Hard Target (The Silencer Series Book 3)

by Mike Ryan

  In fact, he got so lost in his thoughts that he never even saw Mia come into the cafeteria. She grabbed a few things for lunch and paid at the register. Then as she was looking for a table, she caught a glimpse of Recker sitting back in the corner. He still didn’t see her and she could tell that he seemed to be in another world. Although she was happy to see him, she thought it was strange that he was there and wondered what the purpose of his visit was. She approached his table and put her tray down across from him, wondering what it was going to take for him to notice her coming. Recker’s trance was broken upon seeing and hearing the tray hit the table. He looked up at her and smiled, pleased she was finally there.

  “Hey,” Recker happily greeted.

  “Is this seat taken already?”

  “Nope. Been waiting for you.”

  “Waiting? Why?” she asked. “How long have you been here?”

  “About two hours.”

  “Two hours?! Why didn’t you just call up and tell them to page me or something?”

  Recker shrugged, not wanting to make a big deal about waiting. “I didn’t want to bother you. I called your phone but since you didn’t answer I figured you were here.”

  “Oh. Sorry, I don’t have a phone right now. Mine was smashed yesterday and I didn’t get a new one yet.”

  “I forgot.”

  Besides, it’s been a pretty busy day here,” she replied.

  “I assumed as much. That’s why I figured I’d just come down and wait for you here.”

  “You still should’ve called up.”

  “No big deal. I didn’t mind the wait.”

  Mia smiled at him as she began eating. “Did you eat already?”

  “Nah, this is fine,” Recker replied with a shake of his head, holding his coffee up. “I’m not really that hungry anyway.”

  “So what are you doing here?” Mia wondered.

  “Just wanted to see you.”

  “Aww. You’re sweet. Now what’s the real reason you’re here?”

  Recker laughed and looked away for a moment. “Honestly, I just wanted to make sure you were OK.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure? I know what happened yesterday must’ve been hard for you,” he told her.

  “Well, I can’t say that I’m eager for it to ever happen again but I’m holding up.”

  “Good.”

  Mia looked around at the tables near them and leaned forward, making sure to keep her voice down. “What if, umm, what if that guy comes back or something? What if he comes looking for me again?”

  “You don’t ever have to worry about him again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Recker nodded, “positive. He’s been taken care of. He’ll never be an issue for you. Forget about him.”

  “Now, when you say he’s been taken care of, what does that mean exactly?” Mia asked, hoping it didn’t mean what she thought it did.

  Without coming right out and saying that he killed him, which Recker didn’t want to do, he tried to think of how he could dance around the subject.

  “Just means what it sounds like,” Recker said. “He’s gone. You don’t have to worry about him. And you can rest easy, knowing that Susan’s killer was brought to justice.”

  “By who?”

  Recker and Mia’s eyes locked together for a few moments. Though he didn’t regret getting rid of Simmons, he was a little hesitant to come right out and tell her that he killed him. But he didn’t have to. The way he was looking at her, Mia could tell that he did. If not, he would have immediately told her that someone else did. She knew that he just didn’t want to admit it to her.

  “Did you kill him?” she asked.

  Recker sighed and looked around again as he struggled on whether he should tell her the truth. “I don’t think you really need to know the particular details. Just be happy that he’s gone.”

  Seeing that he kept avoiding the subject, Mia assumed that he just didn’t want to talk about it and stopped pestering him with questions about the subject. She took a few bites of her food as she watched him rub his hands together, fidgeting around in his chair. Recker looked like he was nervous or anxious about something. She couldn’t recall him ever looking like that before. Was it the questions about Simmons that he was trying to steer away from? Still, seeing him act nervous was making her a little nervous, wondering what he was doing there. Though it would’ve been a sweet gesture on his part to show up and just check on her well-being, it wasn’t something he’d ever done before. Of course, she’d never gotten kidnapped before either.

  “Is there something wrong?” Mia finally asked.

  “Wrong? No, why?

  “I don’t know. Just seems like you’re not yourself. You seem like you’re off, like you’re nervous or something.”

  Recker shook his head. “No. I just wanted to make sure you were good.”

  “You could’ve just called for that. Why did you specifically come here?”

  “Well, I got back real late last night and I figured you were already in bed. Then when I got up you didn’t answer your phone, so I didn’t want to wait until you were done work before talking to you,” Recker told her.

  “Are you just pumping me for information?”

  “What about?”

  “About what those guys did or asked.”

  “No, no. Only thing I’m worried about is your safety. That’s it.”

  “You were worried about me?” she asked, never getting the feeling that he cared for her as much as she did for him.

  “Of course. You weren’t touched or anything were you?”

  “No. I mean, Simmons slapped me in the face once or twice and grabbed my ass once, but nothing more than that.”

  “OK.”

  “It’s just that…,” Mia started then stopped.

  “What?”

  “Uhh, it’s nothing. Just something that the one guy said to me.”

  “What was it?”

