Kinda Don't Care

by Lani Lynn Vale

  Goddamn, but there was nothing else to lose but each other.

  And I’d be damned if I let him slip through my fingers.

  ***

  What felt like hours later but was only about forty minutes, I left the school when my father arrived so Joshua wouldn’t be alone.

  Then I started to hunt.

  The dogs had already been called, and the manhunt had commenced.

  But I had a secret weapon.

  Carmen. My MWD—military working dog—that was retired. No one else had faith in her, but I sure as hell did.

  And I was going to find the bastard who killed my nephew along with three other little kids, and I was going to make him pay.

  ***

  “No, please! No!” The kid, and he was just a kid, begged. Eighteen, almost nineteen, according to him. “I didn’t mean to!”

  “You didn’t mean to,” I said.

  Carmen, sensing my displeasure, shook her head. It just so happened that Carmen had the kid’s arm in her mouth as she did it, which tore even deeper gashes into the little bastard’s flesh.

  Not that I cared.

  Because before the day was out, I planned to do a whole lot fucking more than that to him.

  ***

  “Do you want a job?”

  I looked at him with confusion.

  “I don’t have the educational requirements to be an FBI agent,” I told him bluntly.

  The agent grinned. “Sometimes if you have other requirements, we look the other way.”

  I read between the lines.

  I apparently had skills that he wanted, and he didn’t care if I met the ‘requirements’ or not. He wanted me on his team, and he was going to make sure that it happened if I wanted to be a part of it.

  I shrugged. “What will I be doing?”

  He looked me dead in the eye. “A lot of what you just handled. School shootings. Shootings in general. It won’t be easy. The life span of an agent in this particular assignment is about three years max. Then we will move you into an assignment that will be a little less…taxing. Or you’ll quit.”

  After that glamourous description, how could I say no?

  Then again, I owed Dillon. He believed in me when nobody else did. He saw something in me that I never once saw in myself.

  And for him, I’d do this for a lifetime. If I could prevent another person from ever having to feel what I was feeling right at this moment, then I’d do it. Forever if I had to.