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I spent several minutes tracking the guy’s trail, but just like the others, it began hopping from one IP address to another. I shook my head and closed the laptop.
“At least we know he’s still watching,” Nathan murmured.
“Yeah. Just be nice to know who it was we’re looking for,” I said in frustration. I had a general idea of the guy’s build from the night he’d attacked Nathan, but that was it.
“How do you know how to do all this stuff?” Nathan asked as he motioned to my laptop. “Did the army teach you?”
“Some of it. I was always into gadgets and stuff when I was a kid. My dad liked to fix old radios, so that was how it started. As I got older, I just liked figuring out how things worked. I suppose if I hadn’t gone into the military, I would have been an engineer or something.”
“So you taught yourself?” Nathan probed.
I knew what he was really asking me. I sighed, and Nathan immediately shifted back. “I’m…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t-”
I grabbed his hand when he tried to stand. “Sit,” I said gently. He settled back on the couch and I turned so I was facing him. I studied him for a moment and shook my head. “I keep telling myself I’m not telling you because I’m worried it’ll get out, but that’s bullshit,” I admitted. “I know you’d take my secrets to your grave.”
He nodded, but remained silent, his whiskey-colored eyes holding mine.
“Truth is, I’m afraid it will change how you look at me.”
“It wouldn’t-”
I pressed my thumb against his lips to silence him. “I can’t tell you everything…”
Nathan nodded and when I dropped my hand, he remained silent.
“After the military discharged me and the contracting work started to dry up, the Department of Defense came calling with a job offer. One of my commanding officers worked for this unit that worked with other groups…FBI, CIA, NSA. The department ran top secret missions all over the world, usually as part of small teams of men, all former military. The work seemed legit at first…saving high-value hostages, doing recon on targets, that sort of thing. But then everything changed.”
Chapter 23
Nathan
I tried to keep up as Vincent spoke, but the deeper he got into his story, the harder it was for me to understand what he was telling me. It was the shit that didn’t exist in real life, only on the big screen in high octane action movies. But as he told me about the first man he’d killed when he’d been sent out on his own for his first solo operation, I knew it was true.
He was an assassin.
There was just no other way to describe what he was telling me. He’d been given a target with orders to pull the trigger, and he’d done it.
That simple.
Except that it wasn’t, because I knew this man. I knew in my bones that he wasn’t capable of cold-blooded murder.
“How many?” I interjected.
“How many what?” he asked, his voice solemn.
“How many people have you killed?”
Vincent straightened and hardened his jaw. “I lost track after the first twenty or so.”
I managed a nod. “Go on,” I said, because I knew in my gut there was more to his story. He was a hard man, but he wouldn’t just pull the trigger and end a life for no reason.
“About three years into the job, I knew something had changed. I’d trusted the man in charge of the unit, so we’d always had really good intel about our targets and why they were being terminated. But when the guy retired, the unit got a new director, and I knew pretty much right away that things were different. I was assigned to take out this twenty-something-year-old grad student, but something about the whole thing was wrong to me. So instead of completing the job, I followed the kid and tried to learn as much about him as I could. Turned out he was this genius who was designing a guidance system that he was hoping to present to NASA for their space program. Only, the government decided they could put the guidance system to better use on their ICBMs.”
“ICBMs…those are intercontinental ballistic missiles,” I murmured. “They carry nuclear warheads.”
Vincent nodded. “The kid wasn’t interested in giving his technology to the government, so they took it. When he discovered the theft, he threatened to go to the press. That was when I was called in.”
“They wanted you to silence him.”
“Only they didn’t sell it that way. The kid’s parents were Middle Eastern, so they sold me on the angle that the kid was trying to sell the guidance system to the highest bidder.”
“What happened to him?” I asked. “Were you able to save him?”
Vincent stiffened and sat back a little. “You’re so certain I didn’t do it?” he asked in confusion.
