The strangest sensation of rightness came over me as I watched him sitting there at my kitchen table, eating my food, playing with my cats.
God, what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and tell Dominic Barretti I would take him up on his job offer. I had to believe that even if things had been different all those years ago, my life still would have led me to this moment…to this man. I knew it was unfaithful to David to not be thinking about him as part of that life after I’d chosen what Dom had been offering, but in my gut, I knew I would have lost David to his demons no matter what. I’d lost him the moment the military had rejected us.
“You okay?” Nathan asked.
I nodded and pushed my chair back. “Just have a lot to do,” I said.
“Let me know what you need me to do, okay?”
“I will,” I agreed and then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, I leaned down and kissed him. Because even if it was only temporary and we were just playing house, I was damn well going to pretend it was real for as long as I could.
I’d deal with the consequences later…once Nathan was gone and I had to go back to the way things were.
The way they’d always be.
“No, tell me you’re not…a channel flipper,” I groused as I watched the image on the TV screen switch a mere second after the channel was changed. Not even long enough to figure out what show was on the screen.
“Shut up,” Nathan murmured as he elbowed me.
Somehow, we’d ended up sitting side by side on the couch, despite there being several different pieces of furniture for us to spread out on, and we’d migrated toward one another until Nathan was leaning against my side.
Just before dinner, Nathan and I had sent out the agreed-upon emails to his assistant, campaign manager, and the rally organizers, telling them Nathan was feeling well enough to attend the rally on Saturday. I’d embedded code into each email that would allow me to tell anytime it was opened and by whom, so we’d know if Nathan’s assailant was watching them or not. So far only his campaign manager and the rally organizer had viewed the email, so I’d settled in with Nathan to watch something on TV while we waited for the final email to be viewed before heading to bed. Our plan was to leave for Charleston in the morning. We’d spend the day at Nathan’s house getting Ronan’s men installed so that some were watching the house from the outside while one secured the inside. I’d have a couple more men backing me up at the rally. As soon as I’d told Ronan what I’d needed, he’d gotten it for me within a matter of minutes. Even with five men at my disposal, he’d told me he could get more to me within a matter of hours if I thought it was necessary.
I didn’t.
But it sure as hell felt good to know Nathan’s safety now lay in the hands of several capable men instead of just mine.
“How about this?” Nathan asked.
I glanced at the TV and barely refrained from rolling my eyes. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“What? It’s cool to see how much they’re able to sell the house for after they fix it up.”
“Pass,” I said.
Nathan made a rude sound, but changed the channel anyway. He began flipping again, but stopped suddenly on a news channel. He stiffened against me and then sat up.
“And I think the fact that Mr. Wilder hasn’t been seen or heard from in nearly a week should have the good people of this state wondering if he’s fit for the demanding challenges of this office.”
I knew who the man was – Lawrence Braxton, the incumbent Republican Senator for the state of South Carolina. The same man whose seat Nathan was running for. The arrogant-looking asshole had a smug look on his face as he spoke with the reporter interviewing him.
The reporter, an older woman, said, “Mr. Wilder’s campaign has said he’s been battling the flu this week. Do you believe it’s something more, Senator Braxton? Do you believe he’s starting to crack under the pressure?”
The man let out a raucous laugh. “Now don’t you go putting words in my mouth, young lady,” he said with his best Southern drawl. “But I do have to wonder if someone with no political experience and who seems to volley on every position you all ask him about…well now, should he really be given the responsibility of speaking for our great state in the mire of Washington?”
The interview ended and the anchor in the news studio began talking about another story, so Nathan changed the channel, but stopped flipping through them. I sat up and used my fingers to brush some hair behind his ear, even though it didn’t need it. It was just an excuse to touch him.
“You okay?” I asked.
Nathan nodded. “I think that’s part of the problem. I am okay.”
“What do you mean?”
He was silent for a moment as he stared at the TV. Then he turned to me and said, “In the past, I would have been on the phone to Preston strategizing a response. But…I just don’t care. What does that say, Vincent?” he asked. “About me? About my campaign? About why I’m really doing this?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean, Nathan,” I admitted.
He sighed. “Yeah, me neither, I guess. I just…”
“Just what?” I prodded.
“Everything’s changed so much and so fast.”
“Things will be clearer when life gets back to normal,” I offered. But my words seemed to agitate him more. He didn’t respond. Just nodded and settled back against my side and began flipping channels again.
“Did you always know you wanted to go into politics?” I heard myself asking. It was a topic we’d both worked hard to avoid, but I found myself avidly interested in the subject now. Of course, I was interested in everything there was to know about this man.
“No,” he said. “It was more like I accepted it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Brody was the one with big dreams. When people would ask him what he wanted to be, he’d have those stock answers like being a fireman or an astronaut.”
“And you?”
“I was too afraid to answer.”
“Afraid? How so?”
