Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 34926 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34926 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Despite myself, I found he’d drawn me into the wicked game. “What’s the stakes?”
“Winner’s choice.”
I knew this was a bad idea. But he’d piqued my interest now. “Fine. You go first.” I had to make sure to get in. If I was doing this, I wasn’t starting.
“OK.” He reached for my hands, clasping them firmly in both of his. “Before I joined ExFil and Bones, I was an assassin.”
Chapter Four
Chase
It seemed to take Cotton several seconds to process what I’d said. Still another few to believe she’d heard me right. Then she swallowed.
“You’re not kidding, are you.” She made it a statement. Oddly enough, her hands tightened around mine. I think I was expecting her to reject me. To push me away. Instead, she seemed to cling to me even more. It was a huge gamble on my part, but I could tell I’d made the right choice.
“No, baby. I’m not. I was part of a group of mercenaries working for a really shady organization. There are a lot of things I still don’t know. I’d been hand-picked for my skills but mostly for my levelheadedness and my ability to do the hard jobs. Even when I didn’t want to. I was assured that we were working for the greater good. There were certain very strict protocols in place to assure my team any target we were sent after deserved the justice they were getting. I believed in them. In my team and our team leader. In the end?” I shrugged and shook my head. “I was just another bad guy doing bad things. I almost killed a woman married to one of my brothers here. That’s when Cain took me in. He didn’t have to, but he listened to my story, fantastical as it was, and believed me. Bones had some friends in high places who knew about my employers. They shut that section down. Some of my team realized how we’d been lied to and manipulated. Others…” I winced even as I remembered. “I executed them. My team. My responsibility. Cain’s had my back ever since. Gave me a job with ExFil and a home here.”
“Sounds familiar,” she muttered. “Cain didn’t hesitate in hiring me, even once he found out everything. I guess he likes taking in strays, huh?” Taking a breath, she began. “I just got out of prison.” When she didn’t elaborate immediately, I had to stifle my need to tell her to continue. That would have been the exact wrong move. She needed time to tell this in her own way. “Before I go on, I should tell you Cain and Pops read my casefile after requesting it from my parole officer. I gave consent because I never want to deceive people who’ve given me a chance.” She closed her eyes and a single tear tracked down her left cheek. “If you want to read that file, I’ll have Cain give it to you.”
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
She nodded several times, still gripping my hands tightly. Finally, she started. “I killed a man. There were circumstances, but I did it. The guy was the son of a judge in town, so even though the case was taken out of his jurisdiction, I knew there was no way I’d win at trial. My lawyer got the prosecution to accept a deal for manslaughter instead of murder and I took it. I got fifteen years. Served ten of them before I got out on parole.”
“Seems a bit excessive to serve that much on a fifteen-year sentence. Did you have a minimum you needed to serve before you were eligible for parole?”
“You would think that, huh? Yeah. I had to serve a quarter of the sentence before being considered for parole. Unfortunately, the parole board doesn’t like it when you don’t express remorse for your crime. I had none. Told them so.”
That made me grin. “That’s something I’ve noticed about you since you’ve been with us. You don’t lie.”
“No. It’s the one thing I have left that’s good inside me. It may be hard for people to hear. May be hard for me to say. But I won’t lie. And I never break a promise.” She shrugged. “I guess even murderers have lines they won’t cross.”
“Somehow, I don’t picture you as someone who kills for no reason. There’s more to that story.”
She gave me a startled look, trying to jerk her hands away, but I kept a hold on them. “You… you believe me?”
“Cotton, I know killers. I could see it the first time I laid eyes on you that you’d killed. I could also see the toll it took you. You’ve killed. But you’re not a killer. There’s a huge difference. So there had to be a good reason in your mind for you to take that step.”