Chapter Five
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HERO OR VIGILANTE?
That was the question the man asked himself every morning as he stared at the face reflected in the mirror.
Was he balancing the scales of justice or simply out for revenge?
The face in the mirror held no answer. Or maybe it only appeared that way because he was actually both.
There was a price to be paid for what happened to Peter. The government had given their mother a medal for Peter’s service. What good did that do any of them? Peter was confined to a wheelchair, a tube his only means of receiving nutrition, the light in his eyes gone, as he stared vacantly into space.
All because of Colton Bells.
He’d brought Peter’s body back, but the man himself—his soul—was gone.
There was only one way to balance the scales of justice for a mission that had left his brother’s mind and body crippled…
Revenge.
The thought, the word, was sweet on his tongue. For nearly two years, he’d waited and planned. Tracked the men—and one woman—who’d been on that mission.
No one on that mission had died except for the terrorist the FBI had been hunting, but Peter had come back riddled with bullets.
The FBI had sent two of its own, creating a taskforce with the SEALs to infiltrate the 12 September compound. The SEALs wanted to rescue Connor McKenzie. The FBI wanted to arrest the leader of 12 September, Iman Quan.
Quan had died, but McKenzie had lived.
And Peter was stuck somewhere in between. Not dead, but not truly alive.
A couple of men on the taskforce had been easy to find and destroy. They’d gotten what they deserved—a bullet through the brain.
But then Shelby Claiborne had stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She was too damn smart for her own good. She had to be stopped.
And he could kill two birds with one stone if he played his cards right.
Setting up Bells for the killings, the man had dropped just the right breadcrumbs to lead Shelby to linking the dead veterans to her husband.
Refine, reorder, rework.
With the right spin, he had meant to make her shooting look like a classic domestic homicide. With a twist.
The ex-husband, a suspect in a federal murder investigation that his former wife was in charge of, showing up to confront her at their home.Priceless!
In this small town, it seemed everyone knew of the rocky relationship the two had endured. They all knew what a misfit Bells had always been. They would believe he’d shot her to shut her up. Case closed.
But plans were fickle, fluid things. Taking advantage of the situation that night had backfired on him, nearly ruining everything he’d worked so hard for.
Now Agent Claiborne had emerged from her coma and was growing stronger every day.
So far, she hadn’t remembered anything damning—not that her memories would include anything about him—but even the smallest detail could eventually lead her and Bells back to him.
He’d seen that happen to the best of them, killers and kidnappers, the men he’d studied religiously to make sure he didn’t fail the way they ultimately had.
There were plenty of criminals still on the loose, men throughout history who’d pulled off the perfect crime.
