“How?” I managed to ask Hawke.
“Overheard him telling some of his buddies that he and his guys had fucked up a couple of faggots at Bagram two months ago. His words, not mine,” Hawke added and I assumed he meant the slur. “A friend of mine was an MP at that base. He told me what they did to you and Trace and the cover-up that happened afterwards. When I found out you were one of the victims, I thought you might like to do the honors yourself,” he said. “Or at least even the score a bit if you want to keep your hands clean.”
Hawke held out the gun. “Your choice,” he said. “You want him to walk, untie him and we’re done here.”
The man on the plastic began sobbing at Hawke’s words, but the pity the doctor in me should have felt didn’t exist. The hate and rage weren’t there either. All I felt was an overwhelming warmth settle in my chest as I stared at the man. Maybe if the man and his friends had waited until Trace was dead before coming after me, I would have felt something different. Maybe I would have been able to call on some last shard of decency to spare his life.
But they hadn’t. Just as I’d had to watch the man shove a metal pipe inside of Trace over and over while his friends held Trace down, he’d had to watch the same thing happen to me even as his body began to fail him. And I’d known that had been the hardest part for Trace – that was when he’d truly suffered. Because while I’d been the healer, he’d been the protector. And they’d stolen even that from him.
I wasn’t interested in making the man suffer and I wasn’t interested in prolonging the moment. And I didn’t need my hands to be clean – they’d hadn’t been clean since the first time I’d dreamed of this moment. I took the gun from Hawke and without hesitation or doubt, I strode up to the man, aimed it at hishead and pulled the trigger. No final words, no wishing him to hell – I’d given him a much better death than he’d given Trace.
That was enough.
The secondI closed the door leading to the patio behind me, I yanked out my phone and dialed even as I began walking through the house. I didn’t bother to check the driveway to make sure that fucker Barry was gone because the fact that the guy had pissed himself as he was running to his car was reassurance enough that he wouldn’t be coming near Seth anytime soon.
“Hey, I was just about to call you,” Mav said when he picked up. “This Fields guy is a piece of work.”
I managed to keep my cool as I said, “How so?” I’d reached the door I was looking for just before the kitchen and tore it open. I flipped on the light and started down the stairs into the dimly lit room as Mav spoke.
“I’ve found restraining orders in three different states. All from former patients who claimed their one-time psychologist, a one Dr. Barry Fields, was stalking them.”
“Any violence?” I asked. For once, I was hoping the answer would be yes because it would be the excuse I needed to end the bastard.
“No. Lots of phone calls, harassing them at their place of business, that sort of thing…it seemed to have stopped each time the RO was issued and then he’d start on the next guy.”
“Ruin him,” I ordered as I reached the bottom of the stairs.
“What?” Mav asked in surprise.
“Take it all. His license, his money – all of it. Make sure he can’t pick up in another state either.”
I was glad when Mav didn’t question me but he did say, “It will take some time.”
“Make it your number one priority.”
I knew it wasn’t fair to dump the shit on Mav since he was just standing in until I found a new tech guy to replace Benny, but seeingBarry holding Seth down on that desk while he’d violated him had stolen away what little reason I had left.
“You got it,” Mav responded quietly and then he hung up.
It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for in the chilly wine cellar and I sent a little prayer of thanks to Seth’s father for keeping what was probably some very expensive whiskey in addition to the countless bottles of wine in the wine cellar. I also sent Trace a thank you for having the foresight to make me aware of the wine cellar’s existence, by bringing me down here on more than one occasion when we’d needed some privacy for a hot and heavy make out session while we’d been visiting his family.
I grabbed the first bottle of whiskey I found and snatched one of several corkscrews from a drawer. I didn’t bother going back upstairs for a glass – I just took several swallows, one right after the other, and let the burn roll through me. I had no doubt the alcohol had cost Seth’s father a fortune, but I barely noticed the taste. But as much as I would have liked to get drunk in the hopes of obliterating the sight of Seth struggling beneath the weight of the other man, I knew he might need me to be at a hundred percent mentally, so I closed the bottle and put it away before going back upstairs.
In the six years since Michael “Hawke” Hawkins had helped me get justice for Trace, I’d taken more lives than I’d saved in all of my years of practicing medicine. No, they hadn’t all died by my hand directly, but I’d given the order on every single one. But none of those deaths, no matter how vile the criminal, had ever brought me pleasure. Only watching every single one of Trace’s killers die had ever done that for me. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that taking Barry’s life would have come a close second. That fact should have bothered me more than it did, but the only part that I was struggling with was the fact that Seth had seen the real me in that study.
For all the times I’d worried that Seth’s hero worship of me would turn to something more when he’d been younger, I hadn’t expected to now feel the loss of that last link between us so keenly. Maybe because I didn’t want Seth to have to lose yet another thingfrom his past. More selfishly though, I wasn’t sure what would happen when I lost that last link to myself.
Once I was back upstairs, I paced the kitchen restlessly as I waited for Seth to return. When I checked the time on my phone, I realized a mere fifteen minutes had passed since Seth had left so I kept myself busy by going up to my room and changing out of my pants and into a pair of jeans. I left my dress shirt on but got rid of the jacket and the shoulder holster. I tucked one of my Glocks into the back of my jeans and then went back downstairs. I glanced out the back door again but still saw no sign of Seth, so I busied myself with changing the security code on the front door. I’d have to do the security gate at the end of the driveway at some point too but since Seth’s house had nothing protecting the perimeter from intruders, the gate wasn’t much of a deterrent.
By the time I was done, Seth had been gone for less than a half an hour, but I was too restless to give him any more time or space so I went out the kitchen door and started walking towards the beach. But I stopped when I saw Bullet lying next to one of the lounge chairs on the far side of the pool. The chair was turned away from the pool and facing the dark blue waters of the Sound and the Olympic mountains beyond.
I didn’t bother grabbing a chair as I moved to Seth’s side and I was pleased that even though he didn’t look up at my approach, he moved his legs out of the way when I sat down on the end of the lounger.
“I didn’t see it,” he whispered.
“What?”
“That thing that made him dangerous,” he said. “I knew something was off the last few months but I thought I was overreacting. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings if I was wrong. He…he helped me.”
