37

That’s the only thing that will make you happy? When you kill Samuel Logan… or he kills you?

I was in the lobby of the hotel, observing the comings and goings of guests and workers, watching for one man in particular. I’d been there since dawn, and was beginning to attract the attention of the lobby staff. They knew why I was there, but still they persisted in giving me funny looks: maybe my presence had them on edge, thinking that I would attract danger rather than deter it. They weren’t wrong. I didn’t want to cause them worry, but thought I’d give it a little while longer, because on a stake-out you have plenty of time for thinking.

I was mulling over what Jay had asked me last night, and admit that it was a troubling notion. I can’t pinpoint why, but I did feel a need to redress things with her. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t offered the best argument. In fact, my words cheapened me somewhat, made me sound like a manic depressive bent on self-destruction.

Or worse…

Jay had left without comment, retiring to her room again. I liked her, and the last thing I wanted was for her to think I was some sort of demented thug with a death wish. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

When I was with Arrowsake I did see and do some terrible things but at the time they had been a necessary evil. I’d hunted and killed men who were mass murderers, torturers, sadists and thieves working under the guise of freedom fighters and soldiers. They were neither; they were terrorists who made the lives of others unbearable. I’d had no qualms then about killing them, and the same remains true to this day. I feel justified in saying they deserved what they got.

Maybe I’d tell Jay so.

It wasn’t those bastards who haunted me; it was the innocent people I’d failed to help soon enough to make a difference. The military designated them as collateral damage; but that didn’t change a thing. It was the brutal murder of innocent people whatever euphemism they attached to it. Those were the deaths that preyed heaviest on my mind, and those I now worked so hard to avenge. I know I was juxtaposing one problem with another, and that facing Samuel Logan wouldn’t help any of those who had already died. Yet the point persisted: if I could stop even one bad man from hurting others then it went some way to redressing the balance. There was no room for animals like Samuel Logan, not when good people had perished to allow him his place on earth.

I would only be happy when the bastard was dead and buried, and if that also meant my death then so be it. But that was what was troubling me now. When Jay asked her question I hadn’t answered because I couldn’t: I’d have been speaking for the both of us, and I didn’t have the right to map out her fate as casually as I did my own.

It made me think about what the hell I was setting up here. I was inviting a brutal man to come after the women for my own selfish reasons. However well meaning, I was actually putting Nicole and Jay at risk, their parents as well. I almost left the lobby to call the group together and move them out before Samuel Logan showed up. But I didn’t. I wondered how remorseless an enemy Samuel was. Would he ever stop hunting the women?

It was better to wait here and finish things as soon as possible, I decided, rather than subject them to constant fear while he was still on the loose.

I only wished the madman would get a move on.

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