Soldier of Fortune: Gideon Quinn Adventures Book One

Chapter 31

Gideon groaned his way to his third uncomfortable awakening of the night.

At least this time there was no water in his lungs.

He did feel something unpleasantly tacky under his left cheek.

Not yet ready to face what was on the other side of his eyelids, Gideon took a slow, deep breath—a breath that caught midway—as a bright, metallic scent coated his nostrils, and thickened in his throat.

He forced his eyes open and yes, the scent was that of blood—a great deal of it—splattered on his shirt, congealing under his cheek, slickly coating his right hand, where it lay directly in front of his eyes.

His right hand, and the knife he held in it.

Knife.

Bloody.

In his hand.

He made himself look beyond the gory artifact to what he presumed was the source of all that blood, and was on his feet before he knew he'd moved.

Then he stood, stunned, over the recently deceased Jessup Rand.

He looked at the body, then the knife he still held, then the body again.

"Huh," he said.

This seemed lacking, given the circumstances, but damned if he could think of anything else to say.

"How?" he then asked, which, while not much better, at least was a question. Or a word which happened to double as a question.

It then occurred to Gideon he was having a very difficult time thinking.

This was odd, as, generally, he found life-and-death situations to bring a remarkable clarity of mind. Certainly in battle this had been the case. Maybe it was only murder that lent this kind of thick, cottony fog? A fog not unlike that of the previous evening when he'd been drugged by Nahmin.

Nahmin, who, like Ronan and Rey, worked for Celia.

"Celia," the name ground out between his teeth, as he at last remembered the woman in red, pouring red liqueur down his throat, dosing him with morph.

Again.

There, see, his thoughts sloughed through the cotton, you didn't kill Rand.

I was drugged, so how do you know what I did and didn't do? he asked back.

"Because, you moron, you're left handed," he heard himself say aloud, holding up his right hand, in which the knife had been placed. "And because I didn't want you dead," he added, looking at Jessup, who, not surprisingly, didn't comment.

True, six years ago Gideon had wanted him dead. Had, in fact, come damn close to achieving that desire.

But the Gideon of six years ago had been blind with fury, standing on the killing field where half his company lay slaughtered because of Rand's deceit.

So yes, in that moment, Gideon had wanted Rand's death more than anything.

Now, though, what he wanted more than anything was for the truth of Rand's guilt to be made known.

He looked down at Jessup, and felt the knife slide from his fingers.

The thud as it landed was unpleasant.

Almost as unpleasant as the sound of one man breathing when there were two men in the room.

More unpleasant still was the pounding of hurried footsteps rising from the street below, followed by the thud of a door being thrown open and the choked, fearful, yet viscerally recognizable voice of Celia Rand, begging those at the door to, "Please, hurry! They're upstairs... my husband and... and... the man who... he... he tried to..."