“Growing up in the Wilder household was about one thing and one thing only. Having the right answer. And by right, I mean the answer my father wanted you to have. I got that early on. Brody struggled with it. It was harder for him to accept that our lives had already been decided for us. I tried to help him by taking the attention off him…by doing things so well, he’d maybe have a chance to be the things he wanted. It didn’t really work, though. I think he resented me, and my father just saw him as a failure and a disappointment. I guess in the end, I just made things worse.”
“You were trying to protect him,” I said softly.
“Trying and doing aren’t the same thing,” he responded. “Brody was always the brave one. He was the one who had the guts to ask why things were the way they were. I just did what was expected. Straight A’s in school, captain of the football team, dated the most popular girl in school…I never broke the rules. Brody, he was always finding ways to stretch them.”
“So why stay in politics after you decided not to run as a Republican?”
“I thought I could undo some of what I’d done.”
“To Brody?” I asked carefully.
He nodded. He was still staring at the TV, but I knew he wasn’t watching what was on the screen anymore.
“Knowing people would never leave Brody alone to live his life…that he’d carry this label around that somehow made him less than human…I couldn’t just stand by and let that happen. This whole time I had myself convinced it was just about Brody and people like him. I don’t know why it was so hard to admit the truth to myself.”
“Not many people seek out being different, Nathan. I sure as shit didn’t want to be gay,” I admitted. “I knew I wanted to be with David, but I think if I’d had a choice in the whole thing, I would have chosen the path that ensured I could have everything I wanted. Military career, family. I mean, who wants to have to fight
for things that should just be a given? It shouldn’t have been about me fighting to be allowed to love whoever I wanted. But that’s what it became - that’s who I became. Not a soldier, not a man, not a brother. Gay. I’m gay first and everything else second. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.”
“You don’t think things can change?” Nathan asked as he straightened and turned to look at me again.
“Over time, maybe. But do I think in my lifetime, or even yours, that that label will go away? No, I don’t.”
“But that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting. Maybe the battle we win today is one less battle that needs to be fought tomorrow.”
I sighed and nodded. “Maybe. But I’m damn tired of fighting,” I murmured.
Nathan nodded and settled back against me. “Here, you old geezer,” he said as he handed me the remote.
I took it and let my free hand slide down his abdomen until it lingered just above the button of his jeans. “Geezer, huh?” I said softly as I gently bit down on his earlobe. Nathan shuddered, and then his hand was covering mine and trying to urge it south. “Maybe you need a repeat of what I did to you on that kitchen table?”
The sounds coming out of his mouth had no meaning, but it was clear what his bobbing head was saying. Then he was turning to seek out my lips. Unfortunately, an alert on my phone beeped, and I was forced to pull my mouth from his. “I gotta check this, baby,” I said as he tried to follow me with his mouth. He let out a growl and dropped his head to my chest. I grabbed my laptop off the side table and opened it up.
“Someone besides your assistant opened the email,” I said.
“Can you trace it?” Nathan asked.
I spent several minutes tracking the guy’s trail, but just like the others, it began hopping from one IP address to another. I shook my head and closed the laptop.
“At least we know he’s still watching,” Nathan murmured.
“Yeah. Just be nice to know who it was we’re looking for,” I said in frustration. I had a general idea of the guy’s build from the night he’d attacked Nathan, but that was it.
“How do you know how to do all this stuff?” Nathan asked as he motioned to my laptop. “Did the army teach you?”
“Some of it. I was always into gadgets and stuff when I was a kid. My dad liked to fix old radios, so that was how it started. As I got older, I just liked figuring out how things worked. I suppose if I hadn’t gone into the military, I would have been an engineer or something.”
“So you taught yourself?” Nathan probed.
I knew what he was really asking me. I sighed, and Nathan immediately shifted back. “I’m…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t-”
I grabbed his hand when he tried to stand. “Sit,” I said gently. He settled back on the couch and I turned so I was facing him. I studied him for a moment and shook my head. “I keep telling myself I’m not telling you because I’m worried it’ll get out, but that’s bullshit,” I admitted. “I know you’d take my secrets to your grave.”
He nodded, but remained silent, his whiskey-colored eyes holding mine.
“Truth is, I’m afraid it will change how you look at me.”
“It wouldn’t-”
I pressed my thumb against his lips to silence him. “I can’t tell you everything…”
Nathan nodded and when I dropped my hand, he remained silent.
“After the military discharged me and the contracting work started to dry up, the Department of Defense came calling with a job offer. One of my commanding officers worked for this unit that worked with other groups…FBI, CIA, NSA. The department ran top secret missions all over the world, usually as part of small teams of men, all former military. The work seemed legit at first…saving high-value hostages, doing recon on targets, that sort of thing. But then everything changed.”
