Raid

None of this made me feel any better.

Raiden wasn’t done sharing.

“I went into the Marines and I did it as a career choice. What I mean by that is I never intended to get out. Had no Dad who could help guide the way, never had any dreams of wantin’ to be a cop or a fireman or an astronaut. But I examined my life to that point and knew where I was comfortable. I figured I needed discipline and someone to guide me, tell me what to do. I was good on a team, playin’ sports, gettin’ coached. I thought that was a natural progression. Once I got a directive, if I was trained how to do it, I went all out. And I was right. At first, the Corps worked for me.”

His face changed, went hard and his eyes started burning.

“Then it didn’t,” he stated.

I understood why and understanding it killed me, but I stayed silent.

Raiden continued talking.

“I got out and remembered trackin’ Dad. Figured I’d be good at bounty hunting, better at it after what I learned in the Corps. So I looked into that. Didn’t like the way it played out. It was part of a system that was totally f**ked. Lots of rules. Lots of paperwork. But absolutely no reason to any of it. It was a dysfunctional cycle. To be successful, I had to write bonds, put my own f**kin’ money on the line and live a life filled with lying scum, most of them intent on f**kin’ me over. A buddy from the Corps came to town. We went out for beer, I shared this shit with him, he told me about a man he knew named Deacon.”

When he stopped and didn’t carry on, I asked, “Deacon?”

“Bounty hunter, like I am now. But a cold motherfucker. A six foot two, two hundred twenty pound wall of sheer ice. He got into it like I got into it. His wife went missin’, the cops couldn’t find her, so he descended into a world that was not his to find her. What he found was that he fit in that world. It was on the periphery, but he had talents in it, he had a place, so he stayed.”

“Did he find his wife?”

His gaze, already locked on mine, bonded with it.

“Yeah.”

Whatever this Deacon person found was not good and I didn’t want to know.

Luckily, Raiden didn’t tell me.

Unluckily, he continued to tell me other things.

“My buddy hooked me up with Deacon. He’s a loner, but he’s also the best in the business. Lots of work, not enough of him to go around. The thing was he didn’t have anyone he respected enough to punt business to. He must have liked the feel of me ‘cause he took me on a couple jobs before he let me loose and started referring work to me. I did the jobs, established a reputation, got more work. So much I had to recruit and train a crew. I did. All the men left from my unit in the Corps who got out like me and found, also like me, they didn’t fit back into the world they left when they entered the Corps. But they fit into this other world.”

Suddenly, it came clear to me.

And it broke my heart.

“Raiden, this sounds like—”

“Save it,” he bit off, interrupting me. “They don’t know all this I’m tellin’ you, but they know me and I figure they can guess. Not the specifics, but enough to tweak them, so I got that shit from Mom. Got it from Rache. Didn’t listen to it from them either. I live it, Hanna. I get it and I know my place, where I’m comfortable, where I fit and this is it.”

“I’m not sure you’re right,” I told him carefully.

“You watch a friend you thought would be a friend for life—who’d stand up at your wedding, who you’d name your kid after, who you’d watch go gray while listenin’ to him bitch for the next forty years about his wife spending too much money—get blown to f**kin’ bits by a landmine, babe, you’ll be in a place to say. Since that shit will thankfully never happen to you, you aren’t.”

My heart broke more, but after that I stayed silent.

“You know all that, I’ll give you the rest,” he declared. “All of this is sorted. Knight’s a buddy because Knight’s connected to Deacon, Deacon connected me with Knight and Knight did me a favor. I get paid cash. None of that is on any books, but Knight’s got a business and he cleans my money. I use a bogus partnership with him, which means I use his accounts to pay myself, my boys, make investments and pay taxes. It’s all above board and legal as far as the government knows. We do legitimate jobs that have no results in a way no one will ever cotton on that the jobs we do are not legitimate. IRS takes their cut, turns the other way. I got an address. I vote. I got a license. Plates on my car. An honorable discharge from the Corps. As far as anyone’s concerned I’m a respectable citizen, a veteran and a small business owner and the shit me and my crew do is buried so deep under that respectability, it’ll never be dug out.”

“Paul Moyer said you were off the grid,” I blurted, and his eyes got scary sharp before he appeared to relax.

“Paul Moyer talks smack because he wants to sound cool. For all intents and purposes, I operate off the grid, but I’m not off the grid. You meet Deacon, you’ll understand off the grid. That is not me. I come home for a few days at Christmas, but don’t reestablish life in Willow after gettin’ out, he knows what went down with my unit, Moyer thinks he knows his shit and runs his mouth. He doesn’t know his shit. He doesn’t know anything.”

“You said this was unsafe,” I reminded him.

“Men who want men hunted and are willin’ to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have them delivered, and the men who are runnin’ from them tend not to be people you wanna ask to dinner,” Raiden remarked.

This was very, very true.

God.

“This scares me,” I admitted.

“Yeah, but you’ll get used to it.”

He seemed very sure.

I was not.

“I don’t think I like this,” I told him, my voice small. “Any of it.”

Raiden didn’t move.

But he did speak.

“Then you need to understand why I do it.”

This meant there was more, and I really did not want more.

He gave it to me.

“Everything, every living thing on this earth, from plants to animals to humans, has a natural order. It’s absolutely crucial to keep that order, Hanna. I’ve been in the thick of chaos and it is not a fun place to be.”

Raiden went quiet and I nodded for him to go on, my heart clenching and the pizza in my belly sitting there in a nauseating lump.

He went on.