I needed to find something to do other than replay that nightmarish day in my mind or I was going to drive myself nuts.
Talking to Daniel would help. Daniel had become my closest friend through our years of field work at the Agency and he was the only one from my old life who I still communicated with. He’d been the only person who witnessed my downfall from start to present. Everyone else was locked out of my life for good.
It was better for them. Safer.
Daniel took care of most of the funeral arrangements.
A funeral I could hardly even remember.
I wanted to be left the hell alone.
Isolated from the world.
Bourbon tasted better than coffee, and the tears I should’ve been shedding came in the form of holes in my bedroom wall.
The police department in DC was filled with half-brained idiots. They called the shootings a simple home invasion and dropped the investigation after only a few weeks due to lack of evidence. It was a fucking joke.
The alarm system had been disabled, and the windows broken from the inside out. Nothing in the house was missing, and nothing was overturned as if someone was looking for something.
Home invasion was the cover-up. Something was off. And because I hadn’t seen it sooner, my wife and son paid the ultimate price. In the end, it was my fault. I should have seen it coming.
Fuck. I could have stopped it.
After months of drinking away my guilt, I put down the bourbon and packed up my shit, leaving my badge and my gun on my desk at the Agency. I didn’t even leave a resignation letter or speak a word to any of my co-workers who tried to voice their bullshit words of sympathy. I didn’t need anyone’s fucking pity.
I walked out on the CIA, never turning back. I changed my last name and altered my date of birth and took off for parts unknown. The agency would not be happy with my leaving, as I had not been properly debriefed.
I knew things they didn’t want anyone else to know and, leaving in such circumstances, they figured I might have gone rogue.
That in combination with my skills made me a threat. I could take on ten men at once and leave them all unconscious without breaking a fucking sweat.
Fuck them. Let them feel threatened.
Not one fucking case was opened to get to the root of my family’s killers. The Agency accepted the word of the damn police department. That told me something was wrong with the whole situation. The family of one of their highest-ranking agents was murdered in a home with the newest and best security system at the time, and they didn’t care to look farther into it? I hated everyone in that damn office for not taking it more seriously. We were trained to believe that nothing that happened around us was random or coincidental.
That left me to do the digging myself. I went over everything that had led up to that day in my head over and over. An operation had gone south not long before. Had someone I’d put away come at me for revenge? The endless unknowns were enough to keep me up most nights.
I wasn’t going to rest until I found out.
God as my witness, justice would be served for my family.
I needed to get as far away from the Agency and my former life as possible. I’d lived in two remote towns before settling into Bend, Oregon.
I made it my mission to fit in somewhere just enough to be left the fuck alone.
So far so good.
***
GRAHAM
I headed to my truck as a sound caught my ear. I looked over into my neighbor’s yard and saw a little girl running around on the grass. Her dark red hair was billowing around her shoulders, bouncing in small curls as she flapped her arms around. She kept yelling to her mother that she was a bird trying to take off and fly around the city so she could see the world below. I saw a woman step out of her house, tired and worn down as she heaved a heavy sigh.
Beautiful.
I cursed myself at the thought.
I unlocked my truck as I watched her pile her daughter into the rust bucket vehicle she owned. By the looks of it, it was a complete piece of junk. Putting a child in that kind of car was not a good idea.