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Mark sat back as well and chewed on the end of his pen.

“Tell me about killing him.”

I went over it all—how I had been on scout duty and had seen him approaching our base. I told him about the bombs strapped to him and how young he was. I even told him about my captain telling me I had done well.

“So?” I asked. “What does it mean?”

“It could mean a lot of things,” Mark said in typical, vague psychologist fashion. “Like you said—you’ve taken other lives.”

His eyes narrowed slightly as he said it, and his posture changed minutely.

He knows.

I wasn’t sure what digging he had done over the past few weeks, but I had no doubt that he had found out what I did for a living, and it wasn’t paid-under-the-table roofing.

“What made this life different from the others?” he asked.

I could have called him out on it and maybe even threatened him into silence, but I didn’t see the point. If he was going to turn me in, it wasn’t like he had anything more on me than the feds already did. His knowledge was interesting and changed our dynamic but ultimately didn’t matter to me.

“He was a kid, I guess,” I said but didn’t really buy it. I’d taken the lives of gang members not much older than the insurgent teenager. I shrugged. “Maybe he was a virgin.”

“Does that matter to you?”

“Dying a virgin seems kind of shitty.”

“You’re too flippant about it for that to be the reason,” Mark countered. He was pissed again.

“So, what is it, then?” I snapped back.

“He’s a symbol, Evan,” Mark informed me. “A symbol about what is something you’re going to have to figure out. If you don’t, you’re going to keep seeing him.”

Fuck.

*****

“Your phone doesn’t answer.”

“Sorry about that, sir.” I sat down in the lounge area of Quay across from Gavino and Andrey and handed them each my new number. Micah and Craig were standing in their designated spots off to the side, trying to look intimidating. “Technical difficulties with the other one.”

Andrey grumbled something in Russian—I was definitely going to have to learn another language if I was going to keep this up—and folded his arms.

“You have news for me?” Gavino asked.

I took two Polaroid photos out of my pocket and handed them over.

“Destroy those, obviously.”

Andrey glared at me.

“Why do you use such old technology?” he asked. “You don’t have a camera on your phone?”

“Do you want a lot of digital pictures around as evidence?” I asked. “With these—those are the only photos outside of the ones the cops take when they find the bodies. After a couple days in the river, they don’t look so pretty anyway.”

“This is pretty to you?” Andrey asked.

I took a long drag on my cigarette and leaned back in my chair. I looked at him steadily for a moment, blew smoke across the table, and then replied.

“I think they’re beautiful,” I said. “Nice clean shots—one to the head, one to the throat. Not bad, considering that rifle needs a scope on it for decent accuracy at that distance. Maybe I’ll add an ACOG or a CCO.”

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