I had to go.
There was no other option.
But there was something else that forced my legs to move, that got me to the airport, got me on a plane to South America.
And that was having a face.
I had a face.
And a voice.
And a new mission in life.
Find the motherfucker who rigged the explosion at Mack's house.
Then make him pay.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Until he screamed for the release of death.
For mercy.
Mercy I wouldn't have to offer him.
It didn't matter that I had once been him, that I had killed, that I had maybe ended lives of people that others thought of as good, valuable.
What mattered was the fact that he stole her.
From the world.
And from me.
I knew that no matter what went down, I would have had to leave her, move on from her.
But there was a comfort of sorts knowing that she would be there. Breathing, living, shining some light into the lives of everyone she met.