Chapter 23
Nathan
I tried to keep up as Vincent spoke, but the deeper he got into his story, the harder it was for me to understand what he was telling me. It was the shit that didn’t exist in real life, only on the big screen in high octane action movies. But as he told me about the first man he’d killed when he’d been sent out on his own for his first solo operation, I knew it was true.
He was an assassin.
There was just no other way to describe what he was telling me. He’d been given a target with orders to pull the trigger, and he’d done it.
That simple.
Except that it wasn’t, because I knew this man. I knew in my bones that he wasn’t capable of cold-blooded murder.
“How many?” I interjected.
“How many what?” he asked, his voice solemn.
“How many people have you killed?”
Vincent straightened and hardened his jaw. “I lost track after the first twenty or so.”
I managed a nod. “Go on,” I said, because I knew in my gut there was more to his story. He was a hard man, but he wouldn’t just pull the trigger and end a life for no reason.
“About three years into the job, I knew something had changed. I’d trusted the man in charge of the unit, so we’d always had really good intel about our targets and why they were being terminated. But when the guy retired, the unit got a new director, and I knew pretty much right away that things were different. I was assigned to take out this twenty-something-year-old grad student, but something about the whole thing was wrong to me. So instead of completing the job, I followed the kid and tried to learn as much about him as I could. Turned out he was this genius who was designing a guidance system that he was hoping to present to NASA for their space program. Only, the government decided they could put the guidance system to better use on their ICBMs.”
“ICBMs…those are intercontinental ballistic missiles,” I murmured. “They carry nuclear warheads.”
Vincent nodded. “The kid wasn’t interested in giving his technology to the government, so they took it. When he discovered the theft, he threatened to go to the press. That was when I was called in.”
“They wanted you to silence him.”
“Only they didn’t sell it that way. The kid’s parents were Middle Eastern, so they sold me on the angle that the kid was trying to sell the guidance system to the highest bidder.”
“What happened to him?” I asked. “Were you able to save him?”
Vincent stiffened and sat back a little. “You’re so certain I didn’t do it?” he asked in confusion.
I shook my head in disbelief. “Vincent, I know you,” I whispered. “You’re…you’re not like that. Whatever you did early on, you did it because you believed it was the right thing. And because you had proof.”
He studied me for a long time before continuing. “I didn’t do it, but I knew my handler would just send someone along who would do the job without question. I helped get the kid and his parents set up in another country with new identities. But doing that painted a target on my back.”
“They came after you,” I said softly as things began to make sense.
“The team they sent found Pierce instead of me that night.”
I swallowed hard as I remembered the gruesome details he’d shared with me about his brother’s murder.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I became the hunted,” Vincent responded. “So I got smart. It was that or face a lifetime of running.” He settled back against the cushions. “Three years of killing people for the government taught me who the power players were. So, while they played cat and mouse with me, I did the same with them. I convinced those in power that killing me wouldn’t safeguard their precious secrets.”
“That worked?” I asked.
“Not at first. I had to prove that I was in the game until the end. Every team they sent after me I sent back in body bags. And every time they tried to take me down, I leaked some of their secrets. Not enough to bring any one person down, but enough to make them uncomfortable. I became known as The Ghost.” Vincent waved his hand. “I know, it’s a stupid nickname, but I wa
s more interested in what it meant.”
“What did it mean?”
“It meant anyone who came into contact with me should be scared. That I could appear and disappear whenever and however I wanted. That I could take someone down as easily with information as I could with my gun. Eventually the powers that be figured it was safer just to leave me be.”
“But…you still live like this,” I murmured as I motioned to the house.
“Because I’m not foolish enough to believe anything those fuckers tell me. You remember that child’s fable about the scorpion and the frog?”
“Yeah. The frog agrees to give the scorpion a ride across the river in exchange for the scorpion not stinging him, and the scorpion agrees, but then stings him anyway and they both die.”
Vincent nodded. “And the frog asks the scorpion why he did it and he says, ‘Because it’s my nature.’”
He fell silent, so I said, “You think they’ll keep coming after you. That they can’t help themselves.”
“I’ve built up enough relationships that I’ve got most guys running scared who will do their best to ensure I’m left alone, but there will always be that asshole who doesn’t like knowing I’m out there…that with a few words I can take him and everyone around him down. Add in the guys who want revenge for the loved ones I took out over the years, and there’s always someone waiting for that moment when The Ghost exposes a vulnerable spot.”
I nodded as things began to make more sense. “I’m a vulnerable spot,” I murmured.
Vincent’s hand came up to clasp my neck so he could force my eyes up. “Baby, you’re not a spot – you’re my goddamn jugular.”
I wanted to cry, because while his words were proof that he was getting in as deep into this thing as me, he’d also sealed our fate. Being with me would put him at risk. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but there’d come a time when the next guy would come along and use me to get to him.
Defiance (The Protectors, Book 9) Page 21
