That makes no sense.

But then there’s a prick of the syringe into my arm and the burn of drugs as they are forced into my muscle.

“Why are you drugging me?” I ask, my voice trembling. “I’ll answer any question you have, just please. Stop drugging me.”

“Fear, like all emotions, is a weapon I use with skill.”

– Case

I don’t answer her question, just hold her tightly as the drugs take over. She begins to rest against me, her body becoming heavy. After several minutes she slumps down.

I pick her up in my arms and then lay her down on the table, tying her hands first and then her legs. My fingertips travel up her leg, lingering briefly on the prick marks I made with the knife, as I position myself next to her head. I lean down and whisper, “Are you ready?”

I can feel her nod, just slightly, but enough to know the cocktail I came up with is working. “OK, then. Let’s start from the beginning again. What happened after I left you out at the cabin eight years ago? When I left you with Garrett?”

She mumbles but none of her words makes sense.

Fuck. I gave her too much.

“Sydney,” I try again. “Tell me everything that happened when I left you with Garrett at the cabin eight years ago.”

She mumbles again, but it’s a little better now.

I wait for several more minutes, checking my watch, then ask again.

This time she answers. “He was nice.”

Hmmm. I’ve heard this before. She’s said it several times already when under the drugs. So many times, in fact, that I have to assume it’s true. “How was he nice? What did he do?”

“He taught me to fish.”

I shake my head and sigh. “No,” I say sharply. “Before that. Back at the cabin. What did he say?”

“Nothing. He just took care of me. He took us to the Bighorn cabin and we stayed there. It was nice.”

“Nice?” What the fuck game is Garrett playing?

“He took care of me. He protected me.”

I shake my head and have to draw one of two conclusions. The dose was too high. Or that fucker is not what I think he is. I go with the first because the other isn’t even possible.

My breath comes out in a long huff, a mixture of dissatisfaction and fatigue. I’m tired of this shit. I want this to be over. I want to kill this girl and this guy and move on. I want to go back to my friends and say, “It’s done.” I want to see the look of relief on Sasha Cherlin’s face when she finally gets to put the death of her father behind her.

But I can’t do any of that until I figure out what the hell is going on. I understand that Sasha was a threat. She was a twelve-year-old trained assassin. She was a wild card that needed to be dealt with. She was a liability and an asset, because back then she had all the answers everyone needed thanks to her father’s big mouth.

That got him killed. That almost got her killed. But I saved her ass that night and I saved her ass again, over and over since then. She’s grown now. In college. Living a nice, safe, normal life.

So we won. I tell her that, anyway. We won. And I know she shouldn’t believe it. But normal life makes you forget to be wary. She’s lived normal for too long now. The last time I said it a few years ago, she said, OK. We won.

And she believed me.

But I didn’t. I didn’t believe it when I said it and I don’t believe it now.

We lost. Because we never got the answers as to why. Why?

I need to know this, and Garrett McGovern is the path to that level of satisfaction. And my only connection to Garrett is Sydney.

What if I’m wrong? What if Sydney has no answers? She passed the lie detector test when I drugged her up when she first got here. That was ten days ago. She’s been mostly unconscious since then. And she has no memory of it, for sure. That drug is made to wipe your memory.

I need a different approach.

I place my hand on her cheek, flattening my palm against her soft skin. She lets out a little, “Mmmm,” to that gesture and leans into my touch. Like she craves me.

My eyes close at her murmurings and what they might mean, and I take a deep breath to get my mind back on the job. “I want you to concentrate now, Sydney. When was the last time you saw Garrett?”

She takes her own deep breath, mimicking mine. “Yesterday.”

“Fuck.” This is not working right, goddammit. “No, Sydney. It wasn’t yesterday. It was a long time ago. Tell me the last time you saw Garrett.”

“The night before my wedding.”

“Jesus Christ.” She’s got it all fucked up. She’s got me and him all fucked up. I walk out of the room and close the door behind me. I grab fistfuls of my hair and feel a roar coming up. But I calm myself and walk back out into the main room of the cabin and sit on the couch.

I’m not getting anywhere. She’s had too many drugs. She’s had too much trauma since I took her. She’s, quite frankly, not as easy to break as I first thought.

I consider calling my friend to ask for some insight into how I might’ve fucked her memory up so bad. But I nix that idea. He doesn’t do that anymore. None of them do this shit anymore. I’m the last one. I’m the only one left who’s still in the business.

I walk over to the other side of the room and pick up my guitar. And then I walk back over to the couch and lean up against the soft leather of the arm, kicking my feet up and cradling my instrument at the same time.

I begin to strum. It helps me think. Hell—I smile a little as I remember—this guitar got Sasha and me through some really fucked-up times back in the day.

God, I miss her. She’s gonna graduate from college this spring and I’m gonna be there. I’m gonna be there with a present. A gift of satisfaction. Of retribution. Of revenge.

And this stupid girl in the other room is my only chance at making that gift a reality.

My fingers start strumming the song. One I’ve heard Sydney play over and over again since I started watching her. It’s a soft tune, one that Sasha used to like as well, back when she was into that sort of thing. These days she’s all about school. No time for dates, or parties, or music. That kid is a swift-moving arrow with dinosaurs as her target.

The tension eases out of me as I think of my adopted little sister. Not daughter. My friend the amateur psychologist adopted her as his daughter. He can have that title.

I actually laugh at that. All those phone calls he placed to me when she was fourteen, trying to ease her back into civilian life after that mess of a final job we did.

They did, I correct myself.

They all retired. Life went on. And they went on with it.

But me? I’m stuck, man. I’m stuck in time. I’m stuck back in the hills between Cheyenne and Larimer. The night Sydney’s father and Garrett tried to kill Sasha and got her father instead. The night I vowed that we’d get those motherfuckers.

And we did. A long time ago. We got them.

All but one.

I need him.

I need to torture him and make him pay.

I need to kill him. And I need Sydney Channing to make that happen.

I will do whatever it takes to get my revenge.

Whatever. It. Takes.

“When the monster in the dark wants to drag you into the light, just go silent and still.”

– Sydney

I come down off the drugs the same way I did the previous times. Thick, sticky mouth desperate for water. My stomach rumbling. The silence. The bottoms of my feet are warm from the hidden fire. My eyes are blind from the hidden light.