The Talented Mr. Rivers (11 page)

“You are a prize.” Seth shook his head. “Makes me wonder what Will sees in you.”

Hunter's hand tightened on his gun. “You have ten seconds.”

The move, the slight raising of the barrel, didn't appear to impress Seth. He didn't shout commands or duck for cover. He stared back at Hunter as if daring him to take a shot.

“I'll give you a half hour, but remember two things.” Seth held up one finger. “We'll be watching.”

We?
Not unexpected but not exactly the news Will wanted to hear either.

“Great,” Hunter said in a voice that sounded like he felt the exact opposite.

Seth held up a second finger. “And so that we're clear, that's the last time you threaten me. I get that you're upset, but lose the attitude or I'll hand you over to the BND and let them fry your ass.”

What the hell was the BND? Will had no clue, but for some reason the comment made Hunter's shoulders relax. Which only proved he didn't understand Hunter at all. Every last second between them had been a lie.

After the tension of the quiet standoff, some of the tightness around Hunter's mouth eased. “Not going to happen.”

Seth laughed. “Don't test me.”

The suffocating stillness sucked the air out of the room, but the choking sensation started to abate. They no longer appeared to be perched on the edge of an all-out war. Will wasn't sure what had happened, but he blamed Hunter.

“I see he has this effect on everyone,” Will said to Seth.

“The want-to-commit-homicide thing? Yeah.” Seth clapped a hand on Will's shoulder. “Welcome to the club.”

After Seth left the room, Hunter and Will just stood there. Hunter's brain refused to click into action. After a lifetime of shooting and hunting and chasing, this assignment left him twisted up and confused. He fucking hated not being confident about the steps he'd taken and where to go next.

He'd never questioned the job before. The direction and strategy, yes. If he really wanted to take down a potential target, even if it meant collateral damage—no.

Evil existed and the only way to combat that was to eliminate the people who reveled in it. To take out those who spread pain and celebrated every death. The Rivers family fit into that group. Hell, they sat at the top of the food chain when it came to that. They thrived at killing. Made it into a watchable sport on the dark net. Collected checks and wallowed in the blood.

Which had made his decision to go undercover in the group originally such an easy one. He'd stepped into danger, had been willing to die if that's what it took to bring the family down. At one point he'd even been willing to sacrifice Zach and Fisher to reach his end goal.

Everything had fit and it all made sense. He reported back to his BND superiors, followed Pentasus's requirements to be part of the small and very lucrative team, and did what he had to do to get in good with Stacia. Easy…until Will. Meeting him changed the rules. Hunter wanted to stay detached and able to march Will right into prison when and if the time came. To shoot him to keep the mission on track, if needed.

Tough talk but it had all unraveled. Hunter knew he couldn't make any choice that concluded with ending Will. That had been true even before the sex and before spending more time with him.

Will now knew the truth about who Hunter really was, or at least a piece of it. Hunter reached for his usual emotional shield of anger, ready to morph back into the guy who didn't give a shit about anything but the job. To shore up his defenses. To remember the lesson his father had inadvertently taught him—some people didn't deserve either the benefit of the doubt or a second chance.

But that wasn't the right answer. Putting it all together, turning it over in his head, he knew he and Will had to talk. Really talk. That meant privacy and probably fighting.

He locked the door and came back to stand in front of Will. Left a few feet between them just in case that unreadable expression on Will's face cleared up and he dove in for revenge.

“Before you go off…” Jesus, he had no idea what else to say. Will stood there, not fighting back. Not accusing. Not grabbing a gun, like he had every right to do, and Hunter had no response. He'd been trained to react and he had nothing here.

Will's eyes narrowed. “What?”

After a few seconds of trying to come up with the right comment, Hunter gave up. Without thinking, he offered up the only thing in his head. “I kind of thought you'd stop me in mid-sentence. I'm not really sure what to say.”

Will shifted his weight but didn't try to move away. “You fucking lied to me.”

There was no use denying it. He didn't even want to. This wasn't a do-over, but they needed undiluted honesty for once. “Yes.”

“About everything.”

That defensive shield went up. This time it was about telling the truth. He needed Will to know this part. “Not about what was happening between us.”

Will shook his head. The wariness was right there on every line of his face. “Just tell the truth for once.”

