“You could’ve,” Mac counters. The hurt on his face breaks my heart.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Not if you make it complicated,” he snorts.
“Why pretend it’s not complicated?” I return. When he stubbornly sets his jaw, I know he’s refusing to understand. I sigh. “I couldn’t risk the truth getting out—the fewer people who knew, the better.”
“But we’re not justsomepeople. We’re… a team. I thought we were a team.”
“We are,” I insist, voice rising. “Mac, do you remember when we were discussing the complications of trying to find the General when I first realized Madison was one of my spiders? Do you remember how we questioned what role he might play in her life, whether she spoke to him without realizing, if he knew about her internet usage or had put sleepers in her life?” I watch Mac make the connection before I reach my conclusion. “When you don’t know where the danger comes from, it could be anywhere. The smartest thing to do is to treat it like it’severywhere.”
But Mac still shakes his head. “Then why tell us now?”
“Because we found it,” Madison says.
I nod. “The General is someone at SmarTech, using SmarTech data and resources. So now that I know where my project ended up, I’m going to destroy it.”
“But it’s done some good, right?” Eleanor asks softly, like she’s almost afraid to intervene. “You’ve taken so many bad guys off the streets.”
“Yes,” I agree sadly. “But no one should have that kind of power. Whoever bought it—whoever is controlling the hit list now—has gone completely off script. They targeted Madison, and journalists and other people who don’t actively cause harm. It went from a way to balance the scales to a weapon in the wrong hands. That’s why it never should have existed.”
Dimitri speaks up for the first time. “This is…” he blows a long breath out through his nose, his brows lowering further as if the release of oxygen is pulling them down. “Unexpected.”
“I know I kept it—”
“Not that,” he cuts in. “Well, yes, the fact that you kept important information from us is irritating. But if you had told me the truth at the beginning, I would not have joined you. If you had told me earlier, I probably would not have stayed on the team. And I would not wish for my life to have turned out differently.” His eyes cut to Nicole and soften. “Regret is pointless when you are happy in the present.”
“Google doc,” Mac says faintly, his own eyes cutting towards Eleanor. She reaches for his hand.
“If anything, it is a relief,” Dimitri continues thoughtfully.
“What?” Mac demands, his ire rising again as he directs it across the table.
Dimitri lifts a brow. “I would rather work for a man I know and trust instead of this anonymous General. Wesley kept this secret from us,da, but he had a reason. Just as I have reasons for my secrets, and you have reasons for yours.”
Mac crosses his arms, leaning forward onto the table on his elbows.
“Does it really matter that we never worked for thatsvo lach’—that we were always contractors through Wesley?” Dimitri wonders in that relentlessly straightforward way of his. “The jobs were done. The money was paid. The choices we made about the targets were our own.”
“Of course it doesn’t matter,” Mac fires back through his teeth. He hangs his head for a second, then turns to me. “It… it just kinda sucks that you thought you couldn’t tell us.”
“Not through any fault of your own,” I promise. “But you have to understand… the only people who knew anything about this were dead—were killedbecauseof what they knew. I had no idea who was responsible, or where they might be, or what they might know about me and the two of you… I thought the truth might get us all killed, so it was safer to keep the secret until I knew what I was up against.”
With every point, some of the lines of tension in Mac’s face iron out. By the end of it, he’s sitting upright and wearing a look more akin to compassion.
“That must have made you feel so alone,” Eleanor says softly.
Her heart is so damn big that it tugs a smile to my lips. “Sometimes,” I admit. Then I glance sideways at Madison. “But sometimes strangers on the internet have a way of making you feel much less alone.”
She lets out a choked laugh.
“All right,” Mac says, scrubbing his face with his palm. “Fine. I get it. I’m… well, I’m notnotmad, but I understand why you did what you did.”
I nod, knowing that’s the best I can hope for at present. He’ll come around.
“So you’re telling us now because you found the guy? You know who the General is?” Mac asks.
“We know where to start. Who to target.”
