by Mike Ryan
“Matt, you in there?” Raines asked from the hallway.
“Yeah,” Cain replied.
Raines walked in and also quickly brought his gun up as he saw the image of Sanders sitting before them.
“You get the other rooms in the hallway?” Cain wondered.
“Yeah. Everything’s clear.”
“What tricks do you have up your sleeve?” Cain asked the man sitting in front of them.
“I have no tricks,” Sanders answered. “I’m fully prepared for whatever punishment you’re prepared to dish out.”
“Seems strange coming from someone like you.”
“Why? I’ve known this day would come for a long time,” a seemingly defeated Sanders said. “The only question was when and who.”
“Well now you know.”
“I always assumed it’d be you.”
Raines looked behind him, not quite sure he believed there wasn’t another shoe to drop. “Excuse me for being skeptical, but do you expect us to believe you were just waiting here for us?”
“I was alerted to your presence about two hours ago. I knew there was not sufficient time enough for me to escape. With you two, I knew you’d track me down in a matter of days, if not hours. Why delay the inevitable?”
“Why didn’t you come up shooting?”
“Because you’re both better shots than I am. I would stand no chance in a gunfight with you two, we all know that,” Sanders responded.
“I’m a little surprised at your defeatist attitude,” Cain said.
“It’s not a defeatist attitude. It’s a realistic one. And as I said, why delay the inevitable? Now, if I had known in advance you were coming, that’d be one thing. I’d have had some time to plan my escape. But with only a two hour lead, with you two on my tail, we both know how far I’d get.”
Sanders got up from his chair and started walking around the room, Cain and Raines somewhat expecting him to try something.
“If I may ask one thing, what led you here? How’d you find me?” Sanders wondered.
“I remembered something Ruiz told me on my first mission,” Cain replied.
“Which was?”
“He told me what you did for him in regards to his daughter. I figured the one man you knew you could trust that would never betray you…was him.”
Sanders smiled. “I wasn’t aware he told you that story. If I had, it may have changed my itinerary slightly. Have you been to see him?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Good. He’s a good man.”
“Still wouldn’t give you up. All the way to the end,” Cain said.
“I don’t suppose you would be willing to walk away and forget you found me?” Sanders asked.
“You gotta be joking.”
“I mean, after all I’ve done for you?”
“All you’ve done for me? You took away everything I had,” Cain angrily told him. “I had a wife and a son.”
“Still carrying around that narrow minded and false sense of being wronged attitude of yours, huh?”
“Only with you.”
“You never did completely understand my plans for you.”
“Your plans? Destroying my life was your plan?”
“I gave you a life!” Sanders yelled. “Look at you now. You’ve got a girlfriend. You’ve got a career. You’ve got a life. All that is because of me! Because of what I gave you!”
“You gave me nothing.”
“So you’d like to think. You brood about your memory…your memory wasn’t coming back. Bits and pieces, sure, but your life was already over by that point. You could’ve spent years in some hospital, toiling away, being visited by a wife and son that you had no memory of. I gave you a purpose to keep on living!”
Cain aimed his gun at Sanders’ head, ready to pull the trigger and end his miserable existence. His thoughts suddenly turned to Heather, telling him not to kill him if it wasn’t necessary.
“You know I’m right, don’t you?” Sanders asked, still pacing around the room. “You’d like nothing more than to pull the trigger and kill me, but deep down inside, you know what I’m saying is true.”
Raines looked at his partner and could tell he was having some conflict about what to do. He’d never seen Cain so conflicted before. All Cain could see was Heather’s disapproving face if he pulled the trigger. Cain took his finger off the trigger and pulled the gun down to his side.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you did give me a life. Maybe I should be more appreciative of what I have instead of what I lost,” Cain stated.
Sanders nodded, sensing that his speech was working on his former agent.
“But in spite of that, you have crimes that you’ve committed that you need to be punished for.”
“Oh come on,” Sanders objected. “We all know that’s a bunch of crap. We’re all intelligent men here. We can work something out.”
“Maybe. But in spite of all that, all that you’ve given me, a life, a career, a girlfriend…you didn’t give it to him,” Cain said, pointing to his partner.
Sanders looked at Raines, worried about what Cain was inferring. As soon as the final words left his mouth, Cain turned around and walked out of the room. A smile formed on Raines’ face as he finally saw the look of fear on Sanders face that he was hoping to see. Cain kept walking down the hallway, not stopping until he reached the front door. He heard two shots ring out. He started to turn around to look back but thought better of it. He exited the house and went back to the car to wait for Raines. While he was waiting, he let Lawson know it was done.
“It’s over,” Cain texted.
