Page 49 of Benny

Then an agent yelling “stop” echoed down the corridor and in their earpieces. Everyone turned, and Davenport threw out an arm, halting them as the sound of several gunshots cracked through the building.

Jordan’s heart slammed against her ribs as adrenaline surged, as everything she’d learned over the years as a cop commanded her to charge down the hallway, to provide backup to her fellow law enforcement officers. Then Dev’s furious voice came through their comms.

“Motherfucker.” He waited a beat. “Fucking suicide by cop.”

Beside her, Benny went completely still.

“He lunged at one of the FBI agents,” Dev continued, anger roughening every word. “They took him down. Hayes is DOA.”

Jordan immediately looked at Benny to gauge his reaction. She’d expected satisfaction, or maybe relief. After everything Hayes had allowed Overlander to do to him, she wouldn’t have blamed Benny for either.

Instead, his expression was one of… frustration, and that disappointment made complete sense. He’d wanted Hayes alive to face the consequences of his actions.

“If you’re not already out, get going,” Dev said, his voice low enough that only his mic would catch it as he turned his attention to the federal agents. “Goddammit. He was our only witness to what was done in this facility. The official records show the entire project was a failure, but Hayes was the one person we could hold directly accountable for what happened here.”

Benny looked back at the door where he’d endured so much pain and Jordan followed his gaze.

Hayes was dead and Overlander was in the wind. For one ugly moment, it felt like they’d lost. That everything Benny had endured had been for naught because the two people responsible had slipped beyond their reach in wholly different ways.

Jordan wanted to rage at the unfairness of it. More than that, she wanted to fix it for him, but there was no fixing this.

She couldn’t put Hayes in handcuffs. She couldn’t drag Overlander out of whatever hole she’d disappeared into. And she sure as hell couldn’t give Benny back the time that’d been stolen from him. All she could do was stand beside him, so she slipped her hand into his.

He looked down at their joined fingers, and for several long seconds, he didn’t move, then his fingers tightened and something in his expression changed.

Not forgiveness. Jordan didn’t think either had enough sainthood in them for that. Acceptance, maybe.

His gaze shifted once more to the door, and she felt his grip tighten.

Jordan knew him well enough, even if he no longer knew himself quite as well, to recognize a decision forming behind those brown eyes. “You okay?”

He met her gaze and for a second, she saw everything he wasn’t saying. The anger. The loss. The questions he might never have answers to. And beneath all of it, something steadier. “I will be.”

The three simple words hit her harder than they should have.

Maybe he would never remember everything Overlander had taken from him.

Maybe he would never remember falling in love with Jordan the first time.

But as Benny started toward the exit, he didn’t release her hand and Jordan went with him.

She didn't look back at the lab and neither did he, and for now, that was enough.

~

The ride back in the SUV was somber and quiet as they all processed what had happened. It didn’t seem fair that Hayes hadn’t been held accountable for his crimes. And the fact that Overlander was still in the wild? That gave Jordan the creeps.

But beneath the disappointment and unease was a strange sense of liberation.

With La Sombra dead, she was free. With Hayes dead, Benny was as well, even with the evil scientist out there somewhere. What was more important than that was the fact that the time Benny had spent in that building was no longer linked to him, but instead to an unidentified corpse. She wondered what Davenport had done to that body to make the records match, and shuddered. That was a thought she’d keep to herself. Forever.

For the first time, maybe since they’d all come together for that fateful flight over two years ago, they were free. Jordan wasn’t sure how she felt about that and was even less sure how Benny did.

Beside her, he held her hand tightly, as if she were the only thing tethering him to the earth. She had absolutely no problem being that for him, but her mind had already started flipping through scenarios.

Once he realized exactly what this new freedom meant, that Benito Drake was officially dead and his military records and former identity were effectively beyond his reach, would he make a different decision about his future?

He had the right to, and more than that, he deserved the chance. He deserved to strike out on his own if that was what he wanted, to figure out who he was going to be if his memory never returned. Jordan had promised herself she would give him the freedom to make those choices.