Page 25 of Atonement

“By who?” I grit out, my annoyance growing as her heavy sigh follows. It fills the line and makes me furious as I wait for Kira to tell me whose neck I need to break next.

Working as a double agent has its perks and its disadvantages, and is the one secret I’ve kept hidden from my wife since the night our lives ended. Coming full circle, disclosing both my two lies and one truth, it looks like all my secrets have been revealed. Or have they? If my assignment to gain intel on the Chinese government in order to stop their economic espionage fails because of a rat, so does my job to bring back information on the Russian military to Kira. In exchange for my information, Kira has agreed to give me some very important, highly classified details on the whereabouts of my children’s killer.

“I’d like to tell you that information isn’t your concern, however,” she pauses, her voice hanging in the air, grating on my last nerve as I watch and observe Magnolia starting to stir. “Your wife may like to play more tricks than you remember, 0013,” Kira asserts, making all the blood in my veins turn ice cold. I stare at my wife in the darkness and wonder if all we just confessed was done so in vain. “You might want to start frisking her first for wires. You know, before you decide to fuck her.”

“Last time I checked, it wasn’t a crime to sleep with your own wife.”

“But aiding and abetting the enemy is, Ace,” Kira fumes a second later.

“You know what they say,” I hiss, releasing a heavy sigh. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“If these rumors turn out to be true,” she snaps, “you stand to lose the last thing that you care about in the entire world. The only thing that’s kept you sane these last seven years, Ace; the one thing that’s stopped you from losing it all. Information only I can give you.”

“And how will you ever find out about Magnolia?” I snap back with disdain, because there’s no way in hell she can be right. “The only one she’s working this job with, is me, Kira. The only one she’s close to, is me. I keep a closer eye on her than she keeps on herself.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Magnolia rolls to her side and then slowly sits up in bed. Her eyes remain closed for a moment as she stretches her arms above her head. I watch her in the darkness and wait, her eyes gracefully open a second later and appear only slightly startled as she adjusts to her surroundings; to the weight of what transpired a few hours ago on the bed she’s sitting on. She looks up at me and my heart slams to the pit of my stomach, anger turning the ice in my veins into a homicidal fire as I take in what Kira says next.

“Find out who the rat is, 0013, before it finds you.” My grip tightens on the phone as my wife attempts a smile at me from across the room.

“What is it?” she innocently asks. Instinctively, I let my mind go numb in order to block both of the women out so I can focus on how much I might be fucked.

“Report back to headquarters before midnight,” my superior demands. “Or we’ll take the only thing you love most and erase your plan for vengeance before it ever got started.” When I don’t answer, blinded by the revelation of what I just heard, and desperately not wanting to believe it, Kira goes on. “Want to know the best part, Ace?” My grip on my phone turns brutal as my teeth grind together in a murderous madness and I stare into my wife’s wide eyes. “You won’t even see us coming.”

The line goes dead, and I sit stunned, fighting with the fact that could ruin it all. Kira just may be right. No one’s wanted to ruin me more over the last several years than the woman sitting across from me now. The one demanding answers with her eyes like the woman who just called and aggressively handed me an ultimatum I’ll refuse to accept.

They both forget who they’re dealing with. Good thing for all of us, I have no problem reminding them. My mission has always been to seek full restitution for a wrong I was forced to commit. This isn’t over until I receive a full pardon.

Until everyone pays for their sins.

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