  “The one guy questioned me about you.”

  “Vincent,” Recker responded.

  “Yeah. I guess he wanted to see what our relationship was.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “The truth. That we were just friends and that you saved me from an abusive boyfriend once,” she answered, looking sad as she played with her food.

  “And?” Recker asked, concerned.

  “He said something about how a man like you doesn’t really have friends or anyone who’s close to him.”

  Recker looked at her, having an idea of where she was heading. “That’s sometimes true.”

  “And he said that it was smart of you to keep someone like me close to you,” Mia said, still looking down at the table.

  “And why did he say that was?”

  “Cause he said that with me being a nurse that it was smart for you to keep someone like me around in case something happened to you,” she explained. “Like when you were shot and came to my apartment.”

  Recker leaned back and put his hand on his face, running it down past his lips and chin as he thought of a reply. He could tell that she’d given it some thought, and even if she didn’t believe it to be true, it at least had crept into her mind a little bit. She worried that he might have just been using her for her skills and that he didn’t care about having her in his life.

  “And what do you think?” Recker wondered.

  Mia didn’t immediately answer and just shrugged, wiping her eye as she felt a tear start to form. “I don’t know. I guess sometimes I feel like that might be true. That maybe you just keep me around because you might need me sometime.”

  Recker knew he had to put her mind at ease right away. He reached his hand across the table and gently grabbed hers, rubbing it slightly, not letting go of it. Once she felt his hand, she looked up at him and saw him smiling warmly at her.

  “The reason I keep you around is because I want you to be in my life. Not because I need you to be,” Recker told her.

>   “Then why do you act so carefree with me? I’ll call you and you won’t get back to me for three or four days. I’ll ask you to dinner and ninety percent of the time you say you can’t make it. I feel like you intentionally keep me at a distance.”

  Recker, still holding her hand, looked away as he thought of the best way to say what was in his mind. It was a topic that seemed to always pop up between them every couple of months. He could always successfully dodge away from it, but he knew that at some point, he was going to have to honestly tell her what was in his heart. And he wondered if now was the time to share that viewpoint.

  “I’ve always felt like we shared some type of…connection or a bond,” Mia told him. “Like there’s something there between us. But you always just shut me out and pretend that it isn’t there. Or maybe there really isn’t and it’s just me hoping that there is and one day a light bulb will go off over your head and you’ll see it too.”

  Though Recker was still hesitant to come clean about everything, he could see the pain in her eyes. Tears were forming in her eyes and he didn’t want to keep putting her through the agony of not knowing exactly what their relationship was.

  “Fine. I’ll tell you the truth,” Recker stated.

  “Oh boy,” Mia responded, worried. She was shaking her leg up and down as her nerves were getting the better of her as she anxiously awaited what he was about to say.

  “You’re right. I do push you away sometimes and sometimes I keep you at a distance on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  “There are plenty of reasons and none are close to being anything like you’re thinking.”

  “Just tell me and put me out of my misery.”

  “The real reasons are because of the man I am, the life that I lead, the things that I do, things that I’ve done, things in my past,” he told her.

  “Because of what you did in the CIA?” she asked, still not fully understanding.

  “Mostly.”

  “But that’s in the past. What’s that got to do with now?”

  “It’s got everything to do with it,” Recker huffed, still struggling with how best to describe his feelings. “Look, I like everything about you. You’re pretty, smart, fearless, funny, stubborn at times…there’s nothing I don’t like about you. And that’s what frightens me sometimes. Because I could see myself falling hard for you if I let myself.”

  “And you don’t want that?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want it. It’s that I can’t have it. I can’t let it. I can’t have you and you can’t have me.”

  “But why?” Mia cried. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Because you deserve better than me. All I can do is bring you heartache.”

  “You won’t even give it a chance. How do you know?”

  “Because I tried it once before,” Recker answered, figuring it was time to reveal what he’d been hiding from her for so long. “I was engaged once.”

  “Oh? You’ve never mentioned that.”

  “Because it’s…,” Recker stumbled over his words, pain clearly still evident on his face as he thought about it. “Because it’s something that I’ll never get over. And it’s a mistake that I’ll never make again.”

  Mia could see how torn up Recker was over recalling his past. Though she still had trouble understanding his reasoning, she cared for him too much to not try and console him over whatever it was that still haunted him.

  “What happened?” she softly asked.

  Recker sighed as he began to tell his story. “A few years ago I met a woman named Carrie and we fell in love. Without getting into every detail, I wanted to leave the CIA and settle down with her. Two years ago I was in London on an assignment. It was a setup. That scar you saw on my stomach was from that night. I was shot and bleeding badly and just walking around aimlessly until I thought of Carrie, thinking she might be in danger. So I called her to warn her and tell her what happened so she could go somewhere safe.”

  Mia had a feeling of what he was about to say next. She felt so badly for him as he began explaining his past. They were still holding hands, though now, she was the one rubbing his hand.

