Licensed to Kill

Chapter 9

I could feel, but I couldn't see. I could hear, but it was more like a blur of background noise. I was too exhausted to open my eyes, though my conscience was shouting at me to wake up. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. My whole body, every limb, every muscle, every finger feeling too heavy to move even an inch. My head felt too heavy to lift. And there was a stinging pain in my upper right arm, near my shoulder.

I could feel something soft beneath me. A mattress or a sofa, perhaps. I could feel a tightness around my arm where the pain radiated, almost like there was a bandage wrapped around it. But there couldn't be. I hadn't had a chance to doctor myself.

What the hell happened? I mentally asked myself, desperately trying to remember where I'd been, what I'd been doing, and why my arm was hurting.

Then I remembered gunshots in the distance. The sting of tree branches scraping against my skin and tearing at my clothes. I remembered voices – shouting in German and Italian. The escape from the hotel. The chase by the police. Sirens. And then... The most vivid thing I remembered was hazel eyes looking deeply into my own.

Dallas. Was he really there? Had it all been some fucked up dream? Had I been hallucinating after all?

The throbbing in my head was enough to prevent me from opening my eyes. I knew I needed to get up, needed to survey my location and determine how bad off I was, but my body felt so heavy, like there were barbells lying on top of me, weighing me down.

I could hear something – shuffling around, movement, boots on a wood floor. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Exhaustion was taking over and I was quickly succumbing to its death grip. I could feel myself drifting back into a state of unconsciousness, the minimal amount of light I could see through my eyelids fading. Everything was going black again. Everything but the memories that arose of four years ago in Washington, post-incident.

I sat in a chilly, dark interrogation room at the Alpha Reconnaissance Taskforce headquarters, still wearing my vest and gear from the previous night in Bellucci's warehouse. My clothes and hands were still bloodstained. The distinct metallic smell was nauseating. There was a trashcan beside the table where I'd vomited probably twelve times. I couldn't see through the window in the wall, but I knew there were people standing on the other side, studying my body language, tearing apart my answers to every question I'd been asked. And fuck, had they asked a lot of questions!

The Taskforce had been dissecting my every move, breath, blink, and word since they'd dragged me back to headquarters, kicking, screaming, cursing, and throwing punches. I'd been so riled up, they'd had to handcuff me, and when that didn't work, they'd resorted to restraining me to a chair that'd been bolted to the floor until I settled down. But settling down and calmly discussing the situation with my superiors was the last thing on my mind. I'd just watched the love of my life, the most important person in the world to me, die in a puddle of his own blood, and I'd been the one to pull the trigger. How could anyone in their right mind expect me settle the fuck down?

I'd been in interrogation since before the ass crack of dawn, as had Matt. Our superiors wanted to know every fucking detail right down to how many bullets were fired and how many breaths we took during the raid. I'd answered the same questions over and over, each time my interrogators searching for the slightest variation in my story, looking for any opportunity to pin federal charges on me.

I'd broken protocol. I knew that. It was a common sense rule that you don't fire if you can't see what you're shooting at. But I'd been so sure that Matt and I were the only agents left alive, and that Bellucci was the only enemy left, aside from his one last cohort. It only made sense that the person in the shadows would be a minion of Bellucci's. That's why I'd taken the shot. But I'd made a stupid, costly mistake. A mistake that I'd have to live with the guilt of for the rest of my life.