The Bounty Hunter: Soldier's Wrath by Joseph Anderson Read Free Book Online

with that
person despite him being a constant reminder of the war you both lost. To have
that person turn on you, the person that understood the most horrible thing
that ever happened to you more than anyone,” Natalie’s voice trailed off.
    Burke was very still on the bed.
    “I can’t understand it,” she
repeated. “But I can accept it. You’re not wrong to feel the way you do, and to
be worried. But not everyone who cares about you will turn on you, no matter
how it might seem sometimes. I promise you that.”
    He nodded once. She held out her
hands again. He reached up and squeezed them softly. She sat down next to him
and rested against him, her head on his shoulder.
    “I am going to ask you a strange
question,” she said. “I want you to be honest.”
    “Okay,” he said slowly.
    “Do you ever miss him?”
    “Who?”
    “Adam.”
    He was taken aback. For a brief
instant, he looked at her like it was the stupidest question he had ever heard.
Then, he found his mind wondering at the answer and was surprised by what he
felt.
    “There were only three of us that
survived from the beginning,” he began. “In our squad. Most of them died. We
got replacements. Most of them died too. Our squad captain, Moira, nearly died.
A dross crushed half of her head but she lived through it. She wasn’t well
enough to fight again until the war was over. I took over her position. Maybe I
shouldn’t have. Adam was always better with people than I was. He could make
them think what he wanted them to.”
    Burke smiled. Natalie thought he
looked sad, only for a moment, before he gave a short laugh.
    “I didn’t know him before the war,”
he continued. “He was born on Earth, like me, but we never met until the
fighting started. I don’t know if it was the war that changed him into who he
became, and that it only took a few more years for that change to be complete.
Or maybe losing the war was what started the change. I don’t know. It changed
me, I’m certain of that. I can’t remember much of my life before it.
    “My family died. My friends. It was
only Adam and the other soldiers that joined us near the end—the few that
survived—they were the only people in the entire galaxy I knew, right after
losing the planet. I can see why many people couldn’t cope. Maybe I wouldn’t
have without working with Adam. Maybe Adam couldn’t either, and it was only a
matter of time.
    “I don’t know, Natalie. I don’t
miss who he became. I miss who he was. I miss who I was before he tried to kill
me, but maybe that’s not even his fault. Maybe that was just the moment that
the war caught up with me. Maybe I was already broken and it took until then
for me to realize it.”
    Natalie put an arm around him and
pulled him against her. She pressed the side of her head against his.
    “That makes perfect sense,” she
said.
    “I wish it didn’t. You didn’t come
here for this.”
    “I said that I accepted you, as you
are,” she said firmly, but pleasantly. “I meant it.”
    She raised a hand to his face and
turned his head to hers. She kissed him once on the lips and then on the
forehead. He didn’t take his eyes from hers. They eased back slowly onto the
bed and turned to face each other. He moved his arms around her back and she
did the same to him.
    “I missed you,” she whispered
softly, barely loud enough for him to hear.
    She held him for a while, silently
running a hand through his hair, until he fell asleep.
     
     
    * * *
     
     
    Natalie walked across the bedroom
as quietly as she could. She turned back when she reached the door. There he
was, she thought, someone who used to be one of the most famous bounty hunters
in the galaxy, curled up on the bed and looking the most vulnerable she had
ever seen him. It felt like an ache in her chest to see him in such a state;
both for how much he had changed, and for how earnestly he has was trying to
better himself. She had only been told briefly what Jess Richmond had