“Yes. It even has the little triangular-shaped air freshener Eli hung over the rearview mirror.”
“This must be the security system. The car is in the garage, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe if we keep going, we’ll see the guys and whether they’re safe. For all we know, they might have already caught the guy and we can come out now.”
Mara tapped the Enter key a few more times, scrolling through images of the back of the house and several empty rooms. She had a feeling that this situation wasn’t going to be resolved so easily.
FOR ELI, TIME fell away and it was seven years ago. He was young and hopeful. Things weren’t so complicated, and all he knew was the Circle. He was staring into the face of his best friend, his mentor, and his fellow soldier. He was staring into the face of his past.
“Justice.”
The other man’s head dipped in acknowledgement. “Knight.”
Eli grimaced. “I don’t go by that name anymore. It was a lie just like everything else.”
Justice moved closer and Eli raised his gun higher. “Stay where you are.” It horrified him that his hand shook. His arm felt only loosely connected to his body, like whatever held him together most of the time had gone liquid.
“Are you going to shoot me now? After everything we’ve been through together? After all I did for you?” The voice that came back to him was just the same as he remembered. Everything about Justice was the same as he remembered. It made him angry that time hadn’t stamped the evidence of his treachery on his face.
“You told me we were going to help people. That we were making a difference.”
Rage rose in Eli’s chest, an inferno that burned through his veins and made his trigger finger itch. It would be so easy to end this. To pull the trigger and take him out. But there was a small, traitorous part of him that couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to.
Because then he would never understand why.
“We did make a difference. All those people we saved appreciated the things we did for them. I didn’t see them complaining afterward.” Justice gave him a long-suffering look.
It was so familiar, so much like the looks he’d often given him back when they were training together. The sense of familiarity only enraged Eli further. He shouldn’t feel an affinity toward the man who’d been systematically tormenting him and the people around him for months.
“Sure, it was fine as long as we got some money and some drugs out of the deal, right? You never gave a shit about helping people. I just want to know if you’re here, then who the hell is the FBI holding?”
“They’re holding someone willing to pretend their name is Justice. I’d used that identity too long anyhow. It was time for it to die a valiant death.”
Eli wondered if the FBI knew they’d been wasting their time on a decoy. Although, considering the things he’d learned that day, it was time to start reexamining all the information he’d taken for granted as fact over the last few years.
“Why would someone do that? Take the fall for you?”
“Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few pawns to protect the king.” Justice watched him with knowing eyes. He waited patiently, his lips fixed into that infuriatingly smug smile.
Eli’s finger flexed against the trigger slightly. It was a frightening thing to feel your universe realigning around you. Even more so when you realized that so much of what you thought you knew was a lie.
Or if not a lie, at least not the whole story.
Agent Harris had seemed so sure that the leader of the Circle would be in contact with Eli. Maybe he’d known that the Justice they’d captured wasn’t who he’d claimed to be.
Maybe he’d known all along that Eli had been far more connected in the organization than even he had realized.
“You’re the leader. You’re Zeus.”
The other man’s eyes glittered in triumph. “To think, all that time you were at the right hand of the gods. I was going to bring you in—you would have been in the inner circle. Unfortunately, I had to leave the country for a while. Spent some time in Cambodia and Indonesia. Lovely places. More importantly, non-extradition countries. I figured I could hang out for a few years until the heat died down stateside.”
“So I was here taking the blame while you were vacationing,” Eli spat.
“I came back as soon as I could. I figured five or so years was enough time for memories to get fuzzy. When I came back to the States, I started rounding up as many of my old comrades as I could find. Imagine my surprise to find you in bed with the FBI. I would have thought it of anyone but you. You narced on us and got dozens of my best guys killed.”
“No, I didn’t. I was pulled in from the same sting and had no idea what was going on. But I’m glad it happened now. Otherwise, I would have never known the truth. I’d have wasted my life helping a drug kingpin build his empire on the backs of the very people I was trying to save.”
Justice bared his teeth. “Look at you. So righteous.”
“This is a game to you, but it’s my life,” Eli snarled. “You turned me into a criminal. Then you put everyone around me at risk. But why spend all this time playing with me? Hurting innocent people and dragging this out? You could have just come straight at me months ago. Ended it all.”
It would have been so much easier that way. Eli could have put them all out of their misery if he’d had a chance to take Justice out months ago.