I refill my mug and sit down across from him.
"You're going to ask me something." He doesn't look up.
"What's the history between Wyatt and Frost?"
The disassembled components are laid out on a cloth in front of him. He picks up the barrel, runs a cleaning rod through it, sets it back down. Takes his time.
"Not my story to tell."
"I'm not asking you to tell it. I'm asking you to confirm what I've already figured out."
He looks up at that. Something in his expression shifts — a slight recalculation. He sets the cleaning rod down.
"What have you figured out?"
"Wyatt took a contract four years ago that went wrong. The target turned out to be someone he shouldn't have killed. Frost found out, and that was it. Four years of nothing." I keep my voice even. "What I don't know is why it mattered enough to sever everything."
Flint is quiet for a long moment. His hands stay flat on the table.
"Still not my story to tell."
"I read the folder." I keep my voice level. "I know it was a federal witness. A man in protection. Wyatt didn't know. He thought the target was what the broker told him. I know what happened to the investigation after." I pause. "What I don't know is why there's a glacial chill between Wyatt and Frost."
The mug is warm in my hands. I stare at it.
"Frost has a source inside the Marshal Service. Always has." Flint picks up the barrel again. His voice stays level, but the flatness of it costs him something. "He called Wyatt. Gave him the file. Full name, photo, everything about the man he killed. The family." He resumes cleaning. "Wyatt didn't deny it. Didn't try to justify it. Just went quiet and stayed quiet. Frost made the call that he couldn't have someone on his team — or in his family — who was capable of that."
"He didn't know Wyatt was hunting the broker who set him up?"
"Frost knows that now. Didn't know it then, and even now—" He stops. Sets the barrel down carefully, like he's making a decision about how much to say. "It's not about whether Wyatt knew. It's about the fact that Wyatt spent years making money killing people. At some point you run out of ways to call it righteous. Frost drew a line. Wyatt ignored it." He meets my eyes. "That's not something you unfracture with one phone call or one op."
"But isn't that what you do?" I gesture at the walls, the gear stacked to the ceiling, the building we're all sitting inside. "You all work for Guardian HRS. You take jobs. You kill people doing those jobs, and you make money doing it. Why is this different?"
The data I laid out for Frost on the hood of that truck surfaces in my mind. Me telling him without knowing any of this— without knowing any of the history — that Wyatt had been working the same case from the other direction. That he had spent four years hunting the broker who burned him.
"He didn't tell Frost any of that. The four years of tracking. He was just going to let Frost keep thinking the worst of him." Flint reassembles the sidearm in one practiced sequence, slides the magazine home, sets it on the cloth. "That's on Wyatt. He doesn't argue his own case. Never has. Frost handed down the verdict and Wyatt accepted it."
"Because he thought Frost was right?"
"You'd have to ask Wyatt. Whatever the reason, it sure as hell didn't help anything that Wyatt's been silent about the whole thing for four years." He picks up the sidearm and checks the sight. "Not telling Frost the truth, keeping it secret all these years — that's almost as bad as the hit."
"Is Frost going to be able to work with him?"
"He already is." He stands, tucks the weapon, folds the cloth. "That's not the same thing as forgiven. And Frost isn't a man who forgives fast." He pauses at the door to the hall. "What you told him at the cabin — about the four years — that landed. But landing isn't the same thing as healing. Give it time. And whatever you do, don't push the issue. It'll only make it worse. That's something they need to sort out on their own."
He's gone before I can ask the next question.
I sit at the kitchen table with both hands wrapped around my mug for a long time.
He spent four years hunting the man who gave him the wrong intel. Alone. Without telling Frost. Without asking for forgiveness. Without ever expecting it to change anything.
That is either the most principled thing I've ever heard, or the most self-destructive.
Maybe both.
By day three,the pressure in the building has nowhere left to go.
It happens in the hallway.
