Chapter 22 : Questions Without Answers
The gun felt different in my hands now.
Three weeks ago, I'd held a Beretta like it was a snake that might bite me. Now the weapon was an extension of Fiona's talent—weight distribution mapped, recoil pattern anticipated, sightline already calculating before I consciously aimed.
"Target left, second floor window!" Sam's voice crackled through the radio.
I pivoted, acquired, fired. The shooter in the window jerked backward and disappeared.
"Target center, behind the blue car!"
Another pivot. Another acquisition. Two rounds this time—the first to suppress, the second to hit. Glass shattered. A body slumped.
"Third hostile, moving toward the back—"
I was already tracking him. Fiona's Weapons Intuition painted his trajectory before Sam finished speaking. He was running for an exit that would put him behind Michael's position. I led the shot by three feet, squeezed twice, and watched him fold.
Four seconds. Three targets. All clean.
The silence that followed was heavy with questions I didn't want to answer.
Carlito's Bar was quiet at this hour—late afternoon, too early for the evening crowd, too late for the lunch spillover. We had a corner booth to ourselves, drinks sweating in the Miami heat, and a conversation nobody wanted to start.
Sam broke first.
"So." He took a long pull from his beer. "When exactly did you become a gunfighter?"
"I've been training."
"Training." Fiona's voice was flat. "I taught you shaped charges two weeks ago. You learned demolitions faster than anyone I've ever trained. And now—" She gestured vaguely. "—that shooting display. That wasn't training. That was instinct."
Michael sat across from me, silent, watching. His beer was untouched. His eyes were tracking my microexpressions the way he tracked hostile movement in combat.
"I learn fast," I said. "I told you that."
"You told us that." Sam leaned back. "And we believed it. Hell, I've seen savants before—guys who pick things up quicker than makes sense. But this is different."
"How?"
"The way you move." Fiona's eyes were sharp, analytical. "The way you react. You don't think anymore—you respond. Like the information is already in your body before your brain catches up."
She was right. Fiona's talent had done exactly that—installed instinct that bypassed conscious thought. But I couldn't tell her she was right, because then I'd have to explain how her instinct had become my instinct.
"I've seen special programs," Sam said carefully. "Military. Black ops. Things that accelerate learning in ways that aren't supposed to be possible. You in something like that?"
"No."
"Government experiment? Drug trial? Something that—"
"No." I met his eyes. "Nothing like that."
Michael finally spoke. "Then what?"
The question hung in the air between us. Behind the bar, the bartender wiped glasses and pretended not to notice the tension at our table. A ceiling fan turned lazy circles overhead, moving air that didn't cool anything.
"I've always learned fast," I said. "Faster than I should. I never had direction before—never had people to learn from, never had skills worth developing. I bounced around, picked up fragments of things, never committed to anything."
True. Host Sheldon had been exactly that—a drifter with potential and no purpose.
"Then I met Sugar. And Barry. And you." I looked at each of them in turn. "You gave me direction. You gave me something to learn. And I learned it."
"That's not an answer," Fiona said.
"It's the truth."
"The truth can still not be an answer."
She was right about that too.
Michael's silence continued. He was doing what he always did—cataloging data, running scenarios, calculating probabilities. I could almost see the mental file he was building: Sheldon Kendrick. Anomalous improvement rate. Claims natural ability. Evidence suggests something else.
"I'm not your enemy," I said quietly. "Whatever I am, whatever's happening with me—I'm not a threat to this team."
"How do we know that?" Sam's voice wasn't hostile, just careful. The tone of a man who'd been betrayed before and learned to expect it.
"Because I've had opportunities." I let that sink in. "If I wanted to hurt you, I could have. The surveillance jobs, the combat operations, the trust you've extended—any of it could have been used against you. It hasn't been."
"Yet," Fiona said.
"Ever."
Michael finished his beer in one long drink and set down the empty glass. The sound was loud in the quiet bar.
"I'm going to keep watching you," he said. "I'm going to keep asking questions you don't want to answer. And if I ever find out you've lied about being on our side—"
"You'll handle it."
"I will."
It wasn't acceptance. It wasn't trust. But it was acknowledgment—recognition that we could work together even with the questions unresolved.
I'd take it.
Sam bought me a beer afterward.
We sat at the bar while Michael and Fiona left separately, neither looking back. The gesture felt significant—Sam choosing to stay, choosing to extend something like solidarity.
"You're not going to tell us, are you?" he asked.
"I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
He nodded slowly, drinking his beer with the easy familiarity of someone who'd spent a lifetime in bars like this one. "I get it. Everyone's got secrets. Hell, I've got things in my past I wouldn't tell Michael if he waterboarded me."
"Somehow I doubt that."
Sam laughed—a genuine sound, warm despite the tension. "The point is, I've worked with people I didn't fully understand before. Some of them turned out bad. Some of them turned out to be the best friends I ever had." He raised his glass toward me. "Here's hoping you're the second kind."
I clinked my glass against his. "Here's hoping."
The beer was cold, the bar was quiet, and somewhere behind us, Michael Westen was adding more notes to his mental file.
The questions would come back. They always did.
But for now, I had equilibrium. And equilibrium was enough.
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