Jack's face shutters, and guilt pools in my gut, but I still can't stop myself from carrying on, landing more blows meant to bruise and dent. "You can't just kill whoever you want. People will care now.I'llcare. You need to stop acting like you don't care as well."
There's a moment where Jack doesn't respond, where he just stands across the room from me with his shoulders squared, like he's bracing for further impact and with a look on his face so blank it sends shivers down my spine for all the worst reasons.
Then cracks start to appear in his façade, like he really can't contain everything he's feeling, and it's spilling out, allowing me to catch just a sliver of the pain I've caused. I wince at the sight of it, knowing I've messed up and still too angry to feel compelled to fix it.
"I’ve never made any excuses for what I did when I was with OI," Jack says, voice deathly quiet and simmering with tension. "If you did, then that's on you. Get it through your thick head. This is who I am, Leo!" His eyes practically spit green fire at me. "I'm a remorseless killer, a fucking murder machine." He attempts to hide how badly saying this is hurting him, hanging his head and turning as if to hide his face, but none of it works. It's become too much for him to hold inside, caged and strapped down like he usually does. He’s set it loose, signed off on its parole, and now he's paying the price.
Exhaustion hangs on him like a thick cloak. "The only thing pretending that isn't true does is set you up for disappointment and piss me the fuck off for making me feel like I've failed you, when I didn't promise anything different."
With that final strike, Jack turns around and slams out of the house in a static explosion of fury and pain, both of which I have to take some of the blame for inciting.
"Don't walk away from this!" I shout at his back, taking a couple of unsteady steps after my wayward partner with no real intention of following, the more rational part of my brain finally stepping back in and telling me that he needs time to think.
We could both use a bit of breathing room, time to let rationality sink back in when all the volatile emotion has flooded out of our systems.
But when I hear the truck start, a bolt of panic travels through me, and I forget all about what's healthy and best and right because the thought of Jack leaving makes me want to be violently ill. A powerful fear overtakes every other instinct, and I rush to stop him, guilt and desperation bursting inside me like fireworks.
I'm too late, though. By the time I've opened the door, Jack is already peeling away at a rate of noughts. Dust kicks up behind the truck, thick and dirty, blowing into my face and making my eyes sting.
"Jack!" I call after him, razor-sharp claws of panic tearing their way up my throat as my partner speeds away and disappears from view.
Chapter six
Jack
There'sastretchoftime where I pretend I'm just going to drive around for a while until I stop wanting to shatter every window in the truck and use the glass as missiles to cut the shit out of Bullet and his pet soldiers. I fake like I'm going to turn around at some point, drive back to the safe house, and let Leo do that thing where he talks me into making good, calm decisions instead of reckless, violent ones.
I allow myself a fantasy where I return to Leo and apologise for storming off like a crazed child, where he forgives me just like that, and convinces me we can get the intelligence from Bullet without going on his little murder side quest. I let myself think, for just a short amount of time, that I can be the sort of person who chooses the light path over the dark one without hesitation, secure in the knowledge my feet will know the way forward even when my eyes are firmly closed.
But eventually, I have to let the fantasy fall away and make the only choice possible for someone like me, by pressing forward with my eyes wide open, stepping back into the envelope of shadows I was trained my whole life to manoeuvre within.
I take out the piece of paper Bullet handed to me earlier and punch the coordinates scribbled on it into the truck's built-in satnav.
When we were sitting outside Bullet's stronghold and Leo said we would be in this together, vehemently promising to go in hard with his commitment to getting the job done, I thought maybe I could allow myself to believe him. He seemed sincere, just like he does about almost everything he cares about. I wanted to think we could do this, the two of us making the tough calls no one else will. But I knew the second Bullet asked us to do an off-the-books mass assassination that Leo would never agree to it.
Leo has ironclad principles. He values human life to an extent I can't fathom. There’s no way he could ever bloody his hands that thoroughly and live with it afterwards. He wasn't built to survive in the dark spaces.
Conversely, I was forged for exactly that purpose. To break every moral boundary in the name of completingthe mission.
Leo might wind up hating me for this, both for doing it at all and for going into danger without him. But I know it's the only chance we have of getting the intelligence from Bullet and using it to find Rohan. That’s the job I was given. Not saving the world. Not protecting some random gang of extremists. Not putting a stop to Bullet's arms-dealing business.
Get the intelligence. Find Rohan. Those are the only two objectives I need to care about. Everything else is just white noise for people like Snow and North to deal with in the background.
Leo will either learn to understand, or he won't. I can't worry about that. My mission also isn't to teach my partner how to be an effective agent.
It takes three hours of non-stop driving to reach the general area in which Righteous Anarchy is holed up with Bullet's stolen weapons. According to the satnav’s map, their camp is buried deep in the jungle.
I stash the truck around half a mile away, hiding it from view amongst large pieces of foliage. The hiding place wouldn't stand up to close scrutiny, but anyone passing by wouldn't notice it at first glance. Given this area is rife with small militias, there's a chance it could be stolen no matter how well hidden it is, but that's a low-level concern. If I have to find another ride out of here after the job is done, it won't be too difficult, and part of me would love to see the constipated look on North's face if I told him a militia nicked a FISA-issued truck.
Unlike my brother, who would have been content to go in guns blazing and take the extremists out at the very likely risk of getting shot himself, I do some basic recon of RA's camp. I have to be careful about getting too close, unaware as I am about their security measures. Bullet's stronghold was packed with cameras, with at least a dozen outside and just as many inside the building as well.
Although from what I know about groups like RA, they'll probably rely on human observation rather than tech due to monetary concerns and the transient nature of their current operation. They likely planned to steal the guns and get gone as soon as possible. The only thing keeping them here would be finding the best way to transport the weapons out of the country. Those guns will be considered hot, and despite what I said to Leo about the country’s corrupt system, RA would be stupid not to take precautions.
Still, my window for taking them out is going to be small. There's a reason Bullet only gave Leo and me one day to decide if we would be willing to comply with his demands.
As I suspected, once I get close enough to where they're holing up, I find eleven men working as their surveillance system, scattered around the camp’s exterior. All of them are dressed in the same green camo gear, with guns strapped to their sides, similar to the ones Bullet's men had. It seems they're already utilising their stolen gains.
That alone tells me how amateur level their group is. No one who's been in the game for more than two minutes would use the guns they stole from a man like Bullet out in the open whilst still in the same country. It would be asking for trouble, both from the nearby militias and Bullet's business rivals.
