10. Bexley

10

BEXLEY

The coffee tasted like shit, but that didn’t shock me. If there was anything I learned about food, it was that coffee almost always resembled the person making it. And we were all under too much pressure to give a damn about what the engine oil coming from Dom’s kitchen tasted like.

Still, I eased myself down at the kitchen table before a familiar hand with long, dexterous fingers settled onto my shoulder.

“You sure you want to side with the bossman on this one?” Dom asked.

Instead of looking up at him, I peeked over at Voss. “I believe you when you say she’s building an army. I just don’t think she’s doing it because she’s preparing for war or something.”

Voss approached the table and took a seat in front of me. “So, you think she’s doing it just because she can.”

I shook my head again. “No.”

Dom sat down to my left at the table. “Then, why do you think she’s doing it?”

Ronyn was the last to join us, and he sat to my right. He didn’t say anything to me. He just stared, pinning me with those steel gray eyes of his. I looked down into my coffee mug before taking a long pull of the liquid that I damn near had to chew just to get down.

“Jesus,” I said breathlessly.

Dom chuckled. “It’ll wake you up, that’s for certain.”

I placed my mug on the kitchen table in front of me. “Do you ever clean the damned thing?”

Ronyn barked with laughter, and I had to admit, the sound was phenomenal. It tugged a soft grin across my cheeks, and I couldn’t help but relish the way his tattoos bounced with his muscles as he chuckled.

Yet, all too soon, silence descended upon us.

I knew they were waiting for an explanation.

“The first night mission I ever ran with Delilah was the one where my partner died,” I said.

Their gazes focused on me as Dom slipped his hand on top of my left knee beneath the table. Ronyn cocked his entire body toward me, giving me his undivided attention. And Voss? Well, his stare never left mine as his steel-toed boot crept toward my bare foot beneath the table.

I felt him settle his boot against it before I continued.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, Delilah had been my boss for a few months at this point. But I was running daylight, quick missions, and she was always the one planning and executing the blacksite’s nighttime, overseas missions.”

Voss folded his arms over his chest. “Should you be telling us this?”

I shrugged. “Who’s going to fire me over it?”

Ronyn chuckled. “Good enough for me.”

“Take your time, sweet girl,” Dom said as he smoothed his thumb against my knee.

I smiled over at him softly before I continued. “This particular case that fell onto her desk required the best and the brightest from our blacksite. So, me, Delilah, Brutus, and Jacob?—”

“Who’s Brutus?” Ronyn asked.

I peeked over at him. “Our pilot for the mission. Hell of an enforcer, but an even better chinook pilot.”

“Chinook?” Dom asked.

Voss grinned at me as Ronyn spoke. “A military helicopter that can transport around 10 tons of shit.”

“Ah,” Dom said.

I drew in a deep breath. “Anyway, it was the four of us. Me and my partner, Brutus behind the wheel of the chinook, and Delilah calling the shots. The op was simple: take out the head of a faction in the Middle East trying to gain a foothold in a pseudo-government faction that the U.S. couldn’t seem to topple on its own.”

“Yikes,” Dom muttered.

I giggled bitterly. “Yikes, indeed. Brutus dropped us about six miles from our final destination and we crept in using the shroud of darkness to cover us. The plan was to snake our way through the six miles until we came to the outskirts of the impoverished town, and then it was simply a matter of sweeping homes while people slept until we found who we were looking for. All of our guns had mufflers. All of us had undergone more than enough stealth training to stun a fucking rhino. It should’ve been an easy mission. It should’ve been ‘get in, get out,’ as routine as it got.”

That’s when I felt Ronyn’s hand slip against my right knee, squeezing softly. “What happened, Bex?”

I shook my head softly. “Please, don’t call me that.”

When Ronyn didn’t speak, I looked over at him with teary eyes. “Jacob always called me that. Please, it just… it hurts to hear.”

He nodded slowly, as if to let me digest his understanding. “All right, Bee.”

I snicker softly. “Like a bumblebee?”

Ronyn tossed me a wink. “My precious little bumblebee.”

My heart came alive at his words, and it gave me the strength to press on as I looked back across the table at Voss.

“When we got to the village, Delilah broke off. It wasn’t part of the plan, but she told us to stick to the plan and she was going to run a plan of her own. Now, you can only imagine our shock. We’re decked out in black tactical gear. Everyone’s got masks on. It’s not like we can just blindly communicate with one another. Plans don’t change mid-run.”

“No, they don’t,” Ronyn said gruffly.