“YES,” she replied.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” he told her.
Raines came back to the car a couple minutes later. Cain let him know that he told Lawson that Sanders was dead.
“What took you so long?” Cain asked.
“Just tying up loose ends,” Raines replied with a smile.
A few seconds later Cain noticed some flames shooting out of the windows of the Sanders house.
“Sorry I left it on you,” Cain stated.
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“Don’t know why I let him get to me.”
“Probably because there was a semblance of truth to what he was saying,” Raines told him.
“Yeah. At least it’s done.”
“Yes. Though I was surprised he didn’t try some shenanigans.”
“I guess it’s like he said. Why delay the inevitable?”
“Indeed.”
Since it was the middle of the night, they found a hotel to get a few hours of sleep before heading back to New York. They took the first flight they could out of San Pedro Sula and got back to New York around 3 in the afternoon. Lawson greeted them at the airport when they got in and had a car waiting for them to take them back to The Center. As soon as they arrived, they could tell there was a more upbeat feeling in the building, like a world of pressure had been lifted off the shoulders of everyone. Several people shook their hands as they walked by. They walked into Lawson’s office and almost immediately, Director Conlin followed them in.
“Job well done,” Conlin told them, shaking each of their hands.
“Thank you,” Raines replied.
“Just got the report in from down there. Whose idea for the fire?”
“That was mine,” Raines answered.
“How come? Not gonna hide the fact there’s a dead body with a bullet hole in his head.”
“Just for kicks.”
“Who got him?” Conlin wondered.
“Eric did,” Cain said without hesitation.
“I’m sure you would’ve liked to have been the one.”
“Just happened that way. As long as it got done, that’s the only thing that really matters.”
“You’re right about that. Good job team,” Conlin said as he walked out the door. A second later, he popped his head back in.
“By the way…vacations all around,” he said with a smile.
Lawson clapped her hands excitedly and put her arms in the air. “Yes!”
“Lawson and Raines…you each got two weeks. Cain…take a couple months. Just make sure you’re completely healthy when you come back.”
“I will.”
“Just make sure you come back,” Conlin joked. “I don’t wanna have to send someone after you again.”
“Don’t have to worry,” Cain replied.
As soon as Conlin disappeared for good, Cain looked relieved. He knew Heather would be ecstatic about going away for a while. He’d offer her the option to go anywhere she wanted.
“So will you two be taking separate vacations?” Cain jokingly asked.
Lawson smiled and then walked over to Raines, kissing his lips firmly. “Does that answer your question?”
“She can’t resist my charm,” Raines joked.
“Who can?” Cain replied.
They all had a laugh before Cain left the office, Lawson and Raines soon following. Cain went back to the apartment, eager to tell Heather the good news. As soon as he walked in she rushed over to him, giving him a big hug and kiss.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” she told him.
“Me too.”
“So what happened?” Heather asked, eager to know the details.
“We found him,” Cain said, reluctant to provide specifics.
“And?”
“And he’s dead.”
Heather’s face had no expression as she thought about the events. “Did you do it?”
“No,” Cain said after a slight hesitation.
“You didn’t?”
“No. Eric got him.”
“Are you OK with that?”
Cain nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Good,” she smiled, taking a few steps back. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Wait,” Cain said, taking her by the hand. “I have a surprise for you first.”
“OK?” Heather asked, not knowing what it could be.
“I’ve been given a vacation.”
Heather smiled and hugged him. “That’s great. How long?”
“I don’t know. Director said a couple months. He said not to come back till I’m fully healthy.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Yeah. So wherever you wanna go. Hawaii, Mexico, Florida, California, Bahamas…it’s up to you.”
“Not Hawaii,” she remembered from before.
“Oh. Yeah. Hawaii’s out.”
She gave him another hug. “That’s so exciting. But I can’t go.”
“What?” Cain asked, confused. “Why can’t you?”
“I mean we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the baby.”
“Uhh…what?”
“Well, I call him a baby,” she said, going to the bedroom.
Heather opened the bedroom door, letting loose a little yellow Labrador Retriever puppy. The puppy sprinted for Cain, jumping up at the bottom of his legs. Cain looked down at the puppy then back at Heather.
“Surprise!” she yelled.
Cain reached down and picked the puppy up. As soon as his face was within range, the puppy unleashed a barrage of wet kisses for its new owner. Cain smiled as he cradled the dog in his arms.
“So you see we really can’t go anywhere right now,” Heather noted.
“I thought you would’ve liked going somewhere.”
“I would have. But this’ll be fun too. Just us three hanging out at home together for a couple of months. Are you mad?”
“Of course not.”
“So you don’t mind just staying here?”
