Terry knew as well as Ellie what would happen if Terry turned out to be part of some kind of larger attack on a debt-recovery corporation. Terry knew, and Ellie did too, and so Ellie understood why Terry might decide to be honest with her.
He might decide to be honest, she thought, but he might also be trying to trick her. She needed to be a little careful.
She thought he was telling the truth, mostly because the consequences would be terrible if he lied. She thought he was, but all the same, she needed to be a little suspicious.
“So why make trouble at all?” Ellie said. “Why start this? If you knew what would happen.”
“Not everyone thought it would end like this.”
“It did.”
Terry nodded.
“So why risk it?” Ellie said.
“I suppose they thought it wouldn’t be traced back here.”
“They?”
“Yeah,” Terry said. “They.”
“You didn’t think that?” Ellie said.
“No, not really.”
“You were right though,” Ellie said. “It was traced here.” She wasn’t trying to be clever, especially, she was just pointing that out. She was here. Terry had been right. He should trust his instinct to fear retribution.
“Yes,” Terry said, a little sadly. “Yes, it was.”
They looked at each other for a moment, and Ellie thought.
“Okay,” she said. “Yes, I suppose that changes things. I get why. Keep talking.”
“I never thought we should get involved,” Terry said. “But not everyone agreed with me.”
“Why not?”
“You’d have to ask them,” Terry said, and glanced at the dead man on the ground, the man who had used to be the group’s leader. “Like I say, I assumed it would end up like this. One way or another. Not everyone else did.”
“With me here, one way or another?”
Terry nodded again.
“And you wouldn’t have risked that?” Ellie said.
Terry looked around the ruined compound. “No.”
Ellie thought. She was beginning to understand. There had been an abrupt change of policy in this militia cell, over the past few minutes. A quite sudden change, and probably right then, while they were all standing around waiting for the ops centre to get back to her. Terry had thought things over, and decided that he was going to cooperate.
“All right,” Ellie said. “Maybe I believe you. Maybe I’m listening. So what is it I need to know?”
YOU ARE READING
The Debt Collectors War
ActionEllie is a soldier in a world without governments. A generation ago, a series of financial crises caused most of the world’s governments to collapse, and left many of the people in those countries in terrible personal debt. Since then, the worst de...