I drew in a deep breath. “But she always came back, and I always thought that was so weird. She’d disappear, and then come back. Disappear, and then come back. I finally got her off to the side at one point in time and asked her what the fuck she was doing, but she’d always give me some dumbass excuse like, ‘oh, I heard a child stirring and didn’t want them to wake anyone.’ Or, ‘I thought I heard someone shifting in the other room, can’t be too careful.’”

“Non-answers,” Voss said.

I pointed at him. “Exactly. Just enough information to calm us down when adrenaline is high, but it’s not as if she was really saying anything that justified her abandoning her entire fucking team and the entire fucking mission whenever she felt like it.”

“What do you think she was doing?” Dom asked.

I slowly panned my tired gaze over to him. “Honestly? To this day, I’m still not quite sure what happened. Sometimes, I’ll lay awake at night and replay it over and over again in my head. Like if I look at it from every single angle in the right order, I might just find the missing piece as to what happened.”

“What happened from your perspective, then?” Voss asked.

That brought my gaze back to his from across the kitchen table. “Before I knew it, she fired her weapon.”

“She what?” Ronyn growled.

I barked bitterly. “At least someone understands how fucked up that is.”

Ronyn leaned forward, gripping my knee a bit tighter. “Let me get this straight: she drags your asses overseas, drops you in a fucking village, and then fires off her weapon and wakes everyone up before you can get out of there?”

My face fell flat. “And now you see why I blame her for Jacob’s death.”

Ronyn shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Bumblebee.”

I swallowed thickly as I closed my eyes and leveled my head out on my shoulders. “Before I knew it, her weapon fired, and I know that specifically because Jacob and I were clearing houses together and Brutus was still back at the chinook, waiting for his command. There’s no one else’s bullet it could have been since everyone else was asleep in that little village. But…”

“Shit hit the fan, didn’t it?” Voss asked.

I slowly opened my eyes. “Yeah, something like that. She fired off her fucking weapon and everyone woke up. I mean, absolutely everyone. Jacob and I stood over a married couple who pulled out a goddamn oozie from beneath their bed. A fucking oozie, of all things. And it was a mad dash to get out of there with us intact.”

The guys waited for me to continue as I tried to figure out my next set of words.

“So, Delilah’s barking orders from somewhere. I don’t even know where she is at that point. All I know is that I can hear her, but I can’t see her. I hear the chinook blades whirring in the distance as Brutus approaches us, so he either heard the gunfire or she gave the command. Either way, while that loud-ass helicopter was coming our way, Jacob and I were basically dragging one another as quickly as possible back to that damned thing. And then, before I knew it, he just collapsed.”

“Collapsed?” Voss asked.

I turned my gaze to my lap and fiddled with the beds of my nails. “Because the chinook alerted the village to what direction we were headed, the people living there chased us back to the thing. His legs were peppered with bullets. They came right out from underneath him, just like that.”

I snapped my fingers before I swallowed the knot working its way around my throat. “And…”

Dom squeezed my left knee softly. “And what, sweet girl?”

Tears crested my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Goddamn it, I was tired of crying.

“Bumblebee,” Ronyn said softly.

I slid my watery gaze over to him. “Yeah?”

“What happened?” he urged with his low rumble of a voice.

I clicked my tongue and cleared my throat. “Jacob couldn’t walk. He couldn’t stand. I did my damnedest to drag him behind me while Brutus landed the chopper. But it kicked up sand everywhere, and we couldn’t see, and before I knew it, Delilah snatched up my arm and dragged me to the damned chinook.”

My hands quivered as I settled them into my lap. “And I swear to you, I did my best to get out of her grasp. She was fucking strong, though. I’ll never forget it. It was like a damn vice grip that I couldn’t wiggle away from, and I screamed out for Jacob. I cursed that woman. I told her that we couldn’t leave him. That the CIA left absolutely no one behind so long as I was around. But, she just picked me up and tossed me into that goddamn helicopter as if I didn’t weigh anything, and… and we left.”

Something warm pressed against my cheek before I realized it was Dom, kissing away a tear that managed to snake its way down my cheek. I felt the rough calluses of Ronyn’s hand as he brushed his knuckles against my other cheek, wiping away the tears I tried so hard not to allow to fall. Even Voss’s feet slid against mine beneath the table, trying to provide me with some sort of comfort.

“I’m so sorry, sweet girl,” Dom whispered.

“What she did was wrong, Bumblebee,” Ronyn said.

I finally picked my teary gaze up and looked at Voss from across the table. “The whole point of this story was, she said something to me that day that I’ll never forget. Something that has always stuck with me. And it wasn’t until I heard you guys talking down here earlier that I realized why it stuck with me.”

“What did she say?” Voss asked.

