Damon was surprised, yet not surprised. He didn’t even know how to explain how he felt about seeing this replica of Terk. Just as hard, just as obviously capable, and just as confident as the man he knew so well. And to think that it was a brother, somebody different and yet the same. It wasn’t shocking, but Damon couldn’t quite come up with the word for what it was.
Maybe it was because his senses were down or because of the fatigue that always sat at the back of his mind. Maybe it was the sudden turn of events, but Damon knew without a single doubt that he could trust this man as much as he trusted Terk. And, with that thought prominent, he followed Merk as they headed to the bottom level and then outside to where the ground parking lot was. “You got a game plan?” Damon asked, as he caught up.
“Hell yeah,” Merk replied. “I’ll open that truck and haul out this asshole and ask him some questions.”
Chapter 10
It was hard to listen to Terk’s reasoning and to not see the logic of it herself, but Tasha still didn’t like it. She didn’t like anything about it. And then she realized that the feelings for Damon she had tried so hard to squash down were there regardless. She sat down at her computer, a cup of coffee in hand, as she watched the interaction on screen. “Both men are on the move.”
“Yeah, I can feel them.” Terk got up and came to stand beside her. “They’re heading into the open parking lot itself, which is all the more interesting.”
She tapped the screen where a black truck stuck in between two other trucks on the parking lot. “That’s him. What do you think they’ll do?”
“Knowing my brother, he’ll probably walk right up there and pull the asshole from the cab.”
She gasped, stared at him. “Won’t that get him killed?”
“Depends on whether the guy is expecting it or not. Merk is pretty wild, and he’s got some pretty fast moves. But he’s also a straight-up guy, who tends to deal with problems head-on.”
“Interesting. You guys must have had fun growing up.”
“We fought plenty, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he admitted. “Both of us are very dominant, and, once I realized what was going on in my headspace and that he didn’t match it, there was an even bigger separation. But, once Merk realized that, in a way, it made me weaker, he immediately stepped up as a protector,” he murmured. “Not a whole lot we wouldn’t do for each other.”
“Have you ever saved his life?”
He laughed. “A couple times. Mostly when I get a heads-up that something was going on in their world. I would just send them a notice and let them know things are wonky. If nothing else, I figure it will make them a little bit more respectful of what they’ve got going, knowing something’s out there that they need to be a little more prepared for.”
“Sounds like a fascinating life.”
“It is, and it isn’t,” he replied quietly. “Definitely a lot of good things about having insight when things go wrong, but, when things go wrong, and you didn’t see it or interpret it correctly, believe me, an awful lot of recrimination and guilt result.”
“Because you didn’t see what happened, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. If you’re talking about Wilson, I didn’t see that at all. I didn’t see the team getting blown up either, even though a part of me wondered,” he noted. “I had been given enough assurances from the higher-ups that I thought we would be safe. Obviously I was wrong, and believe me, nobody feels that guilt more than I do,” he murmured. “It’s a shitty deal all the way around.”
“The thing is,” she noted, “you can only do so much. Humanity still has to step up and to accept responsibility for the shit they do themselves. You couldn’t have known for sure what would happen. You didn’t get any warning, not even an inkling, and that says a lot in itself.”
“Exactly. It says that these people who took down the team put some block out ahead of them coming, and that worries me even more.”
“You really want to take them out, don’t you?”
“I do,” he murmured quietly. “They’re a threat to us all.”
“And a threat we can’t see, which is even more worrisome,” she said. “But then isn’t that what they would say about you?”
“I think it’s what they’ve already said, and it’s likely how they justified what they did,” he murmured. “The trouble is, I’m just not sure who hired them. That makes me even more concerned.”
“Because you think it was our government?”
“No, not at all,” he argued, “but I do think that it was a government—or at least a faction within a government—looking to protect their own. And I get that. I really do. But, at the same time, they brought it to us, when it didn’t need to happen. We weren’t in a fight. We weren’t in a war. Nothing was going on that they had to deal with. So this was a purely offensive strike. It was preemptive, and that, to me, is unacceptable.”
“Interesting,” she noted, “because I feel like we have heard that from you before.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he replied. “Nothing like being attacked in the dark to cause a shift of your own mind-set.”
“And yet would you ever change what you do?”
“Only how I do it,” he answered in a somewhat cryptic tone, and, with that, he walked back to his corner.
She watched as he immediately closed his eyes, and, almost like a plug was pulled, his body shifted. She’d seen him go in and out before. And he was still doing it but almost like a steadier process now. She didn’t know whether it was a lack of trust or if it was the fact that he didn’t have the space and the privacy he needed to do what he did. She worried about that because she didn’t want him feeling like he couldn’t trust her; yet, at the same time, she had no place to go, and he had deliberately not gone into the other room. So he felt like he had no place he could go either, which had to be hard.
Without any answers to give him, she watched her screen as the men approached the truck. “I don’t know if you can tell what’s going on, but, outside of seeing two moving toward the truck,” she relayed, “I’m not seeing anything.”
Just then her burner phone of the day buzzed. She picked it up. “Damon, what’s up?”
“The truck is empty. Did you see anything?”
“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “Where could he have gone?”
“Oh, he’s here,” he stated, “but somehow he managed to get out of the truck, and we didn’t notice.”
“Is there a side door he could have opened and shut?”
“Possibly. Obviously he’s gone, but he’s not very far away.”
“Or he set some sort of trap, so be damn careful.”
“We’re on it. Did Terk get anything?”
“Nothing specific yet,” Terk answered, “except he’s there.”
“Yeah, he’s here all right. We just don’t know where.” And, with that, Damon hung up.