them what to do, kept control of the entire organization.”
“So you think I should go to jail.”
“Well, yeah. Although if what I saw is true, you did the world a service.” She stalled out briefly. “To be honest…I’m stunned that you gave it all to me.”
“I meant what I said.” He dropped his voice. “I need you to believe that what I had with you was the truth—I can’t…I can’t live with the idea that you think I lied about that. And as for that operative at the Marriott—he was sent to kill, and it was a case of either we took him out or he completed his mission. We had no choice.”
“You and Jim Heron?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take the body?”
“No, we did not—but reclamation of remains is standard operating procedure for XOps. Someone else took care of that.”
“XOps is the name, huh.”
“It has no name, but that’s what we call it.”
“Some of the men were marked with an orange strike—what does that mean?” She pointed to Jim. “Like he was.”
“In those cases, there has been some intel suggesting a mortal event, but the body has not been claimed or otherwise visually confirmed.”
“Jim is certainly alive and well.”
“He is.”
A stretch of silence followed, and Mels thought back to being against the man’s body, the two of them moving together under the sheets—so close, heart-to-heart, until the whole world didn’t exist, the power and combustion between them sweeping everything away.
“What can I say to help you with this,” he whispered. “What can I do.”
“Tell me where you’re going.”
“I can’t.”
“Or you’d have to kill me, isn’t that the line.”
“Never. Not you.”
Cue another stall-out, and in the tense quiet, she retraced the steps she’d taken to come out here: As soon as she’d finished looking at all the files on that flashdrive, the urge to confront him had taken hold. A quick dial into her contacts at the CPD had indicated he hadn’t been arrested and there were no leads on his whereabouts. In the end, she’d decided to drive out here, because Jim Heron was the only contact she had.
And now here she was, speechless.
She wanted to yell at Matthias, as if his past had been lived solely to screw her.
She wanted to rail against the whole course of their…God, it wasn’t even a relationship, was it. More like a collision that had involved so much more than just her car.
She wanted to throw her arms around him…because, looking in his face, she sensed that it could be true…the things he’d given her on the SanDisk—as well as the things they’d been to each other. So much in this situation was bizarre, but the feelings…could they have been real?
“What now,” she demanded hoarsely, mostly to herself.
“As in?”
“I have a feeling, even if I called the cops again right now, that you’d get away.”
He inclined his head. “I would.”
“So what are you going to do for the rest of your life? Run?”
“Evade death. Until it finds me and sends me to Hell. And both are going to happen.”
A chill went up her spine, tingling in the nape of her neck, making her hyper-aware of everything from the pine scent in the air to the coolness of the night to those lazy, traveling clouds overhead.
Matthias seemed sad to the point of agony. “Mels, I need you to know that I didn’t have a clue what to do. The amnesia was real, and when things started coming to me, I kept them from you because…that expression on your face in that hotel room this morning was something I never wanted to see—and I knew it was coming. I knew it was inevitable. The thing was, there was no good news in any of my memories—no goodness, either. But with you, I was different.” He dragged a hand through his hair and touched beside his eye, running his fingertips around the faded scars. “This I can’t explain. I just can’t—but it wasn’t makeup and contacts. And that is the God’s honest. The same’s true about the impotence. I didn’t lie about that.”
Shit. He struck her as so open, everything about him seemingly bared to her.
Except, wasn’t that what good liars did? They made themselves appear to be speaking the gospel—and they had a way of figuring out what would work with whoever was in front of them, what approach, what combination of affect and vocabulary would be successful.
Good liars were so much more than fib makers. They were selfish seducers with agendas.
“I can’t believe you,” she said roughly.
“And I don’t blame you. It is, however, the truth. My reckoning is coming for me—one way or the other the past is going to catch up with me, and I’m at peace with that. I was lucky—I got sent back to set things right, to give you what I did so you can expose the whole organization. That’s the only way I can make amends, and it’s also going to get you what you want—the story that can make an entire career. In the end, we’ll both have what we deserve.”
Funny, but her work had never seemed less important.
“You know what is still bothering me?” she said numbly. “I’ve never understood why I fell so hard for you— that’s bothered me all along. I just can’t find the reasoning, I mean, why a man I didn’t know, who didn’t even know himself? But you pursued me, didn’t you—and you get what you want. So be honest with me now, why did you do it? Why…me.”
“For the simplest reason there is.”
“And that is?”
He was quiet for so long, she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. Except then he said in a cracked voice, “I fell in love with you. I am a monster—it’s true. But I opened my eyes in that hospital and the second I saw you… everything changed. I went after you…because I am in love.”
Mels exhaled and closed her eyes, the pain in her chest taking her breath away. “Oh…God—”
Her lids flew open as Matthias hollered, and then everything went into slow motion.
With a powerful shove from him, she went flying, her body cast aside as something whistled by her ear and pinged off the side of the garage.
Mels hit the pea gravel and slid along the drive. Scrambling to stop her momentum, she clawed at the loose ground cover as she rolled onto her back.
And saw everything.
Just as the moon broke free of the clouds, and silvery white light rained down on the night landscape, Matthias heaved his whole body up into the air, the trajectory putting him directly in front of Jim Heron.
Mels shouted out, but it was too late.
The illumination from the heavens spotlit him as he put his chest in the way of the second shot…that had clearly been meant for the other man.
She would never forget Matthias’s face.
As he was mortally struck, his eyes were not trained on the one who was firing or the one he was saving. They were looking to the light from above, and he was…at peace.
As if his final act put him at ease all the way to his soul.
Mels reached out, as if she could stop him, or catch him, or rewind time—but the end had come for him, and, God, it seemed like he had expected it.
Perhaps even welcomed it.
She screamed, the shrill sound peeling out of her throat. “Matthias…!”
His body landed in a heap, and the fact that he didn’t try to brace himself against the impact was testament to how badly he was struck.
