I move.
Boots silent.Breath calm.Muscles tight.Shadows bending around every corner.Every instinct from the Marines, from the bad missions, from the old life, waking up like a beast I buried years ago.
The office is darker than the others.The red glow of the exit lights barely noticeable here.
Rainwater drips from a busted vent in slow, irregular taps.I advance twenty feet before entering the room where a voice slices through the dark.
Soft.Mocking.Unbelievably familiar.
“Well, Ledger.”
My spine turns to ice.He’s here.Exactly where I expected him to be, hiding in the shadows.
“You always did walk heavy.”
I freeze.Knife on my side.Gun in hand, raised.
“Show yourself,” I growl.
“Oh, come now.”Footsteps echo slowly, purposefully.“Not even a hello?Not even a Jonas, I thought you were dead?Hell, I expected to hear, I hoped you were dead.I’m hurt.”
He steps out of the shadows.A man I buried years ago.
Shorter hair.Lean face.Eyes like ice.
He’s not masked now.
He wants me to see him.
Jonas Greene.
I lift my gun.
He smiles slow, amused, utterly unfazed.“You won’t shoot me yet.”
“Try me.”
“No,” he state calmly.“If you shoot, you risk the unknown of who I may have working for me and the risk to your beautiful lady.”
I go rigid.
Greene chuckles.“Ah.There it is.”He taps his temple.“Your tell.Your weakness.Same as before.”
“You don’t get to talk about her.”
“Why not?”He tilts his head.“She’s the reason you’re here.She’s the reason I could even get close enough to have a conversation with you.And she’s the reason you’re not going to walk away from this alive.”
A growl builds in my chest.“Where are the rest of your men?”I demand.
He shrugs.“Alive.Dead.I lose track.”
“You sent them after her.”
“I sent them afteryou,” he corrects.“She was simply the pressure point.”
“You should’ve stayed dead,” I snarl.“When the contract came in for Russia, that final mission, I told you man to man, it ends now.We both allowed things, we both did things we can’t take back.”
“Funny.”His smile widens.“When I came to in the hospital after you left me the first name I said was yours.While I couldn’t remember everything, I remember you telling me I was dead to you.”He lets out a low whistle.“Except, I was anything but dead, Ledger Masters.No, I was a man with vague memories and a grudge.”
