“In the morning, we’ll set up and watch for him to leave the building, so we can have a talk with him. First, though, I want to stop and see a friend of mine.”
“Why am I not surprised you have a friend here in town.”
Taylor’s years in the Special Forces community had led to him building up a fair number of contacts who, after getting out, ended up in various security and intelligence jobs around the world. In the few years that Whitaker had known Taylor, he’d often been able to come up with a random person he knew ‘back in the service’ who had been able to help them out.
“He already kind of knows what’s going on. He’s the one who tracked down the real identities of the guys who jumped me at the storage locker. When that information clashed with what Graf had told me was when I knew he was dirty. Unfortunately, my poker face sucked, and Graf realized I was on to him before I could make a move.”
“What do you need to get from your friend?”
“First, I want to find out how screwed we are. My guess is Graf will find a reason to put a warrant out for me to and use the cities resources to track us down, but that’s a guess. I don’t want to be blindsided by someone just doing their job and taking us in if we can avoid it.”
“You agree that we shouldn’t call Joe, at least not yet.”
“No. He’d tell us to turn ourselves in and then try to work and clear us through diplomatic channels. That sounds great in theory, but Graf would make sure we were dead well before he could make anything happen. This is one of the times doing things the ‘right’ way would be completely wrong.”
Whitaker looked away for a minute before saying, “I agree.”
“Hey,” Taylor said, cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face back towards him. “I get it.”
Whitaker stared into Taylor’s eyes, searching for something, before pulling out of his grasp.
With a heavy sigh, she collapsed into herself, softly saying, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“So, are we going to talk about this now?”
“Yeah.”
They sat awkwardly for a few minutes, neither looking at each other, both trying to come up with what to say next.
Eventually, Taylor said, “I still think I did the right thing. Qasim was a danger to everyone, but I recognize what a terrible position I put you in. I know how you feel about doing things by the rules. I know how much lying on the official report hurt you, and I’m sorry I put you in that position. I know I said, afterward, that I didn’t ask you to do that for me, and I know I was wrong about that. I knew you loved me, and I wasn’t surprised when you made your story match mine. I’d expected you to do it. I almost wish you hadn’t. I think jail would’ve been better than losing you. These last few months have been awful.”
Taylor ran down. He’d been struggling since she left on what he actually felt. He still thought he’d done the right thing, but he realized he’d been so stubborn about his actions being right he refused to see what his decision had forced her to do.
“I still think you shouldn’t have shot him once he was in handcuffs. I admit that you knew him better than me, and I accept that you’d know better if he was still a danger in custody. What I was really mad about was that I felt you’d forced me to falsify the report, but you were right when you said you never asked me to do it. I made my choice but didn’t want to take responsibility for that. Everything that’s happened over the last week has pointed out that maybe you’ve been right all the times you said always going by procedure didn’t work. If I did things the way I ‘should,’ I would have turned myself in after I found Frieda’s body, and I’d almost certainly be dead now. I still think that usually, it’s best to do things the official way, but I agree that you’re right. Sometimes the official way and the right way are not the same thing.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
“I think I try to stop being so rigid about doing things the ‘right’ way and you stop being so stubborn in doing things ‘your way.’ I’m sure there will be times when we run into this again. Next time, we need to not dig our heels in and try and see things from the other’s perspective. Had we talked about it like this and not just retreated to our corners, things would have gone differently.”
“That sounds a lot easier said than done.”
“It is, but there’s one thing that, if we remember it, we should be able to get through our disagreement.”
Taylor looked at her, trying to work out what she meant.
“What’s that one thing?”
“That we love each other and only want the best for each other.”
Tayor left out a soft chuckle and said, “There’s that. Had I remembered that and thought about it, I wouldn’t have demanded you just accept what I did as right.”
“Had I remember it, I wouldn’t have handed back the ring.”
“Speaking of which,” Taylor said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small box. “Would you consider taking this back?”
Whitaker’s breath caught as she reached out and took it, opening the box to reveal her engagement ring.
“You have it with you?”
“I’ve had it in my pocket every day since you left, hoping we’d be able to fix this.”
“Yes, I’ll take it back. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
Whitaker slid the ring on
