Chapter 35: Who wants me dead?

Rea let Karma tug him into the chair. She looked at him with those wide, imploring eyes. She handed him back his soup like the bowl was some kind of peace offering. Damn, but he felt lost. He shouldn't let her talk to him. He should remember she was a stranger, and their shared past meant nothing. Except that wasn't true. Their past did mean something to him.

He pictured her crying for him and his father getting rid of her. One last time, he told himself. One final time, he would hear her out. Rea hoped she wouldn't let him down again.

"Please, let me speak. I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything you ask, I'll tell you with no lies or half-truths. I won't make a move from this bed without your permission. I'll stay here and protect you the best I can. I'll even stay unarmed." She looked so earnest.

"The unarmed part? Is that the hardest part for you? Are you uncomfortable?"

"Very."

"Good." Rea smiled. He grabbed his bowl back from her and set it on the bed in front of him. He tried to come up with what he wanted to know first. She bent toward the soup and reached for the spoon. She noisily slurped from the utensil.

"Who hired you to kill me?"

"It's complicated." She smiled sadly and licked her lips.

Rea shook his head and started to get up, but again her hand snaked out and stopped him.

"I only meant I'll have to go back to the beginning. It's a long story," she said

"I like long stories." He picked up the soup and handed it to her. He then crossed his arms over his chest.

"I was afraid you would say that." Karma drank out of the large bowl. He could tell she was putting her story together. If she lied, he would know, so he prepared himself to throw her out the second she tried to bullshit him. She stopped eating and wrapped her hands around the warm bowl. She settled herself against the pillows and stared at the swirls of heat coming off the liquid.

"After I left here all those years ago, I went to live with my father. I won't go into how I found him or any of that. I'll save it for another time. I only wanted to tell you my dad was sort of unique."

"He was a killer?"

He didn't need to ask. Who else would've taught her this?

"Actually, he was an underground builder. And he was good at creating homes in the NEDs. He made decent money, but when he first started his business, he didn't make enough to survive or for his team to survive. So, in the beginning, he did odd jobs, like take occasional contracts or move a product that wasn't meant to be moved."

"So, your dad was a killer and a thief. We could get him a Father of the Year award." Rea's eyes rolled up to the ceiling.

"Better that than the controlling satanic child abuser your father was, but look, do you want me to get to who hired me, or do you want to trade insults on who had a worse father?"

Rea wished he had held his tongue.

"Fine, go on. So, your dad built underground houses in the Northern Earth Dens and did other tasks on the side."

"Yes. My father was mostly a builder, but over time people still came to him for jobs. When I showed up, I was pretty distraught over you. I begged him to make me resilient. I wanted to forget you, my previous life, and everything that happened. I was an impetuous teenager. I wanted to never feel or care for anyone ever again. My dad did what he thought was best, which was to train me to be a hardened killer and a good thief. I got plastic surgery and a tattoo. He was trying to make me tough. I embraced it all."

"You asked to be this? You wanted to be an assassin?"

"When I thought you'd died, I fell apart. You were my world, and I figured I had nothing left to lose. Ultimately, hurting people and stealing wasn't really what I wanted for my future, but I needed something to cling to after losing you. My dad liked the idea. He liked teaching me. It made us close. We bonded."

Rea swallowed away the horrible feeling that rose within him as he pictured his father telling her he was dead. At first, he couldn't imagine how she could make these choices, but at the same time, it was easy to understand. He did know how she felt because he'd felt total isolation and nothing but despair when she left. It had been more than someone you cared about moving away. It was as if a piece of him had been ripped out. He wasn't able to judge her because he'd embraced his father's will to take the heartache away.

"So, you started to kill people, and you took the assignment to kill me," Rea spoke slowly as these unhappy thoughts sloshed in his head.

"I would've never done that. If I'd figured it was you, I would've made different choices. Let me explain. My father had a sort of family within the builders, and some of us, as I said, did other work. He called our family The Seemyah. Seemyah was the word he used for 'family.' One of the men I sort of grew up with was named Fletcher. I grew up with him as an assassin. Fletcher wasn't good at much else." Karma gave a little laugh and then cleared her throat. "After my father died, I knew I didn't want to control the family or the business. I knew I didn't want to kill people or do basically anything I'd been doing up to that point. So I quit."

