“It's not like there's a rule against something like that,” she argued.
“There is for me,” I asserted, hoping she understood. “That’s a line I don’t cross. And you shouldn’t want to be with me, anyway.”
“Why?” She looked at me puzzled, sliding her glasses back up to the top of her nose.
“Because I’m not a good man.”
Confusion was written all over her face. “Really? From what I know, you’re a brave man who risked his life to save my sister and her husband. You also jumped in, no questions asked, to help protect me. So I call bullshit.”
“I didn’t save her life. I just helped stall until the good guys could get there.”
“That’s not how Anna tells the story,” she said, putting her hands on her hips in defiance, which only made her more attractive.
“Iris, I’m about as morally gray as they come. I’ve killed people before—several people.”
She stared at me as though she were taking in what I said. “These people you’ve killed…Were they bad people who did bad things?”
“Technically, yes.”
“Did you get approval from the head of the police department or your military boss-person to kill them?”
Here we were talking about killing people, and all I could think about was how damn adorable she was using terms like boss-person.
“Technically, yes,” I repeated.
“So, if you hadn’t killed those people, would they likely have gone on to do more bad things to more good people?”
I sighed because she was coming to the same conclusion my parents and sisters had come to, but they didn’t see the whole picture. Realizing she was waiting for me to respond, I went with a non-answer. “Maybe.”
“Then I don’t see a problem with it.”
“Iris, it’s not that simple.”
I really didn’t want to tell her the details, but I needed to give her something so that she would understand.
“I worked special ops for the Army, and one of our missions was to locate a known terrorist who was supposedly transporting some new drone technology that was stolen from the U.S. and our allies. We were told to retrieve it and kill him.”
I took a deep breath and continued. “We found him, but we were far away, looking through scopes, and my commanding officer was having a hard time confirming the box in his hand looked like the one we had been shown. He told me to hold my fire for a few more seconds while heconfirmed. Unfortunately, in those moments, the man must have been tipped off, because he turned quickly, grabbed a child from behind him, and pulled him in front to use the child as cover. My commanding officer gave me the call to fire at that exact moment. I ended up killing our target and the boy that day. All because I had waited to take the shot.”
She said nothing, just placed her hand on my shoulder.
“I still think about that kid often and how my slow response killed him.”
“We all have moments in life we regret, but many of them are not things that we had the power to change,” she said, and I saw her eyes soften.
I didn’t want that either. The sympathy card just made it worse. My parents had given me that when they heard about some of the stuff Manny and I had seen while on the force.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked at her sudden dismissiveness.
“Yeah, okay,” she repeated as if that explained everything.“Hector, I don’t know everything about you, and I likely never will. But what Idoknow, I like. You saved my sister. You saved her husband. You helped dismantle a mafia group, and you helped me when I found that body in the lake. I’m not worried about a couple bad guys you may have sent swimming with the fishies.”
I snorted, and my lip twitched. “Did you just say swimmingwith the fishies?”
“Isn’t that what bad guys say when they kill someone?”
“Only in the movies, sweetheart,” I said, feeling myself smile for the first time today, thanks to the woman in front of me.
