Avery grabbed his shoulder. “Bullshit. Don’t say that.”
“He’s going to start looking for me. I have to keep working for him.”
“Until we find a way to kill you,” Jem finished.
“That won’t work a second time.”
“It has to. So either you die or Landon does. Personally, I’d take Landon out, but hey, what do I know?”
Gunner fisted his hands on the table. “He’ll turn me in to the CIA if I try anything. He’s got more on me than anything you’ve got in that folder.”
Jem stood. “We’ve got shit to figure out.”
Gunner nodded. “Let me make contact with Landon first.”
Jem pulled Gunner’s phone from his pocket. “You already have. I bought you a week and then he expects you in Bali.”
“I’ve got a place,” Gunner told them. “Can’t risk flying, though, unless you’ve got a private plane I don’t know about.”
“I’ve still got several favors to call in, but I’d rather use them when we’re closer to desperate,” Jem said. “You two drive. I’ll fly. Let me see if anyone’s got my trail.”
“I don’t want you going alone.”
“With my luck, I won’t be.”
Chapter Twelve
Avery held him the entire way up the narrow stairs to the small apartment above the interrogation room like she was afraid he would disappear.
He wanted to tell her that she’d brought this shit and everything that came along with it on herself, lock, stock and barrel, and they would need all the luck they could get. Instead, he let her help him, because he was beyond thinking. He needed to clean up and get her out of here.
He pushed into the shower she ran for him, let the hot water soak his sore muscles while she packed her things and brought him clothes. His clothes, from his house, he noted, then turned his face back under the spray for a while. Washed James away, as if it could be that easy to wash so much bad down the drain.
Avery was watching him and he was grateful she didn’t join him. Not yet. It was too soon, everything too raw. When he finally emerged from the shower, he dried himself briskly and dressed. Ate some takeout she’d brought in for him too. Let her dress his split lip and a cut across his eyebrow. She dealt with the cuts around his wrists and ankles too, cleaning and dressing them gently like she was trying to make up for hurting him.
He didn’t bother to tell her he’d deserved every second of it, and she didn’t even know the worst of it.
“You still want me? On your team, in your life, after how many times I’ve fucked up?”
“Yes.”
Yes. So simple. No reservations.
She brushed some hair out of his eyes. “You have to stop punishing yourself. You’ve made up for what you’ve done so many times over. You can’t control things that weren’t your fault.”
“I made choices.”
“You made the best choices you could at the time. I hate that Landon used us to force your hand.”
“He knew what would work.” He paused. “You haven’t told the others.”
“No.”
“I don’t want Grace to know . . . to feel like she’s responsible. Because she’s not.”
“Gunner, we all feel responsible.”
“I didn’t have to go to the island,” he told her. “I chose that. I knew. Didn’t care, because saving her, Dare, Darius . . . it was important to you. And you’d already lost so much.”
“Then don’t make me lose you. Not when we just started.”
He didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded. And her arms wound around him. Hugging him. Healing him. Welcoming him home.
Within the hour, they were in a truck with bulletproofing and tinted windows. Avery pushed him into the passenger’s side and he didn’t argue. He was bruised and sore and he gulped down some ibuprofen.
“Jem was doing it out of love. You know that, right?” she asked as she tried to leave on a song that sounded like a cat wailing. “Hey, I love that song. It’s Fiona Apple.”
“It’s depressing.” He found some classic rock, AC/DC, then rubbed his ribs. “Asshole you claim loves me tried to waterboard me,” he sniffed.
“I’m sure he’ll make it up to you.”
He leaned his head back and let the easy rhythm of the truck moving fast on the highway lull him into thinking everything was going to be all right.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked quietly after they were a couple of hours into the trip. She’d gotten them fast food at a rest stop, but that was the only break they’d taken. Couldn’t afford to be out in the open, not at all.
“Everything.” Because it was easy to let it all overwhelm him. He realized he’d lost count of how many jobs he’d done. There’d been no point in counting them. After he’d left Avery in the hotel, he’d completely immersed himself into James’s old life and hadn’t looked back. He had zero contact with anyone or anything from his old life. He hadn’t kept an e-mail address or a phone number. Nothing to tempt him or make him think or wish he could’ve held on to something.
After a couple of months of carrying out orders, he’d stopped thinking or dreaming about Avery. In fact, he’d stopped dreaming at all. Dead inside was the only thing that would work.
None of the new jobs were as bad as the one that had nearly broken him all those years ago. But that didn’t mean one wouldn’t be. If Landon asked, he’d do it, because even though he was dead inside, he remembered the stakes.
He knew Landon was waiting for him to be dead enough inside so he wouldn’t remember those stakes. And he knew what Landon would ask him to do, eventually.
Could he?
He guessed that remained to be seen.
“I meant what I said, about us both running from things. About starting over. I know it’s hard—” she said tentatively.
“Do you know what it’s like to live a lie?” he interrupted. “When you ran, it was toward family. You started over, but you were still you. I’ve been living a lie since I was twelve, in one way or another. Gunner was who Josie wanted me to be.”
He paused then, and she said, “I know about Josie, Gunner. Billie told me some . . . and then . . . Jem and I met with Mike and Andy.”
“Fuck me,” he muttered. That’s how she and Jem had tracked him. It made sense now.
“I hear what you’re saying. So show me who you are.”
“It’s that simple?”
“For me, yes.” She paused. “Do you think I don’t know you’re capable of violence? You always were. Dare, Jem, Key . . . they’re far from saints. So am I.”
“What you did was avenge your mom’s death. I was never able to do that for Josie.”
“Until now,” she reminded him.
“You really have no idea who you’re up against.”
“I do have some idea. He can’t be worse than Powell.”
He was, in a different way, though. “Landon was a tough taskmaster, but it was better than living with Powell any day of the week.”
“What about your mom, Gunner? Mike and Andy didn’t know much about her. They said you barely mentioned her.”
“I still try to keep her life and death covert, the way she would’ve wanted it. She was killed when I was twelve. She was an SAS operative and she and Powell crossed paths a few times. I came out of a very brief affair. But she had no other family, didn’t want me to have no one if she died. A lot of people never knew what Powell was like, even those who were supposed to be close with him.”
There wasn’t anything she could really say to make it better, but he gave her credit for trying when she said, “You made it out.”
“I guess I did. Lot of backtracking along the way, though. I don’t know what the hell she’d think of me. Of what I’ve done.” He paused. “But anything good I’ve been able to make out of the bad situations Landon put me in . . . well, that was because of her.”