"You quit just like that?" Rea found that hard to believe. Maybe it seemed foreign to him because he'd never imagined leaving his father even at the most difficult of times. Then again, when his dad died, the idea of walking away had been seductive. Only Gears had kept him bound to the water base—Gears and his responsibilities to make the bases safe.

"Yes, just like that. I made up my mind, and I did it. My father wouldn't have liked it if I quit, but he was dead, so I decided it was time I lived a better life. I started to rethink everything I'd been doing. My dad never gave me many choices. For once, I had all the freedom I wanted. I never wanted the responsibility of the family."

Rea considered that he might be a little jealous of that kind of freedom. She didn't want to be tied down, so she left. He could never do that.

"What did you want to do? After you left The Seemyah?" he asked after a momentary pause.

"I didn't know. I still don't know, but I left anyway. I put the whole business behind me. I went to live on the Equator. I picked a safe place where the water was questionable."

Karma paused and drank more of the soup. He could tell she collected pieces of her story, and he let her.

A thought crept into his head when the silence encircled them. Had she loved this guy Fletcher? He didn't want to think about that. The idea of her having lovers made rage wash through his gut. Thinking about this wasn't getting him answers. He tried to remember what he wanted to know. This conversation was about who wanted to kill him, not about who might've taken her to bed.

So far, she wasn't lying to him. She had indeed quit and left her life behind. If that was the case, he was curious as to what brought her to his doorstep.

"You were on the Equator? And?"

Finally, she put down the bowl and broke the silence.

"I was in a broken-down house in a disgusting area of the ocean when Fletcher found me. My stepbrother Tad was staying with me at the time. Fletcher took Tad. Fletcher forced me to take the job of killing you if I wanted my stepbrother back. It would be a trade. You'd have to be dead, and my brother Tad could then be alive. I didn't ask about the job. I just took it."

"For the love of your brother, Tad, you came here to kill me."

"Stepbrother," she corrected.

It all started to make more sense now. All the pieces were falling into place. Karma would've had no choice, and he'd have done the same thing for Gears. Hell, if he were good at killing people, he would've shot a stranger to save someone he knew even remotely.

"I didn't love my stepbrother. I barely liked him, but I thought I should help him. Besides, I took the job to kill some random guy named Mac. I didn't know it was you. You were dead already, and everything about you was buried deep in my memory. As you know, I didn't succeed, and when I failed to kill you, Fletcher murdered my stepbrother."

"That was the picture on the phone?" Rea remembered the broken man with his brains blown out.

"Yes, the picture was of Tad. Fletcher didn't waste any time. When I saw the picture, I knew I had to go after Fletcher. I had to retaliate against him. I couldn't stay here with you and explain all this." Karma's shoulders sagged.

"That's when you left again," Rea sighed. Keeping Karma was like trying to keep the wind.

"I left, but this time, I came back to make things right. In the beginning, if I'd thought you were alive, I'd have never left you in the first place. I wish there were some way for you to see I care about you. Like if you had a gift to see if I'm lying…."

"We both changed, Karma." Rea shook his head. "This is more than using my gift, and you know it."

"What I know is that, yes, we've both changed, but I came back here because I want to be with you."

Rea couldn't comment on that or face his feelings at this moment. He needed to figure out what was best for the men and the water bases. His life wasn't what he needed to focus on. His relationships had to take a backseat to the water base. That's what he'd been taught.

What was best right now was to figure out him and Karma later, when everything was safe again. After the bases, Gears and Eric were all secure.

"Who hired you to come and kill me? Why me?"

"Fletcher hired me to kill you, but I honestly don't know who hired Fletcher before this all started. I came to tell you what I know and to protect you. I know Fletcher will come for you again. He'll get the job done if the money's big."

"This whole long story, and I still don't have an answer to who would want me dead?"

"I did warn you that what I had to say was a long story."

Rea ran his hands through his hair."Yeah, you did." He had no idea what he would do now.

"What we both need is some luck." Karma tilted toward him.

Rea was about to tell her that he didn't believe in any of that mystical voodoo, but he stopped himself. Right now, he kind of agreed. Some luck would be great.