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Once the small amount of alcohol worked its way out of his system, he’d find out where she stood, on all fronts.
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“Training’s going well,” Hayden’s low voice rumbled. “It’s good we took the time for it. They needed it.”
She laughed at that, eying him as he pulled off his boots and lowered himself onto their makeshift mattress. “That bad?”
“Mm.”
“Y’know,” she started, “if I was calling the shots, we’d have stormed them weeks ago.”
Hayden grunted. “I like to be prepared.”
She rolled her eyes. “You like to obsess.” Not that she was complaining. Of the two of them, he was definitely the strategy guy. Anna was more of a get-shit-done type of person.
She leaned back into the sleeping bags, fairly used to the hard ground beneath her, though her lower back definitely could’ve used a massage, and stared up at the night sky, the moon too bright for much stargazing.
Hayden fell back beside her, staring up at the same sky she did. “I have a question for you,” he murmured.
“Oh?” She turned to look at him, taking in the hard features that didn’t seem quite so hard anymore. “Ask away.”
He continued staring at the sky. “Is your goal to kill Greene, or for him to die?”
“Have you been stealing sips from Austin’s supply while you’re working on those little devices of yours?” He seemed like a good enough guy, but Austin definitely had a problem with drinking himself to sleep. “They’re the same thing.”
Now, Hayden turned to her, those blue eyes melting something inside of her, even in the darkness. His jaw ticked. “No. If you want him dead, then that can happen with or without you. If you want to kill him, that’s another story entirely.”
She furrowed her brows. “I want him dead.” Definitely dead. That was the goal. But… “I’d like to be the one to pull the trigger.” Wield the knife. Plant the bomb. Whatever. So long as he was dead, and she got to witness it. She’d love to see him draw his last breath, to know that she’d saved hundreds if not thousands of his future victims from ever even meeting him; a final close to that awful, awful chapter of her life.
Chapter… Anna never expected to have anything more than blood and vengeance. It was hard to believe there could be more after this. Though she wouldn’t admit it to him, she had Hayden to thank for that.
Except, he sighed. And while she may not have been sure what she wanted to hear, a sigh definitely wasn’t it.
“Is that a problem?” Was there some familial card he was about to pull, despite the fact that he knew her goal from the start? He’d promised to help her kill Greene, not to do it for her. And heredity or not, she planned to do what she came here to do.
“Not necessarily.”
Wind howled through the trees, a dangerous chill in the air that night. It made her want to nestle closer to the man beside her, get warm together, but she didn’t move. Just stared at him, waiting.
Again, he sighed. “I won’t put anyone at an increased risk just so that you can play out this revenge fantasy, Anna. You included.”
She swallowed, hard, a bit of her comfortable bliss dying away. “I never asked for that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you implying that I can’t kill him but you can? Because if that’s where you’re going with this, I might just have to show you how good of a killer I can be.”
She was bluffing. Obviously. But the idea of Hayden doubting her? Now? After everything they’d shared together? That stung.
“That’s not at all what I’m implying.”
She took in a breath to steady herself. “Then you better get to the point of this. Fast.”
“Back in the early days of the Resistance, I was hellbent on making my father pay for what he’d done to me. To others.” He rolled onto his side, leaning on his elbow as he spoke. “Derek and I went in with two men. He and I walked out without our men, him with a broken leg and me with two holes in my gut. It’s a miracle the two of us made it out of there alive.”
Anna turned, mirroring his position and leaning onto her elbow so they were face to face. “And this is relevant to me, why?”
He narrowed his eyes. “It’s relevant because I nearly got myself and my brother killed. I did get two innocent men killed.”
Anna inhaled deeply, imagining a younger, more reckless Hayden. Somehow, she couldn’t see it. She could only imagine him being her carefully controlled version, it seemed. “Again, I don’t see how your failure is relevant to me.”
His shoulders rose a bit too high before dropping once more. “Just don’t get pissed if Greene winds up dead and it’s not at your hands.”
