The silence stretched between them like a taut wire, broken only by the distant jazz music drifting up from the club below. Rick stared into the barrel of Scott's gun, his mind racing through fifteen years of partnership, shared dangers, and what he had believed was unbreakable trust.
"How long?" Rick's voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the weight of absolute devastation.
Scott's hand trembled—not much, but enough for Rick to notice. In fifteen years, he had never seen his partner's gun hand shake. "Since the beginning."
The words hit Rick like a physical blow. Every case, every late night, every moment when he'd trusted Scott with his life—all of it had been a lie.
Behind Scott, Catherine lay motionless on the Persian rug, her chestnut hair fanned out like spilled wine. Too motionless, Rick thought. No twitch, no gasp, no final breath. Just stillness—as if posed. The way her left hand had fallen—fingers slightly curved, not the complete relaxation of death. And her face, unmarked by blood despite the close-range shot. He filed the observation away, focusing on the immediate threat.
"The Burton brothers never killed my father, did they?" Rick asked, his photographic memory already reconstructing the past with this terrible new information.
Scott's Adam's apple bobbed. A tell Rick had seen a thousand times when his partner was struggling with difficult testimony. "No." The word came out strangled. "I did."
The confession hung in the air like smoke from a discharged weapon. Rick felt something inside him break—not just his heart, but his entire understanding of reality. For a moment, the room seemed to tilt on its axis.
"Why?" The question came out as a broken whisper.
Scott's composure cracked, revealing years of buried guilt. "Because he was getting too close to the truth about Operation Thunderbird. Your father wasn't just investigating the Burton smuggling ring—he had discovered that some of us were... compromised."
Rick's mind began processing the implications, but Scott's next words came slowly, as if each one was being dragged from his soul.
"The operation was bigger than what they told us, Rick. We thought we were just tracking weapons, but..." Scott's voice broke. "Your father found out we were letting some shipments through. Weapons that ended up in the wrong hands. People died because of what we didn't stop."
The revelation struck Rick like ice water. "So you killed him."
"I had orders." Scott's gun wavered slightly. "But Rick, you have to understand—your father's last words..." His voice cracked completely. "He said, 'Take care of my boy.' So I did. I've been taking care of you for fifteen years."
Rick felt tears mixing with the cold sweat on his face. The man who had murdered his father had also been the one constant in his life, the one person he had trusted above all others.
"By lying to me? By letting me hunt ghosts while you walked free?"
"By keeping you alive!" Scott's anguish was raw, real. "Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I don't see his face every night when I close my eyes? But they would have killed you too, Rick. The moment you got too close to the truth."
For the first time, Rick heard genuine pain in his partner's voice. This wasn't a cold-blooded killer—this was a man who had been drowning in guilt for fifteen years, just as Rick had been drowning in whiskey.
"The other agents," Rick said quietly. "The four who died. Was that you too?"
Scott's silence was answer enough.
"They were going to talk," Scott finally said. "After all these years, the guilt was eating at them. They wanted to come clean about Operation Thunderbird, about your father. I couldn't..." He stopped, seeming to realize something. "God, Rick, what have I become?"
The question hung between them, heavy with years of moral compromise and buried truth. Rick saw something in Scott's eyes he had never seen before—a man questioning whether his sacrifices had been worth it.
In that moment of emotional overflow, Rick moved. Fifteen years of training, honed by grief and sharpened by betrayal, exploded into action. He dove sideways as Scott's gun discharged, the bullet splintering the wooden doorframe where Rick's head had been.
Rolling behind an overturned table, Rick drew his father's silver revolver. The irony wasn't lost on him—using his father's weapon to face his father's killer.
"Rick, don't make this harder than it has to be!" Scott shouted, his voice echoing in the private room.
"Harder?" Rick's laugh was bitter. "You murdered my father, and now you're asking me to make it easy for you?"
Another gunshot. This time, Rick was ready. He rolled left, came up firing, and watched Scott dive behind the mahogany bar.
"You want to know the real tragedy?" Scott called out, his voice cracking. "I never wanted to be the monster in your story, Rick. I wanted to be the one who helped you find peace."
The words were meant to wound, and they succeeded. But they also revealed something else—Scott was breaking down, the weight of fifteen years of deception finally crushing him.
"Then tell me the truth," Rick said, his voice steady despite the chaos. "All of it."
"There's no time," Scott replied, and Rick heard something new in his voice—fear. "They're coming, Rick. The people who really run this operation. They don't wear badges, Rick. They don't follow orders. They write them. And they've been watching you since day one."
"What people?"
"People who make the Burton brothers look like choir boys. People who—"
The lights went out.
In the sudden darkness, Rick's trained senses kicked in. He heard the soft whisper of fabric—someone moving. But it wasn't Scott. The sound came from behind him, from where Catherine had fallen.
A gunshot flared in the darkness, illuminating the room for a split second. Rick saw Scott's silhouette, but the muzzle flash had come from the opposite direction.
"Well done, Agent Forsyth," a familiar voice said in the darkness, but the accent was different now—crisp, professional, with a hint of something European. "But the night is far from over."
Catherine Burton—or whoever she really was—was very much alive.
Rick found himself caught between two enemies in the dark, with the weight of fifteen years of lies pressing down on him like a physical force. Somewhere in the distance, a cathedral bell began to toll—once, twice, echoing through the city like a funeral dirge. Eleven chimes. One hour until midnight. One hour until the reckoning.
And Rick Forsyth was beginning to realize that everything he thought he knew about the game was wrong.