Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
“Haven’t I been?” I goaded her.
“Stop with all the banter, and just hear me.”
I stared at her open, honest face. “Fine.”
“I know you don’t think you’re a good man, Maks, but you’ve done an amazing thing here, and now the road is clear in front of you. Second chances are the best.”
“I dunno. Some would say I deserve the same you’re giving to everyone else.”
“The difference is that, by all reports, you saved more people than you hurt.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. The scales don’t tip in my favor.”
“Says you.”
“One death, twenty, it’s all the same blood on you, right?”
She was quiet a moment. “When I first started with the Bureau, I used to think just like that. But I’ve killed people in the line of duty, and some would have killed me, but others, I believe, were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, scared, back up against the wall, feeling like they had no other option than to try and kill me. They were desperate and confused, and I stood between them and their freedom.”
“And?” I groused.
“And I had no choice but to end their lives because if I didn’t act, I would be the one in the morgue.”
“What’re you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that you prevented ‘wrong place, wrong time’ scenarios. You helped your people make better choices, and we have statement after statement to that effect.”
“Listen—”
“I think you did the best you could in the environment you were in, faced with insane decisions I can’t even imagine.”
“It’s not that black and white.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. The more reports we take, apparently everyone misses the guy who took care of them and their families, who didn’t let petty arguments turn into blood, and who kept the peace between all the parties for years.”
But I knew better, and I was covered in the same blood my father was, no matter what the kind FBI agent believed.
“And according to Zane Calhoun, with you gone, bodies were dropping every day.”
I smirked at her. “I think he’s confused. Don’t you get that from him? That he’s not all that bright?”
Her smile lit her dark eyes. “You’re a better man than you think you are, Maksim Lenkov, so from now on, choose the path in the sun and fuck the shadows.”
“Eloquently put.”
“I try,” she said, grinning.
And so would I.
FIVE
Portland smelled different from Chicago, and even from New York, which I’d only been in for a month. But as soon as we were out in the parking lot, it was like wet pavement, soil, and smoke hit my nostrils all at the same time.
“I wanna go home,” Deputy US Marshal Grant Kendall whined as we walked through the parking lot to get the car.
I wondered if I was supposed to be in handcuffs. Hard to say. Kendall and his partner, Deputy US Marshal Serena Woods, hadn’t once treated me like a criminal. At the airport, we didn’t even have to go through the metal detectors or wait in line, since they were federal agents, so the three of us walked through the terminal like colleagues, getting breakfast and coffee.
On the plane I didn’t have to sit between them. I got the window in business class, and Kendall, who was in the middle, fell asleep while Woods watched a movie on her phone. It was anticlimactic, to say the least.
There had been discussion about where to take me—Oregon or Arizona—and the chief deputy in Manhattan, the woman in charge of putting me in WITSEC, had decided that Oregon would be better for me.
“This man is a good witness, and we want to give him the best chance for a new life,” she’d told Lewis, then to me, “It’s your decision, Mr. Lenkov, but I think if you’re hot all the time, you’ll be miserable in Arizona. How in the world is that any kind of reward? I myself hate Arizona, so I can only assume, being from Chicago, you will too.”
I didn’t know about that, and Lewis had pressed her lips together really tight so she wouldn’t laugh. And so it was decided—I was going to the Pacific Northwest.
“I’ll be in touch as different cases progress, but I probably won’t see you in person again,” Lewis said before she hugged me, surprising the hell out of me.
“Awfully touchy-feely for an FBI agent,” I told her as I walked away.
“That’s special agent,” she reminded me just so we were clear.
Now, in Portland, I had to wonder if the air was always going to be this damp.
“You smell that?” Kendall asked me as we got on the freeway. “That’s trees and rain, Maks. Get used to it.”
“Stop,” Woods ordered him and then smiled as she turned around in the front passenger seat to look at me. “I think it’s beautiful here.”
I squinted at her.