When Venus Fell by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

trailed off as I realized what had happened. Pop had intervened. I felt weighted down. “My father didn’t believe in sentiment,” I repeated wearily. “He must have thrown your cards away.”
    Gib and I shared a look of troubled understanding. “Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said finally. “Even though it gives me one more reason to dislike your father.”
    “He wouldn’t have judged
you
so superficially.”
    “Oh? If your father were sitting here right now, I expect he’d despise me.” He held out his good hand. He wore a heavy insignia ring on his third finger. “Recognize this?” he asked.
    “A college ring. So?”
    “Not just any college. The Citadel.”
    The Citadel. Southern bastion of military machismo, graduating generations of ultraconservative traditional males and shouting huzzahs to all-American manhood. My throat clotted on years of fantasy and the cold reality of disappointment. “No wonder you looked out of place in a lesbian bar,” I said. “You’re John Wayne.”
    “There’s more. I joined the Marines right after graduation.”
    “Do you want me to salute?”
    “I’m everything you were raised to hate.”
    Silence. We both looked away. I finally offered, “My father never said a bad word against the Camerons. He knew how it felt to be hated without good reason. No one deserves it. That was the code he lived by.” I paused. “And I certainly don’t hate you. All I ask is fairness. I give fairness in return.”
    “All right.”
    “So you were a career Marine until …?”
    He shook his head. “I did what I was best suited for. What I’d always wanted to do since my parents were killed. I loved feeling that I was standing between an innocent person and danger. I loved feeling like I was out there”—he waved his good hand at the world beyond—“keeping everything safe for what I loved. Can you sympathize with that, now that you know me a little?”
    “Of course. And I don’t need to hear—” I halted. “What
kind
of career did you go into after college and a stint in the Marines?”
    “I went to work for the U.S. Treasury Department.”
    The Treasury Department? “You were an agent for the Treasury Department,” I echoed blankly, scrutinizing him. Some unfound piece of this puzzle floated in my mind disturbingly, but I couldn’t place it.
    “I transferred around the country a lot, tracking counterfeiters, working on cases involving credit-card fraud, that kind of thing. But I finally got transferred to the division I’d wanted all along. Worked like a dog to win that honor. It was the proudest day of my life. The proudest day for my family.”
    The implications were spinning into place. Only my obsessive backtracking over other details kept me from making the connection. “I’ve worked all over the world,” he continued. “I’ve been privy to conversations with kings and queens and prime ministers. I’ve slept in the finest hotels, eaten the finest food, danced with the prettiest women, and traveled first-class. In fact, better than first-class.”
    “So you were some kind of corrupt bureaucrat in the Treasury Department.” I uttered a sharp laugh. “Not that there’s any such thing as an honest bureaucrat.”
    “My lifestyle wasn’t exactly glamorous,” he went on in a flat voice. “I’ve been spit on in public, and kicked, and hit, and shot at, and stabbed with a letter opener once, by a little old lady in Iowa who thought I was keeping her from the private meeting some tiny green Martians promised to set up forher. I was sworn to take whatever the world threw at me. Sworn to give up my life if need be to protect the symbol of everything your dad wanted to tear down.”
    Suddenly I understood. Shock washed over me. I pivoted toward him. Government agents were no better than Nazis to me, and he’d just told me he had belonged to their most elite group. “You were a Secret Service agent.” I almost choked on the words.
    He nodded.
    I