The Wild Charge (Dartmoor Book 9)

Sixteen

Fox felt like doing something cliché and pathetic, so he bought a bottle of cheap bourbon, and rode out to Walsh's old place by the railroad tracks. Walsh still owned it, but it sat empty and dark, now; a glimpse through the window revealed drop cloths on the furniture, but the porch was swept clean and the tiny yard mown. Walsh took care of the things he owned.

A sickle moon grinned at him from over the trees, and the breeze held the first promise of fall, streamers of colder air whispering in the porch eaves. A dark, idyllic night, full of katydid calls, the hoots of owls, crowned by an unpolluted sky netted with stars. Neither it nor the bourbon was helping him find any sort of clarity.

Cliché and pathetic had never been his forte.

Walsh's offered wisdom – and, God, but it pained him to think wisdom and Walsh in the same sentence – kept echoing through his head on loop. And, yeah, well...maybe he could admit that Walsh might know something more about having an old lady and a kid. But he didn't know Eden, and he didn't know a thing about what it was like to be Fox.

He might have second-guessed calling someone in a time zone five hours ahead when it was already after nine in Knoxville, but Abe wasn't just someone.

After the second ring, his familiar, smoke-scratchy voice said, "Charlie." He sounded wide awake.

Fox hadn't been sure exactly what he'd say when he dialed. But Abe had never been the sort of agent that Tenny had been trained up to be – that Devin had been trained to be. No charm school or dialect coaches. Abe had been a weapon and a weapon only, more like Reese. Quick, quiet, straight to the point. So Fox tapped cigarette ash onto the porch floor and said, "I knocked Eden up."

"Hm." Sound of a lighter, rush of an inhale, exhale. "That's not like you not to be careful."

"No." He shrugged, though Abe couldn't see him; a persistent tension had been lying across his shoulders since he left Eden's place. He knew leaving had been a dick move, but staying there, blank-faced and unfeeling, when she was emotional, would have been just as bad, he thought. He had to process first, and then he could go back to her with whatever face, voice, personality best suited the situation. "Guess I just got...comfortable."

Abe hummed and took a noisy drag. Coughed. "And what's comfortable look like in your world? What's that feel like?"

Just like that, he was a kid again, bruises blooming on his arms, nose running from exertion. Abe standing over him, arms folded, calm and unimpressed. What are you hoping to achieve, Charlie? Are you trying to defend yourself? Or are you trying to disable me? Those are two very different things.

The tension spread; shivered out through his chest cavity and laced tight between his ribs. His voice came out steady, unbothered; but he thought, of all people, Abe would be able to hear the note of uncertainty in it. Honesty had always left his belly squirming – but the man who'd taught you how to kill would accept nothing less.

Devin had taught him how to be a chameleon.

Abe had taught him to kill. Killing was always honest.

"I guess I'm supposed to say it's not having to wear a mask. To not be on an op all the time," he said. "But, to tell the truth...I'm not sure I'd recognize that feeling. It's..." He didn't like hesitating. It wasn't him. Hadn't he just been chastising Tenny for this? Trying to steer him in a more human direction?

It was different on the inside. Trying to sort out persona from self. The years of cultivated lies from the real heart of him.

Did he have one? He'd always thought not. But he did feel things. Things that he knew were selfish and personal, and not part of any bigger picture.