Evidence of Passion (Shadow Agents 7)

She pulled out the chair across from him, sat down and stared back at him. “Your name is Kenneth Cross.”

Anger flashed on his face. “I’m Jack.”

“You grew up in Montana. You lived on a ranch.”

He laughed. “Got a hit on my DNA, huh? Or was it my prints?”

“You were an army ranger, under the command of William Harris.”

He leaned toward her. “Don’t tell anyone.” His voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I think he may be dead.”

She gazed into his eyes. “We know who you are now.”

Voice still low, he said, “You know nothing.”

She thought about the files that she’d read. “I know that the real Aidan O’Sullivan is dead. I’m guessing that his body will be found eventually, and he’ll have a playing card on his chest.”

His grin flashed. “He might.” Then his laughter came. “But wasn’t it a grand cover?” The Irish drifted back into his voice then. “I was in Ireland for ove

r a year. Met Aidan there. He wanted me to kill his grandfather, but I don’t just take any kind of work.”

No. “You like to be challenged.”

He nodded. “An old man wasn’t going to challenge me. He would’ve been too easy.”

“That’s why you focus on ex-military, isn’t it?” Rachel asked him. “That way, you have more of—”

“A fight?” He shrugged. “I think it evens the playing field.”

“But...Brent Chastang wasn’t ex-military.”

His jaw tightened. “He was a jerk who needed to stay away from you.”

The guard stood, still as a statue, behind Kenneth.

Dylan moved toward the guard then. He whispered to him. The guard hesitated, but then made his way out of the room.

“Just us three?” Kenneth asked. He pursed his lips. “And of course, the ones watching in that little room next door.”

Rachel decided to gamble. “There’s a profiler in there. She told me that you were a psychopath.”

Rage ignited—plain to see—in his eyes. “The profiler would be wrong.”

“I don’t know...all the people you’ve killed. Your total disregard for human life—”

“I have regard for life. Your life.”

Now Dylan stood behind Kenneth.

“It’s the others that I don’t give a damn about,” Kenneth continued. He acted as if what he’d just said was perfectly reasonable. Probably because, to him, it was.

“Did you give a damn about your father?” Was Noelle right? Had he—

His grin flashed.

He had.

“He was a fool who spent too much time caring about the dirt beneath his feet. Like the land mattered. He wanted to hold me back, to keep me out there, when I was meant for more.”