My first punch slams Gil’s head to one side, but he wraps his legs around my waist and flips me over. I register the scrape of the blade on the dirty floor a second too late, and Gil drives the knife deep into my shoulder.
The pain steals my breath, but I still manage to bring the gun up and wedge it under his chin. “Give…it up,” I manage. “You’re…coming back…with me.”
“Never.” He twists the blade, and the sound that comes out of my mouth is something between a groan and a whimper. It feels like someone’s shooting me full of electricity while simultaneously setting me on fire.
Pritchard, who’s managed to free himself from the zip ties, hauls Gil off of me and throws him five feet into a half-rotten desk before he staggers and falls to his knees. “How could you do this to Dani? To me. You’re my fucking brother.” His voice is hoarse and weak, but there’s an edge that tells me he’s not in danger of dying. Not yet.
Gil springs up, a pistol he pulls from an ankle holster in his hand. “I’m not. Your parents only wanted her. I found my home. My father’s people welcomed me with open arms. With the Loma Collectivo, I’m who I was always meant to be.”
I wrench the blade from my shoulder and struggle to my feet, blood running down my arm and soaking my black shirt. The wound isn’t fatal, but it hurts like a son of a bitch and I’m getting light headed.
“Gil, last warning.” I lean against a pillar, using the exposed metal beams to steady myself. “You know I’m faster. Better. We have to take you in.”
“To a black site where they’ll torture me until I don’t know my own name?” Gil laughs as he sights Pritchard, who’s grabbed the dead guerilla’s gun and is now drawing down on Gil with me. “Never.” He aims at Pritchard’s heart. Fuck. Austin’s not wearing body armor, but I am.
I see it in Gil’s eyes a split second before he squeezes the trigger. Desperation. The boy I met in my very first foster home, the one who taught me so much about how to survive in the system, the man I trained with for five years, the one who had my back and saved my life a dozen times…he’s begging me. And I can’t let him down.
I jump in front of Austin, and as Gil fires, so do I.
* * *
“Trevor? Breathe, man.Breathe!”Austin’s voice echoes like I’m underwater.
Forcing my eyes open, I groan and rub my chest. The bullet hit just right of my heart, and I try to do as ordered, but fuck. I think it cracked a rib. “Shit.”
Austin’s face says it all. I did what I was trained to do. Fire a kill shot under the worst of conditions. Only this time, I didn’t just kill an enemy combatant. I killed my best friend. And Austin’s brother.
“Got an exfil plan?” Austin asks. Grief flashes across his features, but a moment later, he schools his face into a mask. “Ruiz can’t walk. Gil broke his leg when they captured us. And I don’t have long before I’m going to need medical.”
With a grunt, I push up to sitting. “Roof. Give me a minute. I can help carry him.”
“No. Fogerty and I can handle him.” With a nod at the other hostage, a thin, wiry man wearing a shell-shocked look on his face, Pritchard grabs a roll of duct tape from a duffel bag next to Gil’s body, pointedlynotlooking at the man his family adopted as a teenager, then proceeds to bind my shoulder.
“Thanks.” I test my arm, finding it better than I expect, and stare at the man I just executed. His eyes are open and fixed on the ceiling. The bullet wound to his forehead is neat and clean, just a drop of blood around one edge and some burned and blackened skin. He looks...almost at peace. “We can’t leave his body here. You and Fogerty get Ruiz. I’ll take Gil.”
Meeting Austin’s gaze, I wait for him to say something. Anything. I just killed his fucking brother. But then...I don’t know what the hell Gil did to Pritchard the week he held him prisoner.
Finally, Austin claps a hand on my uninjured shoulder and squeezes. “I’m glad it was you, Trev. Anyone else...”
“I know.” Anyone else would have done their job. Taken Gil in, let him disappear into the CIA’s worst-kept secret. Hell, that’s what I should have done too. Because now, anything Gil knew about the Loma Collectivo is gone. They’re a scourge on the Venezuelan people, kidnapping, terrorizing, and more. And we just lost our only link to their leader—Gil’s birth father, Jorge Sosa.
“He didn’t want redemption.” Austin stumbles as he heads for Ruiz and Fogerty, but braces himself on one of the overturned desks, takes a shuddering breath, and then, with some effort, straightens. “You took his pain away.”
God, I hope I did. That I didn’t just make the biggest mistake of my life. I fired the shot for Gil. For Austin. For Dani. But most of all, I did it for me. Because I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t.
Hauling Gil’s body in a fireman’s carry, I’m hyper-aware of the distinct lack of a heartbeat. And that I’m the one who killed him. I jerk my head towards the stairs. “Time to get the fuck out of here.”
In more ways than one. As soon as we land back on United States soil, I’m turning in my resignation. I can’t take another life on order. Not after tonight. It would end me.
* * *
Four Days Later
Standingin front of my handler, Oliver, I adopt the standard at ease position, hands crossed behind my back, prepared for my dressing down.
“You realize we’ll never get intel on the Loma Collectivo if we can’t detain one of their members, right?”
“I’m aware, Ollie. Doyourealize it was kill or be killed?”
