Company Men (The Bad Company Books Book 2) by Adam Stemple

Author:Adam Stemple [Stemple, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

29

Ellie watched Mingo curiously as he sat there thinking. She remembered how long it took her to adjust when shit got crazy at the DMRC.

“You get used to it,” she said after a time.

He looked up. Seemed surprised she’d spoken. “Do you?”

That made her laugh for some reason. “No. I guess you don’t. But it gets easier to deal with.”

“Immortal killers. Secret government assassins.” He shook his head. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Ellie remembered being covered in blood in the DMRC and listening to a woman screaming. Then realizing it was her. “I did go crazy for a bit.”

“You seem fine now.”

She snorted. “My therapist would disagree.”

He smiled at that. “You know, I always wanted to meet you.”

“Well, what do you know, dreams do come true.” That came out harsher than she’d meant it to, but he didn’t seem to notice. He even chuckled a bit.

“Yeah, sure. But I wanted to thank you. I’m supposed to be trained for this kind of thing, and I feel like I’ve fallen apart a bit. You saved the world all on your own, with no training.” He stopped, and she could see him putting it together. Concussion finally wearing off? “But you weren’t really on your own, were you?”

“No.”

That gave him pause. But not too much. “Having met your accomplice,” he said wryly, “I’m even more impressed that you lived.”

“He saved my life. At least twice. Once when it was me trying to end it.” He also tried to kill me. But she didn’t say that part out loud. He doesn’t need to know that.

Mingo fell silent again, maybe considering what would make a stone killer save a person’s life. Can’t say I haven’t thought about it a lot myself. The only answer she’d ever come up with was that Quinn did what he did for reasons only he would understand. And that if she ever came to understand those reasons, it probably meant she’d become a very bad person.

“I don’t think it’s fair what some people say about you,” Mingo said eventually. “You know…”

“The security guards,” she said flatly.

“Yeah.”

“I killed them. They got in my way and I killed them. Without hesitation.” She didn’t know why she was admitting this to a guy she’d basically just met. Maybe being in a firefight together has something to do with it. “I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of something like that. But I am. And…” She turned back to the window. Watched the traffic far below move slowly past. “And I don’t know what to do with that information.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. When he spoke, she could tell that he’d stood and stepped closer.

“I killed a man in the line of duty. Had to. He attacked me and I put three in his chest, just like I was trained to. Like you said: without hesitation.”

“Did it bother you?”

“Not then. But the more time passed, the more it wore on me.” She heard him take a step closer and then he was standing by the bed, staring out the window with her.

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