I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. I was in the military. I knew all about keeping secrets. “Just say it’s confidential, asshole.”
“A little over a year ago, we had a kid that came to stay here. He was a runaway, hiding out from his step-father. That step-father turned out to be someone I happened to be acquainted with. He wasn’t at all a good man, and I knew personally that he was involved in many soldiers losing their lives due to false intel.”
Something niggled in my brain, like I had heard that story before. I thought back over the years and tried to piece shit together, but all I could come up with was a story that was way before my time in the military. And most people in the military thought it was legend more than actual facts. The story was just too unbelievable.
“How was he involved?” I asked.
“There were certain people, higher ups, that were taking bribes to hand out false intel. This guy was just on the edge of it all. He was still new enough that he wasn’t as deeply involved, but he had his fingers in the pie. Soldiers were dying left and right, and these guys didn’t care. They were just in it to make money.”
I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out where he was going with this. “You knew the senator was dirty. So, what happened to him?”
“Someone broke into his house and killed him,” he said coldly.
I wasn’t buying that. The way he was so relaxed, like he didn’t give a shit that someone had killed a senator, not that I had any sad feelings about the whole thing, but most people didn’t wish death on anyone else. He was too calm. Too okay with everything, and I had a sinking feeling that was because he was behind the senator’s demise. The question was, did he hire someone to take the senator out, like he had hired me, or had he done it himself? Most likely he had done it himself. Knight seemed like the type of man that took care of the bad shit on his own. I glanced around the room at Hunter and Cap, who stood there stoically, not letting on to a single fucking thing. And that right there was my answer.
“So, you were pissed about something the senator had done, and you killed him. Why?”
“I never said I killed him.”
“No, but they did. I can see it, the way they stand by and don’t say anything, like they aren’t going to give away a secret that they’re trying desperately to protect.” I tilted my head as I examined his facial features closely, the slight tick in his jaw, the way his body was strung tight, even though he was really good at disguising it. He was on edge just talking about this conversation and it bled deeper than just this one senator. He was pissed about the entire situation, like he had a stake in it. This went deeper than just the actions of a few people. He knew the men that died. He had fought alongside them. He was one of them.
I thought back to the stories I had heard and tried to remember all the details of the case. There had been a lot of soldiers’ deaths. Men were going out and they were coming back in body bags. The missions had seemed on point. Everything had pointed to the intel as being solid, until the guys went out and were ambushed.
I smirked slightly as the pieces started coming together. “There was a rumor that one man took the law into his own hands and started eliminating the people responsible for the bad intel. Of course, the military said that the man had lost his mind, had gone on a killing spree because of some fucked up notion that men were being killed for money. They caught the man and found him guilty on multiple counts of murder. That man was supposed to be sent to prison, but someone broke him out. Actually, I believe it was a team of three men. Now, if you believe the stories, that man died a few years back, about the same time that I was entering the military. Apparently, he was killed after he came back to finish off a few of the men he missed the first time he went on a killing spree.”
“What’s your point?” Knight asked.
I shook my head, laughing to myself. If this was the same man, it all made total sense. Knight had admitted that Cap had gotten him a new identity so that he could have a life with his new wife. He was working for a company that could protect him, keep his identity a secret by only having him work in training. And he lived on the property, which kept him out of the public eye. But if that was true, then everyone in the company was in on it. They had to know who he really was, because they would have to agree to protect him.
“You did a good job of hiding. The real question is what were you doing all those years between breaking out of prison and faking your death?”
His jaw ticked and I knew that I was right. No one admitted it, but they didn’t have to.
“So, that’s why you’re so willing to help me. You’re a crusader, fighting against the people that would screw over the good guys. And when you found out that all those people not only knew about soldiers dying for profit, but they were in on it, you decided that you would take care of it yourself. And that’s why you’re offering to help me,
