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But it was, and as Rhett’s vision flickered back just enough to assure him he wasn’t dead from a heart-attack or a brain-aneurysm, that his life-force hadn’t been ejected by the shock of seeing Scarlet’s face, he collapsed on the floorboards and rolled onto his back and stared up at the blurry ceiling.
“Benson,” came the growl from somewhere in his throat. He didn’t know exactly how or exactly what or even exactly why.
But he knew exactly who.
“Benson,” he snarled again, turning over onto his side, ramming his fist into the wood and forcing himself up.
Rhett staggered to his feet, stared at the photograph again to make sure, then dropped heavily into his chair. It rocked on its springs, making little noises that sounded like distant shrieks.
He rocked gently and trancelike in the chair, his eyes wide and unblinking, fixed on that photograph of the Scarlet he’d once known, the Scarlet he’d once owned, the Scarlet he’d once . . . loved?
The thought brought a surprised smile to his strained mouth, bursting open the skin where he’d been plucking his lower lip. He licked the fresh blood, swallowed it down, then shook away the strange thought.
But the strange thoughts kept coming, like something strained inside him had ripped open, just like that broken lip. He rubbed the back of his head, then reached for his laptop and clicked open the second image, India O’Donnell, pulling it up and aligning it with a close-up of Scarlet’s face.
The similarity was eerie.
The connection was unreal.
The eyes were the same.
The eyes couldn’t lie.
“You lying sonofabitch.” Rhett’s voice was a choking gasp, the rage rising so fast he would have thrown up again if there was anything left in his hollowed-out body. “You lying scheming piece-of-shit dark-hearted snake-tongued motherfuckingbastard!”
And now something snapped inside Rhett’s mind, perhaps his body too. He wasn’t certain if it was something breaking or something coming together. All he knew was that suddenly his mind was clear like a bell, his thoughts sharp like arrows, focused like lasers, muscles tight and tense, ready for action, ready for revenge.
It all came together now—not just what Benson had done, but what Rhett was doing to do.
A wild grin broke on his blood-snot-saliva-puke-streaked face. Everything fit together in that exhilarating way which happened only once in a while, when coincidences weren’t just chance, when fate wasn’t just fiction, destiny not just a dream.
Because fate had reached out a helping hand to Rhett today.
By giving him an instrument of destiny in the form of Diego Vargas.
Fever burned through Rhett now as he dragged his laptop closer and furiously clicked and scrolled until he was in the NSA supercomputer application, running an AI-assisted search on that Maryland license plate.
The little wheel started spinning as the search began to generate results, listing traffic-cam snapshots of the van at various times and locations throughout the day. Rhett drummed his fingertips on the tabletop, then glanced down at the row of drawers beneath his workstation.
He pulled open the third drawer. It contained two Glock 17 handguns. Both were untraceable, with serial numbers filed off, loaded with 9mm hollow-points that would cave in upon impact, making ballistics almost impossible to match to a specific weapon.
He retrieved one of the weapons, checked the magazine and chamber, then placed the gun carefully on the desk, pointing it away from him with cautious habit that was built into his muscle-memory.
But the other memories that seared his throbbing brain were pushing him dangerously past the borders of caution. The thought that the woman and child had been alive all these years, all these decades, all this time . . . hell, it was doing something to him, ripping him up inside like psychic razorblades cutting through some cold dark part of him that Rhett had always assumedwashim, the slashing realization exposing something raw and vulnerable, a wistfulness that worried him, a tenderness that terrified him.
You took them from me, he thought with a viciousness sharpened by what bubbled up from this secret psychic space revealed by what Benson had hidden from him all these years. Rhett wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined, if it was something he’d felt back then or was only feeling now, after thirty years of darkness and death, thirty years of solitude and shadows, thirty years of being angry and alone, thirty years of violence without compassion, sex without love—like perhaps there was some eternal fundamental part of him that the shadow could not completely own, could not completely drown, could not completely destroy.
Love.
Was that the weird wistfulness that racked him?
Was that the terrifying tenderness that tore at him?
Was that the searing sadness that overwhelmed him?
Rhett didn’t know, and hell, he didn’t fuckingwantto know. He’d been this man for thirty years, perhaps forever. There was nothing new he was suddenly going to discover about himself. Nothing new hewantedto know about himself.
Grow the fuck up, Rhett, he screamed inwardly. You didn’t love the woman and the child back then, so there’s no way you can love them now. This isn’t love, it’s weakness. You’ve gotten soft sitting behind a desk in Langley. See it for what it is, and use it for what needs to be done.