Into the Night(66)

The monster had been Tucker’s own brother.

Tucker’s eyes swept over him as the other agent said, “When it came down to making a choice, I made that choice. I pulled the trigger and I killed my own brother rather than let him hurt an innocent woman.”

A woman that Tucker loved. Yes, Jonah knew all about that story. And about the fact that Tucker had recently reunited with that woman. Too bad that reunion had caused a wake of bloodshed in New Orleans.

“Then I turned my damn life around,” Tucker added, voice tight. “I made it my mission to hunt others like my brother. The ones who hid behind charming smiles but were really the worst monsters of their kind. I hunted them, I stopped them and I never let emotion get in the way. You can’t, not with this job. If the cases get to you, they will wreck you. They can’t become personal. You can’t let them. If you do, you’ll find yourself with a fast trip to see the Bureau shrink.”

Jonah swallowed. “You don’t think I can handle the pressure of the job?”

“You shot a man tonight, and your hands are dead steady.”

Jonah lifted his hands. They weren’t shaking.

“That tells me that two things could be happening. One, you’ve got fucking ice in your veins. You’ve locked down your emotions and you won’t let the job get to you because nothing gets to you.”

“Is that a bad thing?” An agent should be clearheaded. An agent should get the job done. “I saw Agent Murphy—Bowen killed a man, and the guy is carrying on like it’s business as usual.”

“No, he’s not.”

“Could have fooled me,” Jonah muttered.

“He has,” Tucker assured him flatly. “I know Bowen. I’ve been in the field with him again and again. He shuts down when he has to make the bad choices but Bowen deals with the aftermath. He knows the aftermath is brutal and ugly and that the guilt and second-guessing don’t stop. He shoulders that burden, and he only lets those close to him even see that he’s carrying it.”

His inner circle. Right. Jonah knew that was a circle that he wasn’t a part of, not yet. “Let me get this straight, you’re riding my ass right now because my hands aren’t shaking? But it’s totally cool with you that Bowen fired and never hesitated?” Such bullshit.

A faint half smile curved Tucker’s lips. Jonah didn’t like that smile. To be honest, he didn’t much like Tucker, either. He fought to keep me off this team. “Maybe I’m not being fair. Could be that I don’t know you well enough yet. Maybe you are like Bowen. You lock down tight and only let the ones closest to you see your pain.”

Bowen felt pain? That was news to him.

“It’s so important in this job...to be able to fucking empathize. With the victims. With the families. You have to be able to understand pain.”

The guy thought he didn’t know about pain? Bullshit.

“But perhaps there is another option at play with you. Maybe the crash just hasn’t hit you yet. It hasn’t fully settled into your head that you were seconds away from dying tonight. You fired wildly when he came at you, and that’s why you only clipped him in the shoulder. If Peter Carter hadn’t been desperate and frantic with fear, the scene could have gone down different, and that truth hasn’t really struck you yet. You don’t realize that death was breathing down your neck, but it was. And if Macey Night hadn’t fired her shot to take down Carter—that’s down and not out, because Macey, she’s the kind that always tries to save people, even when they don’t deserve it—if she hadn’t fired, you would have just stood there and watched Carter blow his own brains out.”

Jonah flinched. “You don’t know...”

“Isn’t that what you did before?” Tucker pushed.

It was just the two of them in that office, and the tension that he’d always felt when Tucker was around, it was boiling to the surface.

“Because I know the stories about you, too,” Tucker said quietly as his watchful gaze swept over Jonah. “I know that your father used a gun on your brother and your sister. I know that he turned that gun on your mother.”

Jonah’s hands clenched into fists.

“And then I know that you were in the room the whole time. You watched while he finally turned that gun on himself.”

The sound of Jonah’s pounding heartbeat filled his own ears.

“The only one to survive,” Tucker murmured. “That was you, right? You made it out, but the rest of your family didn’t. You stood there, and they all died.”

“I was...eleven. What did you want me to do?” His voice was too rough. Too ragged. He needed to fix that. He needed to control that. Control.

“You’re not eleven anymore. Yet you just watched a man nearly kill himself, the same way your father did, and you have no reaction?” Tucker’s hard gaze swept over him. “That shit worries me. That shit is the reason I’m—how did you put it?—‘riding your ass’ right now. Because your reaction isn’t adding up for me.”

“You don’t need to worry about me.” Jonah forced his hands to unclench, but he couldn’t stop his heart from racing. “You’ve doubted me the entire time.” Maybe the gloves needed to come off. No more lying. Clear the damn air.

Again, Tucker didn’t deny the accusation. He wasn’t the type to deny. Or to lie. But he was sure as fuck apparently the type to judge.