Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(38) Alone

“Circumstance,” I told him before Rian could speak again, and the two of them seemed surprised by my response. I swallowed my pride and continued, “You’re being killed because there is no better way to punish your father for some things that he has done.”

“Terrible things?” Jonathon demanded, surprised.

I hesitated. “Not all of them,” I relented.

Rian was looking at me when I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. I could finally see him now through my trembling, dressed in all black, blending in with the night. He was looking at me wearing a man’s shirt that he knew wasn’t his and I think he was getting a little defensive because of it. He crossed his arms, looking at me through lowered lids, and I finally tore my eyes to meet his. They flashed.

“I don’t think we read the same file, then, Alastair,” he told me coolly, coldly.

I met his eyes when I replied, “Maybe we didn’t.”

Surprised flickered across his eyes but then it was gone. Jonathon spoke first.

“Alastair?” Jonathon asked weakly, finally getting a solid footing and pushing himself to his feet. He grabbed the footboard of his bed to keep himself standing. “Was everything a lie, then?”

“Most of it,” I said slowly. “Alastair isn’t my real last name, either.”

“Then what is?” he demanded.

I smiled sadly. I think it surprised him. “I honestly don’t remember anymore. My parents didn’t have their true names, and it changed again when I became a ward of the state, and when I went to Helford—”

“Helford?” he asked, sounding surprised, and I saw the recognition flicker across his face in one horrifying seconds. “I think my mo—”

“Why are we prolonging this?” I snapped at Rian Blackwell loudly, to mask the words his mother had once told Jonathon, words that could get him murdered just because he knew. Rian didn’t seem suspicious—it didn’t even seem like he had been listening before I had acknowledged him. He turned to look at me with his eyebrows raised and looked between Jonathon and me, amused.

“I thought you might need a bittersweet goodbye,” he told me sourly. “After all, you both have that lovesick puppy thing going for you.”

I rolled my eyes at him. He smiled, trying not to laugh.

Jonathon looked between us, looking disturbed.

“This is crazy,” he said, shaking his head. He squeezed his eyes shut when it must have hurt his head, and he raised his hand to the spot on his head stained with blood. He looked right at me when he opened his eyes, and those eyes killed me, ripping me apart. “You are both crazy. You think you’re assassins. You think that you’re on a mission to kill me. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life.”

“You don’t know a thing about real life, do you?” Rian asked him sadly, and I was struck speechless that he looked like he pitied Jonathon.

Jonathon closed his eyes and, when he opened them, there was a new determination in his eyes. “I could always scream,” he warned us, but I didn’t think he would. “I could scream and my dad could hear it and someone will call the police.”

“I can kill you first,” Rian told him simply, his gun hand flying up, pointing directly between the eyes of the boy I loved.

“Don’t!” I cried, the sound ripping through my throat painfully before I wanted it to. Rian and Jonathon both snapped their heads to look at me, and I wondered what they were seeing. A girl, breaking before their eyes, a killing machine in her hand and tears that wouldn’t fall shining in her eyes. I reached my hand out as if to take the gun from Rian and surprised even myself by saying, “No. Don’t. I . . . I have to do this.”