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“Anton hand-picked you all, and though I investigated each and every one of you, Hoyt, Ingridsdottir, and Deschamps were squeaky clean on paper. The only way to uncover them is to use that motto.”
Though his features were still pinched and pale, Goldstein frowned. “We’ll burn that route quickly.”
“Then we burn it quickly. We just need to figure out who’s who in the team. Fast.”
“You can’t kill them all,” he argued, terror leaching into his expression.
“This is a cull,” I said quietly. “We will do what needs to be done to eradicate this threat to our society. Do you understand, Aaron?”
He swallowed. “Is there a sniper on me?”
“Yes. Schmidt, too.”
“If you’re going to purge Interpol, what makes you any better than the Sparrows or this Brotherhood?”
I smiled at him. “I never promised to be better than them. But I am promising to do what needs to be done to make our world a better place.
“The Brothers were into child trafficking, Aaron. Organ harvesting. That’s the tip of the iceberg. I’ve got thousands of terabytes of information, some paper files too, on exactly what they’ve done and are involved in.
“I know Conor picked you because you have an unusual sense of justice—”
“It still ends with the bad guys rotting in prison. Not an early grave."
“It does, and we share that desire, but this is a unique circumstance. You can be the face of this investigation, Aaron. You can be the one who is celebrated as taking down these monsters. You can be the next secretary general of Interpol if you so choose—”
“Or, like Hoyt, Deschamps, and Ingridsdottir, I can die?” His demand was bitter.
I shrugged but before I could answer, “I’ll do it,” Schmidt interrupted. “I’ll be the face—”
“Fuck off," Goldstein snarled. "I’m your superior.”
“If he’s willing to do what needs to be done, he can be the last man standing in your team,” was my simple retort.
Goldstein’s nostrils flared. “How are you going to cover up their deaths?”
“I blame the Sparrows, of course.”
“You’re just as corrupt—”
“‘An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.’” When that Mark Twain quote went over his head, I sighed. “You’re mistaking me for someone who claimed to be good, Aaron,” I sniped, my patience broken at long last. “I’m not a white hat. I’ll never be entirely clean. I’ll always exist in the shadows.”
“Because that’s what it takes,” Conor interrupted, his palm settling on my shoulder. “You can’t bring these bastards down by riding in on a white horse, sword in one hand, shield in the other, Goldstein.
“If you ever want our world to be less corrupt, then you’re going to have to get your hands dirty like the rest of us.”
He swallowed, but I knew that he saw the truth of Conor’s words in the resignation in his expression. “What’s our first move?”
I smiled at him. “Good decision. Smart.”
And that was when I underlined the words ‘The End’ on this part of my life.
Some endings were beginnings, after all.
One lay on the bed to our left; one sat on the monitor in front of us.
It was fitting, however, that Conor was at my back.
That was where he’d always be.
