Winter Massey felt a visceral sense of relief as he watched Alexa drive off, her lights disappearing as she took the distant curve. The FBI agent part of Alexa was a wall standing between him and any information Click possessed. Winter’s gut told him that Click was the key to the Dockerys. Alexa the FBI agent saw the young man as a citizen wearing the cloak of constitutional rights, and he was protected by her allegiance to her pledge to uphold those laws. She could say she was “off the books” till the cows played cards, but she couldn’t actually be that way. Alexa saw the situation in shades of gray. Weighed against the Dockerys’ lives, Click’s rights didn’t figure into Winter’s formula. When it came to life-and-death situations, Winter saw in jet black lines on bright white paper.
Winter knew what he had to do, and if he succeeded, Alexa would have to learn to live with it. His reward would come when he saw Lucy’s and Elijah’s living faces, and if he had to make a deal with the devil, he would do it. When he looked at Ferny Ernest, he saw a cold-blooded willing participant in a double murder of a woman and her child.
Winter had spent a lot of time talking to a psychiatrist who specialized in post-traumatic stress disorder. He had fully opened himself up to the therapy, unburdened himself as completely as he could, but despite that, he still saw every man and the one woman he had killed. They appeared with regularity in his dreams. All he had to do was close his eyes to see them. If Eleanor had lived, maybe he wouldn’t have taken the forks in the road that he had. If he had never gone to Rook Island on that WITSEC assignment, if he had never met Sean, if he had never felt the thirst for justice and retribution, if he hadn’t wandered into a world of CIA killers and mobsters to save her, things would certainly have worked out differently. He wondered if Alexa suspected that she didn’t know him because the years and experiences had altered the boy he had been with her into the man he had become without her. Their closeness had been a long time ago. Alexa knew it was true.
Alexa was somebody from the past who called once in a blue moon, when she felt nostalgic or got the big blue meanies. She was a Christmas card and a birthday card on Rush’s birthday.
Things change.
Life takes up all your time.
You put off making contact and that becomes emotional distance.
He and Alexa would never again be close friends. He had his heart heavily invested in a place that had no defined role for her.
Intentions not acted upon become regrets.
Intentions acted upon become regrets.
Winter checked the extra magazines, zipped his windbreaker halfway up so he could get to the SIG, put on a Gore-Tex ball cap, and climbed out of his truck.
After crossing the street, he circled the neighboring house and kept to the bushes until he arrived at Click’s house.
Showtime.