“Some parts have been the truth.” And that surprised Hunter more than anything else. He'd stuck to his cover because not doing so implicated other people. Put operations and agents at risk. Because he'd been telling the same tale for so long that in some ways his cover story had become real to him.

“I don't know who you are, who you work for. If you're really American or German. Is Hunter even your real name?” Will ticked off his list, then snorted. “No, of course it's not.” He wiped a hand over his face. “God, this all makes me sick.”

“I know.”

“You don't.” Will dropped his hand. “You can't know what it was like to grow up with all the secrets. In that family with a father who was constantly disappointed. With a mother who…hell, he probably killed her.”

“No.” Hunter knew the truth on that score, but how did he say that now, in the middle of everything else that was going on?

But Hunter did understand about failing to meet parental expectations. He also knew what it was like to try to overcome a sick legacy passed down by them. The desperation that came with both trying not to be them and trying to make up for all the damage they'd done to others. It was a constant struggle and an unwinnable one.

The hatred of strangers. The unbearable weight of his father's sins. Hunter knew that all too well, which was why he had to break Will out of the cycle.

“My family kept things from me. Fought. Got violent. Pretended to give a shit about something other than Pentasus.” Will shook his head. “Now you. You're doing it, too.”

None of that family bullshit was about them. Hunter needed Will to focus on that for just a second so this point would be clear. “Wanting you. The sex. Everything that's happened in this room and would have happened back at your house if I didn't have to walk away every night and throw myself into an icy shower to jack off—all of that is real.”

“You're attracted to me.” Not that Will sounded happy about the revelation. “So what? Is that supposed to make all of this better?”

Not that it was even a revelation, really. It sure as hell wasn't new. He'd all but jumped on the guy every time he walked into a room. They'd been eye-fucking each other from the beginning and it hadn't been nearly enough, and it certainly didn't compare to the real touching. “Understatement.”

“Explain the rest.” Will glanced up at the ceiling. “Yes, I know we have an audience. I don't give a shit.”

Hunter knew the right answer here. He should bow out. Pull the I'm-keeping-you-safe-and-you-do-what-I-say card. Sharing led them in a dangerous direction, and not just in terms of the mission. The more time he spent with Will, the more he cared. He'd gone from not wanting the guy to die to this falling-off-a-building sensation in his stomach at the thought of anything happening to him.

“I work for the BND.” If he didn't get fired for anything else, he'd sure as hell be let go for disclosing that. “German intelligence.”

All of the color left Will's face. He dropped down hard on the chair next to him. “Jesus. I need to be sitting for this.” The guy looked half ready to throw up.

Hunter knew the feeling.

“My job was to infiltrate Pentasus, which meant becoming part of your family's operation.” Now that he'd opened the door, he wasn't sure he'd be able to close it again. “A guy named Zach infiltrated the group for the CIA.”

“I remember Zach.” Will nodded as he talked. “Last I saw him he was tied to a chair in the basement of our house as it exploded. You were next to him, by the way.”

“He's alive. He's one of the people watching us now.”

“Really?” Will held up his hand and gave the finger to the ceiling. “Perfect.”

If he didn't feel like he was choking, Hunter might have laughed at the gesture. “He probably deserves that since he and his team blew up the house in the first place.”

“Damn.” Will leaned back in the chair. If he was going for a relaxed look, he failed. His grip on the armrests bordered on violent. One more tug and he might rip through the fabric. “Tell me something. What do you deserve, Hunter? For lying to me, for pretending. For screwing me when you didn't have to.”

“I didn't pretend about everything.” He could say that without calling on any of his training or work skills. He meant it.

“I don't believe you.”

The words slammed right through Hunter. He felt the bruising in every muscle. But he hid it. He didn't get to be wounded now. Hell, he didn't even know he still could be. “Look, be pissed about the choices I've made. Fine. But your family is evil. Like, bone-deep sick fucking evil.”

“You're including me in that definition?”

Hunter came around the couch and sat on the table in front of Will. Their knees grazed each other. “You tell me. Prove that sharing their blood doesn't make you like them.”

“Half of their blood. We don't have the same mother.”

“Blood is blood.” It was an unfair thing to say, but Hunter did anyway. He knew all too well about having people assume that family ties meant one generation needed to pay for the sins of the last.

