Retribution (Secrets & Lies #3)(24)
Katrina sits back, giving me an evaluating look. I sigh and look down. “For eight months, it was like that on nearly a daily basis. We would wake up, f*ck like rabbits, train, eat, f*ck, and kill when we had a job. I was numb by the end of it.”
“I bet. She sounds like she liked you at least. What happened?”
I laugh harshly and lean back, rubbing at my temples. “Isis Bardot may have liked the way she and I killed together, but Isis Bardot has never loved anyone or anything in her entire life except for two things. She loves money, and a good f*ck. I was apparently a very good f*ck, since it took a million dollars for her to betray me. When I got identified on one of our ops in Eastern Europe, the word was put out, my head was worth a million dollars, dead or alive. The very next op, she... well, let's just say my face and my ass still carry reminders of what happens to people who trust Isis Bardot.”
“So why is she doing this?” Katrina asks, referring to the picture and message. “Why not just come after you?”
I shrug. “Who knows? I know she has stayed active, she is one of the best in the world over the past twenty years. She started so young, so she’s still not too old for it yet. Maybe she's just bored.”
Katrina sighs, and leans back. “Okay. I guess I can understand now why you'd go to work for a human snake like Peter. He was a step up from Isis it seems.”
“At the time I thought he was,” I admit. “Now do you understand why even though I love Melissa, I can never let myself be with her?”
Katrina shakes her head. “I can understand why you hate yourself, I can understand your guilt. But no, I can't understand that. I'll try my damnedest though to try and explain it to her when she and Andrea come back.”
“Thanks, Katrina. And if you want, when you want to have that sparring match with me to see who's really better... I’ll be waiting.”
I get up, and head for the door, thinking maybe I can help the guys out. Just as I reach it, Katrina answers.
“I may just take you up on that.”
Chapter Nine
Melissa
“So that's why,” I say, still calm from the hour-long walk I took with Andrea.
“Yeah,” Katrina says, the two of us taking a rest on a rock overlooking a dramatic stretch of valley below us. Even though it's still the middle of winter, and we're both wearing heavy clothes, I'm comfortable out here with Katrina. I don't spend as much time with her as I do with Andrea, but she's still like a sister to me. “What do you think?”
“I... I can understand,” I reply, picking up a maple leaf between my fingers and twirling it. There aren't many left, most of them have fallen and crumbled, but this one still is bright reddish-orange, and looks dramatic against the slate gray of the winter sky. Before Katrina and I left, Jackson said he picked up on the radio we might get some snow overnight. I'm worried about that, but also looking forward to it. I wonder if you can catch snow on your tongue like they show in cartoons.
“How do you feel about it?” Katrina asks, squatting down. She's beautiful, her eyes a different blue from Jackson's or Andrea's, but also in the way she carries herself, moving with unconscious grace. In the way she blends strength into her movements, even in the way she's being protective of me now, she's beautiful, the only thing jarring the scene the black pistol on her hip. Nobody leaves the main compound area unarmed, not after Isis' e-mail to Nathan.
“I'm sad, of course. I feel like a bad joke, really. The thirty-year-old virgin, in love with the one man who can't give her what she needs most in life. It's unfair.”
“Damned unfair,” Katrina agrees. “So, do you want me to kick his ass or not?”
I look over surprised, thinking Katrina is joking, but she's looking back at me her face totally serious. “Why? What would that accomplish?”
“For one, it might knock some sense into that stubborn head of his, show him that he needs us just as much as we need him,” Katrina says, sitting down next to me. “And to be honest, it'd let me work off a lot of anger at him for his stupidity on all this.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, curious. After she'd told everyone else, Carson and Jackson took it in stride, while Andrea went into the chapel, saying she was going to do some exercise while Katrina and I took a walk. Katrina though seems genuinely upset over the news, and I don't understand why. “Why are you so angry?”
Katrina picks up a pebble and throws it into the valley below us, watching as it bounces off an oak tree about ten yards away. “Because I can understand it, maybe more than anyone else. I was totally devoted to nothing except destroying Peter DeLaCoeur two years ago. My reasons for not opening my heart were different and so similar to Nathan's. I was angry, and he's angry, too. He's angry at himself, he hates who he used to be. I hated Peter, I still do I guess, but it's different. And if it hadn't been for Jackson, I probably would have kept my heart guarded. I look back and I think about how close I was to swirling out of control, to destroying everything I've found in the past two years. It hurts, scares me, and pisses me off, too. Because I know you and Nathan deserve your chance to actually find some real happiness in this f*cked up world. All his talk about you being too pure, him being too dirty... f*ck that. Guess what, 'Lissa?”