“No,” Cain answered, seemingly enjoying the sloppy kisses he was receiving from the energetic puppy.
“I was thinking…what do you think of the name Champ?”
Cain thought about it for a minute before nodding his head. “I like it.”
Heather rushed over to him and kissed him, then gave Champ a kiss on the bridge of its nose. “Our own little family.”
Cain thought about what Sanders had told him about giving him a life. Everything he had now was because of what happened to him before. He looked at Champ then looked at Heather and kissed her. He stared at Heather’s face for a minute as she smooched the dog. Though he always appreciated her, and loved her, he always felt there was something hanging over him that brought him down. As he looked at Heather, he thought of how much he loved her and how much she stood behind him. That empty feeling that hung over him was gone. He had his life back. And he couldn’t have been happier.
Author Notes
First, I’d like to thank everyone who has read and enjoyed the series. I really do appreciate the support. It was a really fun series to write and a lot of people seem to have enjoyed it. I do want to address probably the biggest criticism that I’ve heard from people, which is the ending to The Cain Conspiracy. There are people who think the book was rushed or that the ending wasn’t complete or that it’s more like a serial. My answer is a negative on all accounts. The book ended the way I wanted it to. I try on every book to keep it as short as possible. They’re still full length books, but they’re not door-stoppers. I try to keep the books lean and not put in twenty pages of filler. I will not write pages upon pages of descriptions of trees and whatnot. I think most people want to get to the action and dialogue and will skim boring parts that an author just threw in there to pad the page count. I like shorter books better, to read, and to write. As far as being a serial, books 1 and 2 take place months apart, and if you stopped after Conspiracy, I wanted it to end in a way that completed that part of the story, but you could tell there was still more coming. So if you didn’t read on after the first book, I wanted it to be up to the reader to decide for themselves whether Cain killed the guy off the bridge, or whether he survived. But I also wanted to foreshadow that he probably survived and you’d see him again. So that was my thought process with that. A few things I wanted to touch on were asked via reader questions that I’ll just answer in the Q & A portion down below. I’m anxious to hear from people about the ending of Redemption. I have a feeling some people will think I rushed it or could have drawn it out longer. But if people haven’t noticed by now, I don’t like to add fluff. Nobody wants to read ten pages of filler that really don’t move things along. As far as the ending itself, I had this idea early on about someone other than Cain being the one to kill Sanders because it was always just assumed that Cain would be the one to do it and I thought it‘d be neat to change that around. Then I thought it’d be a really cool scene to have Cain and Raines in the same room with Sanders, then Cain just walks out as Raines kills him. And for anybody wondering if maybe Sanders was just wounded and got out when the fire started…he’s dead. Dead. Dead. Now let’s get on to the questions I’ve gotten.
These are some actual questions I’ve received and are reprinted with permission from those who asked them.
Q: Did everything happen in the books the way you imagined it or did things change during the course of writing?
A: Things definitely changed from my initial outline of the series. As a matter of fact, there was initially only going to be three books. Conspiracy, Deception, then Redemption. But as I worked on the first two I just thought I had too much material for three and I didn’t want to cram in stuff that I didn’t think belonged in those books.
Q: Which was the most difficult book for you to write and why?”
A: I would say either Directive or Redemption was the most difficult. I feel like Conspiracy almost wrote itself. I mean, everything just flowed in the story. I really had no difficulties with anything. Deception was pretty similar. Directive had an issue or two that I had problems with but nothing too bad. I guess I just talked myself into saying Redemption was the hardest to write. I had to rewrite it, and I wasn’t sure which direction to go a couple of times, so I guess I just made the case for Redemption.
Q:
How did the characters change, if at all, and which ones, from the way you originally dreamed them up?
A: Well, Cain was always supposed to be the way he was. Sanders was always set up to be the bad guy. I would say the only characters that really differed from the way I drew it up was Heather Lloyd and Eric Raines. Neither was supposed to be the major supporting characters they wound up being. Heather was actually what I call a throw-away character. She was only supposed to be in the one scene where Cain goes to his apartment and the stripper’s there. It was meant to show that Cain was a different kind of guy. You know, here’s a beautiful stripper taking her clothes off in front of him, but he’s not really interested. It wasn’t the kind of guy he was and it wasn’t what drove him. But the more I wrote that scene and they started having dialogue it just seemed that there was a chemistry between the two of them that I couldn’t ignore. Then Heather went and volunteered to stay with him after a seizure and I just couldn’t get rid of her after that! Raines was meant to be just in Conspiracy as a minor character but he kind of just stuck around and I really liked the character and what he brought to the books that he wound up being more important than I thought he would be.