“You’re an agent, Sadie. A member of law enforcement. We can quit arguing about the obvious, all right? All that shows is that you and I are doing the same fucking thing, trying to make the world a safer place. Huh? That’s the whole fucking point. The only difference is that we’re on opposite sides of the fence about how it should be done.”
I stared at him, hating that he made it sound so logical.
Instead of lecturing me, he was surprisingly patient in this match of wills. We weren’t shouting or bickering. It was more like a discourse of agreeing to disagree.
But I refused to let him get to me.
To him, this was still a game, and his big talk about not being a “bad guy” would fail.
I couldn’t care. I just couldn’t make the mistake of caring about what he was sharing. Or that he was ever impacted by killing others, much like a soldier at war might.
All I wanted was to do my job. To do the best that I could and survive to fight another day.
Without prompting me to reply, without another word, he sighed and got up, leaving me to stew on that conversation I wasn’t all that ready for.
Because now that he was gone, I hated how my heart ached just a little bit for the slight possibility that he could be a tortured hero and not the villain I had painted him to be.
Stop it, Sadie. Get a hold of yourself. He’s just messing with your head. It’s all another part of being his captive.
The possibility that something in me could warm up for him bothered me.
How could I do my job if he tricked me into caring about him?
9
EMIL
Iwanted Sadie to talk. That was the point of waiting her out all this time.
After she prompted a conversation with me, trying to paint the picture of good versus bad, where she was on the right side of justice, I had to retreat—again—and decide whether she was trying something with me.
If she thought we could have a kumbaya moment where I’d see the light and regret leading the life I had, she was wrong.
If she thought that pretending to be agreeable so that I’d lower my guard around her and trust her would work, she was wrong again.
Sharing with her was a foreign experience. While I wasn’t letting her have any control over me, it was like something had shifted. Almost like we were coming closer to meeting in the middle. Just talking.
And it left me feeling raw, more vulnerable and exposed than I cared to admit. No one had ever asked me about my feelings. I wasn’t a child, for fuck’s sake. I wasn’t new to this career.
But until she sat with me like that, just the two of us, alone, no pressure to be anywhere else while we were in that bubble of privacy, I never considered that something like regret was building up in me.
No. Fuck this.
I shook my head as I stepped out of the room, needing a breather. I refused to let her get to my head like that. Yet, I had to wonder if she was on to something. Maybe in her attempt to peel my layers back, she revealed something I never wanted to address.
I didn’t regret any of the hits I'd completed. Each kill was a job, and a job well done at that.
However, I never accounted for the growing and accumulating regret that Ihadto have this job. That this many assholes lived in the world. That in the balance of good versus evil, there would always be another motherfucker who needed to be eliminated.
Another murderer or terrorist, another rapist or trafficker. Another political moron who’d start more wars. The list was never-ending, and until Sadie put me up to figuring out an answer for her question, I hadn’t taken the time to realize that.
And it was exhausting that in killing so many, the work would never be done. Evil would persist. Hits would always come in demand.
That was a sobering—and depressing—concept to shoulder, and it was one I didn’t dwell on.
Until you make me think about it, dammit.
From the high of making her come and wanting her so badly, I was thrust into the low of wondering what the point was to label myself as good or bad. I didn’t care. But as I thought about her and how strong she was to stand up to me all this time, fighting for whatshebelieved in, I started to care too much what she could think of me.
