Didn’t matter that it was for Uncle Sam. Didn’t matter that the targets were terrorists, monsters, scumbags, or whatever term society gave them. That didn’t change the fact that they were removed from existence by his hands.
Willingly.
The vow he’d made to his dead mother when he’d found her lying in a pool of her own blood was etched in his heart. Burned into his soul.
He would make the world a better place, a safer place for hissister to grow up in, even if it was slaying one monster at a time.
A vow he’d lived by for twenty years.
Sinjin wasn’t sure he could stop even if he wanted to…and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to…but he was sure he wanted to talk to Isla.
Just after midnight, he’d given up on the tossing and turning and looked out his window, relief quieting some of his disdain when he spotted her car parked in her driveway. She was home, safe and sound. He’d walked to his laptop and flicked it on. Something Isla said had been nagging at the back of his mind. He’d been too focused on what she’d said to notice what shehadn’tsaid.
…your father put you first…his children first…and didn’t end up in prison or dead…
It had taken him less than two minutes of digging on the internet to fill in those holes. Her father had tracked down her mother’s killer and shot him, but not before getting shot himself. Both men had died at the scene.
His heart had squeezed tightly at the thought of what Isla had gone through when she’d been a young college freshman. No mother. No father. No siblings.
At least he’d had his sister and his vow…and his father to make sure there was a roof over their head and food on the table.
His father…
Sinjin sat up and blinked his mind back to the present. Dawn was streaking through the branches of the large Afghan pine tree in the yard he’d been parked in front of for the past two hours.
Stretching to work the kink out of his neck, he grunted.
After his fishing expedition on the net last night, he’d been too antsy to sit around, and since it was the middle of the night and not the time to go knocking on Isla’s door, he’d jumped in his car and had started driving.
Three hours later, he’d pulled up in front of his dad’s house, the same house Sinjin had grown up in, the one he hadn’t stepped foot in since the day he’d left for basic training.
Not much had changed. The ranch-style house was still small but well cared for. The lawn was cut, and his mother’s lilacs still grew in the backyard that he could see from his car.
A pang squeezed his heart and he wondered what the hell he was doing there.
He was about to start the car when the door opened, and his father stepped out of the house and waved him over.
“You might as well come inside. You’ve been sitting there for two hours. I’m sure you could use a cup of coffee.”
Damn.
He couldn’t exactly leave now, although, until yesterday, he would’ve done just that. Hell, he wouldn’t have been here in the first place. But he was, because of Isla. He owed it to her for being brave enough to confront him, to push him to face his past, and to find the courage to face the truth.
He got out of his car and slowly made his way inside the house, closing the door behind him. Memories from his childhood rushed at Sinjin, gripping his throat, tugging at his chest and squeezing tightly.
Forcing himself to walk down the hallway that led to the kitchen in the back, he noted family photographs of birthdays and holidays of the past lining the wall, as well as some recent ones of his sister and her family smiling and having a good time…but there were also photos of him in the military.
How the hell had his father gotten them?
Sinjin had never even spoken to the guy back then.
“Your sister made me copies of the ones you’d sent her,” his dad said as if reading his mind.
He glanced over to find his father was watching him from his chair at the kitchen table, a small TV sitting on a stand in thecorner with the morning news on low.
Nothing had changed since his childhood. And, Christ, the table was the same old octagon piece of crap with the wobbly leg.
With one last glance at the photos on the wall, he walked over to the table and sat down. “I can’t believe you still have this set. It’s in bad shape.”