  “When I called her phone, a man picked up. It was another agent. And he told me he just killed her,” Recker revealed, rubbing sweat off his forehead.

  “I’m so sorry, Mike.”

  “That’s the reason why I can’t let myself fall for you. I can’t get involved with you and let that happen again. I won’t let it. I care too much about you to let that happen again.”

  “But just because it happened once doesn’t mean it would happen again,” Mia argued.

  “You don’t get it. If you’re with me, you will always be a target. There are people out on these streets, if they knew you were special to me, that would use you as bait in order to get to me. What you experienced yesterday would be a regular occurrence. You’d get kidnapped, followed, shot at, beat up, who knows what else? Is that what you want?”

  Not knowing how to respond, Mia just looked down, obviously disappointed in what she was hearing. Recker knew he was breaking her heart but it was something that just had to be done. For her own good.

  “Listen, I’m still on the CIA’s radar,” Recker told her. “They’re still out there looking for me. They haven’t stopped looking for me and they never will. And eventually I’ll pop up on one of their screens and they’ll be on my doorstep. I don’t want them to be at yours too.”

  “I understand,” Mia replied, disappointment flowing from her voice.

  “You deserve to be happy. You deserve someone that can make you happy. I just don’t think I’m that guy.”

  “But you won’t even give it a chance.”

  “If you’re with me, you’re always gonna have to look over your shoulder. That’s not a life you should lead. That’s not a life anyone should lead.”

  “So why do you?”

  “Because it’s all I know. It’s who I am at this point. I can never lead a normal life even if I wanted to.”

  “What if you left the country?” Mia asked.

  “There’s nowhere you can run from these people.”

  “How do you even know they’re still looking for you? Maybe they gave up and moved on.”

  “Even if they had, the things I do now still prohibit a normal life for me. I have to use different identities, stay out of view of cameras, pull a hat down over my face to avoid detection, those are things you shouldn’t have to go through,” Recker continued. “You should be able to come home after work and have someone there waiting for you. You should be able to look into someone’s eyes when you wake up in the morning. You should be able to have a family and have kids. I can’t give you any of that.”

  “Why does this feel like a goodbye speech?”

  “I don’t mean it to be.”

  They continued their conversation for a few more minutes, though it mostly consisted of Recker telling her why a relationship between the two of them wouldn’t work. Mia couldn’t help but look like she’d just been stabbed in the heart. She understood his reasoning but it didn’t help to soothe the pain. It was tough for her to understand the things that Recker had been through. It was tough for anybody who had a normal life and a regular job to get what Recker was talking about. They just couldn’t comprehend what the life he led was like. Mia looked at her watch and started scurrying along.

  “I’m already late. I have to go,” she told him.

  She had about five more minutes but she couldn’t take any more of the conversation. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut, stabbed in the heart, and hit by a bus all at the same time. She gathered her stuff up and put what food remained back on the tray as she started to stand up, trying hard not to look at Recker.

  “I guess I’ll talk to you later,” Mia said.

  As Recker watched her walk out of the cafeteria, he felt terrible about making her upset. He rested his elbow on the table and put his head in his hand as he rubbed his forehead.
>
  “This is not how I thought this was gonna go,” he said to himself.

  Chapter 12

  Recker stayed in the hospital cafeteria for another hour or so after Mia left, just thinking about everything he said, replaying their conversation in his mind. He felt like it couldn’t have gone any worse. He went there to make sure she was OK, worried about her, and she left in a worse shape mentally than before Recker talked to her. He thought about waiting there the rest of the day and night until Mia was done so they could continue their conversation, so he could somehow make it right with her. Recker didn’t want to leave her in such a despondent mood but he also thought that there was no way around that unless he did a complete about face in regards to what she wanted.

  Eventually, he thought it was better to give her some space for a while. After their talk would she want to even be around him anymore? Instead of just sitting there doing nothing, he figured it was probably time to get back to the office and see what Jones was up to. He got back in his car and drove straight to the office without stopping.

  Once he got there, he sat in the parking lot in front of the Laundromat, thinking about his options. He hadn’t forgotten about Edwards. Recker wondered if the time was right to go back down there immediately and finish the job or if he should wait a while. He wasn’t even gone a day before his friends got in trouble without him there. Of course, he also realized that now that Mia’s problem had been solved, there was no reason any of them should get into a situation like that again. Then there was Mia. Recker still couldn’t stop thinking about her. He suddenly felt like a rush of emotions were pouring over him regarding her. Was it because her life was in danger that made him feel the things he’d been trying to bury since he’d known her? He did what he promised to himself that he wouldn’t do. He let his guard down. He couldn’t deny to himself any longer that he did feel an attachment toward her. But he had to fight the urge to do something about it. Recker felt strongly about not acting upon it. If they pursued a relationship, and she ended up like Carrie, he couldn’t live with himself knowing another love died because of him. He sat in his car for an hour before figuring he had to get moving.