Hunter's father had done awful things. He claimed that he'd had to for family and survival, but at heart he was a believer. The infiltration, the harassment, the work he did to betray the people he knew and worked with—he was fine with all of it.

When the German secret police had come knocking all those years ago, looking for people to spy on their neighbors, he'd said yes. Not that anyone knew, except maybe Hunter's mother. At some point she clearly found out and protected his father's choice.

It wasn't until the Berlin Wall fell and the citizens stormed Stasi headquarters that the scope of his father's work became known. A billion documents were burned in the frenzy to bury the evidence, but the files about his father being an informant survived. He was in prison by the time Hunter was in elementary school and out soon after Hunter graduated from high school. Hunter had spent a lifetime trying to remove the stain his father left on the family name.

First, though, he had to make Will fess up to the truth he tried so hard to cloud. “You took the money. You enjoyed the lifestyle and let Daddy pay for all your precious schooling in England and America.”

“You had to earn your way into Stacia's inner circle, right?” Will leaned forward with his elbows balanced on his knees and his hands dropped down between his legs.

Hunter forced his body to stay still. To not pull back. To face Will down because this was too important. “Let's not—”

“I'm not stupid. I know that means you proved yourself with a body. So, as far as I can tell, only one of us sitting in this room killed for Pentasus. And that's not me.” Will tapped his fingertips together. “That's how it worked, right? You had to pass some sort of test. Kill for Stacia to earn her trust.”

The man's face flashed in Hunter's mind, as it had so many times before. To make the leap from the legitimate side of the Rivers businesses to Pentasus, he'd had to show that he could follow orders. Whatever they were. One international security company hired Pentasus to take out the head of another. The battle over who would put armed men on the ground for profit in war-torn countries was settled when Hunter removed one from the equation. His BND bosses supported the choice, but they weren't the ones who saw the guy's face in their sleep.

But he didn't lie about his role or downplay it. He doubted Will could say that. “I did. I had to get her to trust me and that meant doing what she wanted.”

Will snorted. “But I'm the evil one.”

“You might not have fired a gun, though maybe you did. I really don't know. Hell, you seem to have an idea about the work I did for Stacia and that didn't stop you from letting me get inside you.”

Will stood up. “Fuck you.”

Hunter followed and grabbed Will's arm, stopping him from walking even the short distance away the small apartment would allow. “You reaped the rewards. With every kidnap victim, every assassination, your bank account got fatter. Your life got easier.”

“Easier?” Will lifted his arm and jerked out of Hunter's hold. “Are you kidding me?”

“Don't pretend to have clean hands.”

“I tried to stay away from the family and I have never been in the family business.”

“But you didn't. When it came right down to it, sick daddy or not, you didn't break away.” Hunter jammed his finger into Will's chest. Did it a few times before flattening his palm and letting it rest against Will's heart. “Everyone thinks they'd choose to be part of the resistance but when it comes right down to it, they pick the fastest road to survival.”

Will frowned. “What does that even mean?”

He'd tipped over and moved into hypocritical asshole territory. Even with his usual inability to read people, Hunter could see that.

“Forget it.” He waved off the talk and debated dropping his hand and stepping back for a breath. “Nothing.”

Will brushed his hand over Hunter's. Just for a second, but it had an impact. “You're trying to prove a point. So, prove it.”

The touching and coaxing in Will's voice did Hunter in. Will sounded curious and genuine and Hunter saw so little of either in his line of work.

“It's something my mother used to say.” He hesitated, not convinced he wanted to go down this road or share so much. His fingers slid down and settled on the top of the waistband of Will's jeans. “My father was evil. He tried to pretty it up and had all of these excuses, but he was willing to turn in his neighbors and friends…”

“Was he with the BND?”

“He was East German secret police, the Stasi. He lived in the community and provided a list of names. He set up people he knew, many of whom disappeared off the street.” Hunter remembered reading the case files about his father's handiwork. “He was a master at interrogation, at threatening people and their innocent families to get the information he needed.”

Will just stood there. “He lied.”

“About everything. And my mother pretended it wasn't that bad and excused it as part of the times and a horrible struggle to survive.” The memories plowed into him. He tried to hold the words back but they tumbled out. “After the world changed, I was raised mostly in West Germany, so I didn't know why I was bullied in school before we left. Most of what happened played out before I was old enough to get it, but the adults knew. They hated my father and mother, and me by extension.”