I licked my lips as my gaze grew unfocused. “She said, ‘sometimes, Special Agent Anna, we don’t get to choose what other people’s destinies are. Sometimes, the only thing we can do is give them a choice. And he made his choice. Do you want to spit in his face by going against his choice and getting yourself killed?”

Voss furrowed his brow in confusion. “What choice?”

I drew in a deep, shaking breath. “When Jacob collapsed and I tried to help get him to the chinook, he kept telling me to leave him and save myself.”

Ronyn and Dom both squeezed my knees as I paused to gather myself. I blinked away the tears and wiped the rest of them from beneath my eyes before I continued.

“He, uh…he kept begging me to go. To get to the helicopter and save myself. Bullets whizzed past us as I tried to get him onto my shoulder. I should have been able to get him onto my shoulder. I don’t…”

“Hey, look at me,” Voss said with a curt voice.

It was enough to stun me out of my trance and I focused my panicked gaze on him.

He leaned forward, settling his forearms against the kitchen table. “What happened to him wasn’t your fault. You didn’t discharge the bullet that woke everyone up. You didn’t shoot him. You didn’t choose to leave him behind. All you did was what you could do, nothing more, and certainly nothing less.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I still think I could’ve gotten him to that helicopter. To this day, I know that if I was stronger, or maybe a bit faster, or even a little bit?—”

“Bexley,” Ronyn said hotly.

“What?” I snapped as I whipped my head toward him.

He sighed. “Why is what she said important?”

His words focused me back onto the conversation and I settled my hand on top of his on my right knee. I squeezed softly, silently thanking him for the refocusing.

Then, I turned my attention back to Voss. “Delilah believed that Jacob had made a choice to save me by urging me onto the helicopter. Which also means, according to her moral code, that he also chose to sacrifice himself.”

I looked around the kitchen table at all three of them before I finally spat my theory.

“I think she believes that she’s saving people. I think Delilah truly believes that she’s giving these people that she turns some sort of a choice between a fleeting mortal existence and immortality. And I think that she’s telling people whatever they need to hear in order to get them to choose immortality.”

Dom was the first to speak. “But, why would she want them to choose immortality in the first place? Doesn’t anyone know what becoming a vampire does to them? The human nature that it removes? The life that is sucked away?”

Voss muttered beneath his breath. “People get desperate when they’re dying.”

I pointed at him again. “Yes, they do. And I think she exploits that.”

Dom waved his free hand in the air. “So, she’s… what? Giving dying people a choice? That doesn’t sound like her.”

I snickered softly. “It’s no different than military recruiting tactics.”

Ronyn straightened his back. “She’s got a point. Humans use the best of the military world to convince young ones to enlist, when the best of the military world is also the rarest.”

I nodded slowly as I looked over at Dom. “Given how important choices seem to be with her, I’m more inclined to think that’s what she’s doing. You say this vampire you guys… interrogated… said he wanted to?—”

“It,” Voss said flatly.

I pinned him with a look. “Just because you dehumanize them doesn’t mean I have to.”

“They’re not alive, so they’re certainly not human,” Voss spat.

I slowly stood from my seated position, feeling Dom and Ronyn’s hands fall away from my knees. “You’re a wolf, so you’re only half human. Does that mean I get to call you a good doggie?”

Voss growled as he slowly stood. “You better watch that mouth of yours.”

I saw his fists ball up at his sides and I tilted my head. “What? Going to use those advanced interrogation techniques on me now?”

“Come on, Bexley!” Voss bellowed.

I pinned him with a look. “You and I may not see eye to eye when it comes to how you treat vampires, but that doesn’t stop me from knowing in the pit of my fucking gut that she’s most likely giving these people a choice. And if Delilah’s as sneaky as the CIA trained all of us to be? Then, she’s giving people a choice between death and what they want to hear. Because you’re right, I don’t think many people would willingly choose the life of a vampire. Which means she has to be feeding them something mighty fucking good before they make the decision to gives their lives over to her.”

Dom stood to my left. “But, why would she want them to choose immortality in the first place? Forget what she’s telling them so that they agree. Why would she want them to agree? I mean, outside of the fact that if someone doesn’t agree to the transformation, it can go… wrong.”

I paused. “Wrong? How so?”

“Not important,” Voss interjected, “the point is, Dom’s got a good point. We have a theory for why, but it gets us no closer to her purpose.”

“Simple,” Ronyn said as he stood.

A grin slithered across my face. “I thought you’d figure it out first.”

“Figure what out first?” Dom asked.

I grinned wickedly at Voss. “Why does anyone in government do anything that they do nowadays?”

And when Voss didn’t respond, Ronyn’s voice filled the air all around us.

“To leave a legacy, that’s why.”