The question shouldn’t have affected me as much as it did. Seriously, it wasn’t going to fucking change anything. I had a goddamn mission, and that fact alone precluded anything else.
Even having a child on the way? Even having a woman that will be the mother of your child?
This was too much. I’d never, ever had second thoughts before. Now it seemed like I was having nothing but second thoughts. I legitimately didn’t know how to handle this situation. And that was saying something, considering all the shit I’d dealt with.
“Come on, Burke,” I said. “Get it together. Deal with this fucking shit later.”
There was a lot that I couldn’t believe about the last week or so. It felt like everything I knew about my life in the last week had flipped on its head, and now I didn’t really know what I thought I knew about myself. It was all too much to fucking handle at a time like this.
“You go and rescue those girls, you go and kill Snake, and then you go and see a therapist,” I said, words that burned. No, that was not going to happen. “Or you go see Emily and get this sorted.”
The instant those words came out of my mouth, it was like the truth. The good news…if you could call it that, I suppose, was that I hadn’t signed anything yet. I still had something like three and a half, maybe four weeks, depending on when the counter started to make something happen. I had time.
It felt like I was falling into the exact same trap that Liam and Sean had. But there were two big differences—one, I only had this thought in my head, not something in real life to affect me, and two, once we defeated Snake, we could legitimately retire. We could close DOM for good, go our own separate ways, and have plenty of money to make ends meet.
Wild? Sure. The future? Almost probably.
The thought gave me clarity. I could focus on the mission again.
And the one thing that seemed evident immediately was how tired I was. I needed to at least get a power nap in. The convoy wasn’t moving tonight—that had come up in our intel.
I decided to call it a night, albeit one with an early wake-up call. The sooner I got rid of Snake and got back to Emily and figure things out with the kid thing, the better off I’d be.
The Next Morning
I had the alarm set for half-past five.
In reality, I was wide awake well before that.
In the middle of missions like these, sleep became something of an option, something that my body decided to just put on pause and not deal with for some time. It wouldn’t be healthy to have for the long run, but in the short term, boy did it work wonders to not have to worry about things like needing naps or eight hours of paused activities.
As soon as the alarm rang out, I turned it off, as ready to hit the off button as I was to pull a trigger. I headed to the armory and armed myself to the teeth. Bulletproof armor. Submachine gun. Pistol and knife in case I fell into hand-to-hand combat. Helmet. I couldn’t have enough.
The only downside to this would be that I would be sweltering hot, slicker, and at more risk of dying from dehydration than I was from daring enemies, but I didn’t mind a little bit of heat. Better the heat from the sun than worrying if the heat from the bullets would fucking kill.
I ran one last time through all of the equipment set up and checked to see if I was forgetting anything. As best as I could tell, I had not. I was set.
I hurried over to the bunker’s garage, found a motorcycle, and hopped on the bike. The door slowly opened.
And as it did, Emily entered my head.
You can’t ignore these thoughts or they’re going to keep popping up.
And so, for exactly one minute, I let myself think of whatever the hell I wanted to with my future. I imagined the child being a little boy. I was attracted to the name Ryan. It seemed strong.
He could play football.
I imagined it being a little girl. I was attracted here to the name Anna. There was something beautiful but fierce about it. I imagined her growing up with her mother’s beauty and my determination. With that combination, there was nothing she couldn’t do.
And then I thought about Emily.
I thought about her seductive curves. I thought about her wearing nothing but a bathrobe when I had entered her place. I thought…
No, not just sex. I thought about her cheer, her lighthearted personality. How easy it was to make her smile. Fuck. What was—
My wrist buzzed.
A minute was up.
It was time to fucking go.
Because of the distance between me and the truck when I started, even if the truck hadn’t moved at all in the night, it would still be about an hour before I got there—and the truck would certainly have started moving at some point.
As I normally did, I drilled the mission briefing and goals in my head until it practically became second-hand memory for what it would entail. First, I would procure the truck by any means necessary. If that meant killing every armored man in the area, I would. If it meant everyone surrendered and was willing to put their face in a ditch, I would.
Next, I would get the girls to safety with an arranged police contact back in Tlaxcala who I knew wasn’t dirty.
And third, as
