Caspian was looking at Ranger now. “I’ll ask you one question, Samantha. Only one. And I want you to tell me the truth.”
Ranger nodded. “Of course.”
“Is Charles Mpassi still a threat to my family?”
Ranger sighed, then she slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “We think that door is closed now. This operation, you’d be doing it for the greater good.”
Caspian looked at Liesel, who was still holding his hand. “I don’t need to do this,” he said. And then, to Ranger, “I’m done, Samantha. Find someone else.”
Ranger’s eyes narrowed again, but there was no anger left in them. Just exhaustion.
“If you ever change your mind ...”
“Yeah,” Caspian said, getting up and then offering his hand. “I know where to find you.”
“Okay, Caspian,” she said, shaking his hand. “Go live your life.”
Caspian offered his hand to Drescher, who took it. “See you soon.”
“I don’t think so,” Caspian replied.
At the door, Liesel paused and turned back.
“Oh, and by the way, Nicklas, I’m resigning. Effective today.”
Drescher gave her a big, almost fatherly smile. “If you hadn’t, I would have fired you.”
Epilogue
Former Onyx Facility
Montana, United States
Several Months Later
Mia Hernandez sat in silence, her hands resting flat on the steel table in front of her. The room was small and cold, its walls painted in white that caught the fluorescent light above. There was nothing on the table. Nothing on the walls either. There was just the buzz of the overhead lighting fixture and the sound of her own breathing.
She touched the scar on her cheek. She didn’t do it out of habit, but she did it to remind herself how close she’d come to dying that night. What was left of her original face had been taken apart and rebuilt, bone by bone and nerve by nerve. She thought the surgeons had done good work.
No. They did excellent work,she corrected herself.
Although the mirror showed her someone new and still unfamiliar, it was still the real her underneath.
She remembered the sound of the bullet, the flash, the world going black. She remembered the smell of blood and smoke. And she remembered Richard Anderson’s eyes right before he pulled the trigger. He had bested her, so she respected him. She meant him no harm. She wouldn’t seek revenge. He’d only protected his family. Like any good man would do.
She should have died that night. But she didn’t. She remembered waking up in darkness, unable to speak. There had been tubes in her throat and pain coming from everywhere. Weeks had passed in fragments, until finally, Samantha Ranger had appeared.
“You’re very lucky,” she’d said to Mia. “But luck will only get you so far now.”
Ranger had paid the hospital bills. All of them. And then she’d shown Mia the file about the Fisherman’s death. Mia had trusted Mpassi. She had killed for him. But he had used her, lied to her.
Lied to us!
Because the Fisherman had also trusted Mpassi, and it had cost him his life. It had almost cost her hers.
In the end, Mpassi had left her to die.
Ranger hadn’t.
