Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(40) War

He never saw me in the shadows.

He didn’t make these kinds of careless mistakes, so he had to know like he knew everything else in the world. He was alone with his hands shoved into his pockets although it was the time of years where the weather was warm, even when the sun had gone down like it had long since tonight. He didn’t look around to find me in the darkness. He didn’t need to, not to know that I was lingering there. I’m sure he could feel my eyes, watching his every movement.

He glided toward me, barely making a sound as he walked, and I hit him from behind.

My heart and my veins were pounding painfully with thinly controlled rage as I stood over him, my standard nine millimeter handgun in one hand and my favorite knife in the other, both of them hanging loosely at my sides. From the ground, looking up, he threw his head back and let out a loud laugh into the silence.

“You are such a fool to come here,” Shawn told me. “Such a fool.”

“And you are a fool for meeting me here.” It took all of the control I had not to lose control. “You obviously knew I was coming.”

“Where else would you go?” he asked me, and there was an empty pain in my chest because I knew he was right. After this, I would never know where to go.

Shawn went to heave himself to his feet and I slammed my foot against the back of his head in one swift motion. The breath hissed out of his clenched teeth as he hit the concrete again, his fist tightening its hold on the edge of the curb, the only thing within his reach.

I stomped hard on his knuckles and, if it had been anyone, they would have tried their hardest not to cry out, and they would fail. Shawn just burst out laughing, like what I was doing was meant to be humorous to him.

“Are we just going to play this cat and mouse game all day, Caitie?” he purred, sickly sweet. “I know you have something to say—so say it.”

So I did. “You set me up.”

He snorted, looking up at me and grinning. I squeezed my fist together, refraining from punching that grin, so smug and sure he had the upper hand, but he had to know. By now, I think he knew.

“No,” he said, shifting on the concrete as if to sit up, getting comfortable. “No, no, no, Caitie—that was a test, the entire time. And you passed until you left Helford, this company, everything behind. You were going to be the greatest. You were going to come out of this bulletproof.”

I lifted my gun up and pointed it to his heart. If he even had one.

“You turned your back on us because of Rian Blackwell. You must have loved him more than I thought—actually, I was under the impression that you didn’t love him at all.”

“I didn’t love him enough,” I said slowly. “That was my sin.”

And Shawn just sat there, laughing.

“I know you killed my parents, you bastard.”

And he stopped.

I took a step closer to him, so close I could feel him breathing when I said, “I should have realized that you’ve always been a harlequin, right Shawn? Always the fool.”

He screwed up his face so he was looking up at me, bored. But there was a darkness in his eyes that couldn’t be denied, a truth in the lies that we both knew the truth.

He looked up at me, and I saw his eyes light up like a harlequin’s as he laughed. “Ah,” he said, “so you feel betrayed, and hurt, and like you are entitled to an explanation that doesn’t belong to you. And you’re so wrong, Caitie. I am not the fool here. Maybe you aren’t, but it’s definitely not me.” He leaned toward me so much that I could feel the mind on his breath, making me feel sick. “But your mother was a fool to the very end.”