Dad pulled back, his eyes wet with happy tears. “She’d say you did good, son.” He looked at Abby. “She’d say thank you for giving her boy back something that left him when she did.”
“I don’t know about that,” Abby said, wiping her eyes. She was clearly overwhelmed by Dad’s sentiment.
He hugged us again, laughing and squeezing at the same time. “You wanna bet?”
EPILOGUE
THE WALLS DRIPPED WITH RAINWATER FROM THE streets above. The droplets plopped down into deepening puddles, as if they were crying for him, the bastard lying in the middle of the basement in a pool of his own blood.
I breathed hard, looking down at him, but not for long. Both of my Glocks were pointed in opposite directions, holding Benny’s men in place until the rest of my team arrived.
The earpiece buried deep in my ear buzzed. “ETA ten seconds, Maddox. Good work.” The head of my team, Henry Givens, spoke quietly, knowing as well as I did that with Benny dead, it was all over.
A dozen men with automatic rifles and dressed in black from head to toe rushed in, and I lowered my weapons. “They’re just bag men. Get ’em the hell out of here.”
After holstering my pistols, I pulled the remaining tape from my wrists and trudged up the basement stairs. Thomas waited for me at the top, his khaki coat and hair drenched from the storm.
“You did what you had to do,” he said, following me to the car. “You all right?” he said, reaching for the cut on my eyebrow.
I’d been sitting in that wooden chair for two hours, getting my ass kicked while Benny questioned me. They’d figured me out that morning—all part of the plan, of course—but the end of his interrogation was supposed to result in his arrest, not his death.
My jaws worked violently under the skin. I had come a long way from losing my temper and beating the hell out of anyone that sparked my rage. But in just a few seconds, all of my training had been rendered worthless, and it just took Benny speaking her name for that to happen.
“I’ve gotta get home, Tommy. I’ve been away for weeks, and it’s our anniversary . . . or what’s left of it.”
I yanked open the car door, but Thomas grabbed my wrist. “You need to be debriefed, first. You’ve spent years on this case.”
“Wasted. I’ve wasted years.”
Thomas sighed. “You don’t wanna bring this home with you, do you?”
I sighed. “No, but I have to go. I promised her.”
“I’ll call her. I’ll explain.”
“You’ll lie.”
“It’s what we do.”
The truth was always ugly. Thomas was right. He practically raised me, but I didn’t truly know him until I was recruited by the FBI. When Thomas left for college, I thought he was studying advertising, and later he told us he was an advertising executive in California. He was so far away, it was easy for him to keep his cover.
Looking back, it made sense, now, why Thomas had decided to come home for once without needing a special occasion—the night he met Abby. Back then, when he’d first started investigating Benny and his numerous illegal activities, it was just blind luck that his little brother met and fell in love with the daughter of one of Benny’s borrowers. Even better that we ended up entangled in his business.
The second I graduated with a degree in criminal justice, it just made sense for the FBI to contact me. The honor was lost on me. It never occurred to me or Abby that they had thousands of applications a year, and didn’t make a habit of recruiting. But I was a built-in undercover operative, already having connections to Benny.
Years of training and time away from home had culminated to Benny lying on the floor, his dead eyes staring up at the ceiling of the underground. The entire magazine of my Glock was buried deep in his torso.
I lit a cigarette. “Call Sarah at the office. Tell her to book me the next flight. I want to be home before midnight.”
“He threatened your family, Travis. We all know what Benny is capable of. No one blames you.”
“He knew he was caught, Tommy. He knew he had nowhere to go. He baited me. He baited me, and I fell for it.”
“Maybe. But detailing the torture and death of the wife of his most lethal acquaintance wasn’t exactly good business. He had to know he couldn’t intimidate you.”
“Yeah,” I said through clenched teeth, remembering the vivid picture Benny painted of kidnapping Abby and stripping the flesh away from her bones piece by piece. “I bet he wishes he wasn’t such a good storyteller, now.”
“And there is always Mick. He’s next on the list.”
“I told you, Tommy. I can consult on that one. Not a good idea for me to participate.”
Thomas only smiled, willing to wait another time for that discussion.
I slid into the backseat of the car that was waiting to take me to the airport. Once the door closed behind me, and the driver pulled away from the curb, I dialed Abby’s number.
“Hi, baby,” Abby lilted.
Immediately, I took a deep, cleansing breath. Her voice was all the debriefing I needed.
“Happy anniversary, Pigeon. I’m on my way home.”