BIA Ch. 74

Isaiah got out of the car and immediately crossed the street. As he opened the door to the bar and went inside, thick cigarette smoke greeted him. Through the smoke, he could see a few regulars, drunkards, sitting at their usual spots, drinking beer and vodka and chatting. As always, no one gave Isaiah a second glance.

Isaiah walked up to the bar and ordered a Roy Rogers^[1] right away. The middle-aged man who owned the bar and was also the bartender glanced at Isaiah’s face, then spoke without stopping his hand from wiping a wine glass.

“Not today. We’re out of grenadine syrup.”

“That can’t be.”

Isaiah frowned. The bar owner just shrugged without a word. When Isaiah still didn’t leave, the bar owner finally placed the wiped wine glass on the rack and said,

“No one was asking for it, so they took it back yesterday.”

…Damn it. Isaiah muttered silently.

When carrying out missions, there were often times when circumstances led to a delay in collecting the bullets. But headquarters never bothered to retrieve them.

“When will they be back? If it goes as planned, next Sunday?”

“Yeah. If there are no problems with the supply.”

Too late. According to Chester, the successor announcement is supposed to be in two days.

“Okay, I understand.”

Isaiah left the bar. He got into Chester’s car, parked across the street, and as soon as he closed the back door, he said,

“I think we need to go to Virginia tomorrow.”

“What?”

Chester and Manny stared at him with bewildered expressions.

“I need to bring a gun. Bran took them all.”

Isaiah glanced at Manny in the rearview mirror. The car started moving.

“I have a gun too.”

Chester said.

“That won’t do.”

“What do you need? I’ll get it for you.”

“No, you can’t.”

I only use my gun. Isaiah leaned back in his seat and said.

“And I need to tell WD about the situation too.”

The fact that they retrieved the bullets meant that WD was considering his possibility of deserting. In this situation, even if he called a strange number that couldn’t be traced to explain, they would just think he was trying to get his hands on bullets to resell them, like all the other snipers who had run away from WD. So it was better to explain in person and get the bullets right there. That was the way to reduce waste and misunderstandings in many ways.

“We don’t have any other plans tomorrow anyway. The successor announcement is on Wednesday, right?”

“Who said otherwise? It’s just annoying to fly back and forth.”

Isaiah looked at him with a what-do-you-mean expression.

“I have to go with you too, right?”

Chester said in a tone as if it were obvious.

“What makes you think I would send you alone?”

His forehead was already starting to show veins, it looked like if he said one more word, he would start ranting about how he had joined hands with Bran and betrayed him, how someone who betrayed once would do it again, and all sorts of other nonsense.

“Do as you please.”

Isaiah closed his eyes and spat out curtly. Chester was right, given his past record, so he had nothing to say, and he was too tired to argue any further. He was so exhausted. Too much had happened in a short period of time. He felt like he could just pass out as soon as he got home.

Indeed, as soon as Isaiah arrived at his apartment, he placed the empty gun under his pillow and lay down on the bed. He heard Chester telling Manny to keep a close watch on him before leaving the front door. That crazy paranoid bastard, thankfully, seemed to want to sleep at his own place.

He heard Manny lying down on the sofa in the living room, then getting up again and heading to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door and taking out a can of beer. They bought the alcohol to drink among themselves, so they wouldn’t ask him to join them. Isaiah closed his eyes as he heard Manny, who had sat back on the sofa, opening the can.

But he couldn’t fall asleep. He was so tired he could barely open his eyes, but he couldn’t fall asleep as easily as he thought. Was it because he had dozed off in the taxi on the way from Liberty Harbor?

Then, since he had this rare quiet time to himself, he decided to reflect on what had happened in the last five days, but that wasn’t easy either. Not only could he not remember, but his head hurt too much every time he tried to force himself to think.

The last memory he could recall clearly was meeting Bran at Mountain Dog. He had said that he would guarantee good treatment, including his stepfather’s hospital bills, and he wanted to talk in detail at his house. Up to this point, he could remember everything clearly.

And also waiting for Bran at home. He didn’t do anything while waiting. He was just happy, so happy that he was restless, sitting on the sofa, getting up, and sitting down again.

I guess I thought, this can’t be a dream. Because he had no intention of killing Bran anyway. But if he broke the contract and went back, Chester would definitely hire a new killer. Maybe WD would send Kestrel at half price to smooth things over. He was the sniper with the highest mission success rate these days, besides him.

So he had to hold out until D-day no matter what. He would try to appease Chester and then pretend to shoot the wrong target on the day. Bran was going to be fully prepared anyway, so he could just leave the rest up to him. Chester would be taken care of by him too.

So, in fact, he wasn’t interested in the pay or the conditions. He just liked that Bran had called him. Maybe he had realized that he was that Lee from the John Bosco orphanage. If that was the case, he would spend the rest of his life living for him. In a way, his life was saved by him. He wanted to give him whatever time he had left. He wouldn’t regret it at all, if only he remembered him.

But why was it that he couldn’t remember what happened after Bran came to this house? He could recall hazy scenes, like Bran standing at the entrance with alcohol, or him and Bran sitting across from each other on the sofa talking, but he couldn’t remember any of the conversation.

At first, he thought it felt like watching a silent movie, but it was more like he was having a dream. He couldn’t hear any sound, and his voice wasn’t coming out either, but he could feel the emotions intensely. He couldn’t believe that Bran was in this house, he was so happy that he felt like his heart was about to burst.

Then… as time went by, he became sad. Why…? Was it because Bran told him to drink? Was he sad that his resolution not to drink had been broken? No, there was no way he would feel this desperate for such a simple reason. If he didn’t want to, he could just refuse. There was no reason for him to feel this heartbroken, scared, and in pain.

A long time ago, he had felt something similar. Twenty years ago, when he had gone to rehab to quit drugs. Not only was he out of his mind all day, having hallucinations and body aches, but what was harder was the loneliness of being alone. Back then, he was too young, and he had already experienced his second separation. He just needed to hold on a little longer, but he couldn’t, and the pain of being abandoned by his foster parents was the worst. He wanted to escape that guilt, fear, and sadness, so he started craving drugs again. Because drugs made him feel better anyway. They made him forget all the pain.

People don’t know. The reason why they can’t stop taking drugs is not because of the euphoria they feel when they take them, but because of the pain they feel when they stop. At least that was the case for him. He couldn’t even remember the euphoria, the overflowing energy, or the satisfaction he felt when he took drugs, but the pain of the rehab process was still vivid. Even after twenty years, just remembering it made the skin on his back and arms feel itchy.

“…Damn it.”

Isaiah cursed and sat up. He wanted to scratch his whole body to his heart’s content, but he held back. This was just a hallucination created by his brain anyway. It was a pain that didn’t exist. He couldn’t lose here.

Fortunately, the itchy feeling faded as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as he had learned at the rehab center. As he lay back down on the bed, he noticed the cabinet in the corner of the room. He was reminded of Bran’s ID, which he had no choice but to hide deep inside, but which was no longer there.

What is this?

Isaiah covered his eyes with his arm and laughed. Just a few hours ago, he thought that as long as Chester didn’t take Bran’s FBI ID, it would be okay, that there couldn’t be anything worse. It felt like all the bad things that could happen had happened.

Of course, the worst of them all was the fact that he might end up killing Bran with his own hands.