Free Promises to Keep by Maegan Beaumont

spotter. She sees a hard-to-locate target cross her desk or catches on to something that might interest us during surveillance, she calls me. That’s it.”
    â€œWhat does any of this have to do with your father? You could’ve turned her without handing her over.”
    â€œI did. She’s the one—she handed herself over. For you.” Ben swiped a rough hand over his face. “I mean, Jesus, didn’t you ever wonder how she got you out of there? You and her friend? She’s badass, but she’s not a miracle worker.”
    â€œShe called your father.” It wasn’t a question. He could almost see her doing it. He’d been in bad shape, poisoned by whatever David Song had been using to incapacitate his victims. He’d felt himself dying, and he hadn’t cared—not when it meant dying for her. And in the end it had been her sacrifice, not his, that’d saved them both.
    Defeat and anger: he felt them both, struggled with them as they pulled his in every possible direction. “She’s the one who called you just now from San Francisco. She’s your contact there.”
    Ben hesitated then nodded. “One of them, yeah.”
    â€œHow long? How long has she been working for you?”
    Ben hesitated again, this time a bit longer. “I approached her while she was still in that hospital in Texas.”
    All along. Ben had been in contact with Sabrina all along and he hadn’t said a word. Something crawled along the nape of his neck and trickled down his spine. “Is she chipped?”
    â€œNo. I convinced my father it wasn’t necessary,” Ben said.
    â€œHow?”
    Ben shrugged. “Does it matter?”
    Michael felt a dull pounding start up in the back of his skull, and he had to make himself unclench his fists. “Yeah. It does. It matters a lot.”
    â€œI might’ve … liberated certain evidence from the SFPD that could’ve been used to prosecute her in a few murders,” Ben said.
    He was talking about the bat she’d used nearly twenty years ago to defend herself from being raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The same bat Wade Bauer had used to kill a police officer in order to frame Sabrina for murder. If Livingston Shaw had it, he’d be able to make Sabrina do anything he wanted. “Where is it now?”
    â€œMy dad has it,” Ben said, but he cut his eyes in Lark’s direction for a split second and gave him an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He was lying. Wherever the bat was, Shaw didn’t have it.
    â€œWhy? Why are you protecting her?” he said. Ben’s motives mattered, and the wrong ones would get him killed.
    Ben got that look again. That serious look that showed you just who he really was. “Because my father has stolen enough from you. Don’t get me wrong—you made your bed all by yourself, but as far as I’m concerned, your debt to him is cleared.”
    Michael looked away, out the window at the blue and white that whipped by so fast it looked like it was standing still.
    The kid was wrong. His debt would never be cleared. Not until Reyes was dead and buried.

Fifteen
    After Ben came clean about Sabrina’s involvement with FSS, Michael didn’t even try to pretend to sleep. He cleaned his weapons instead.
    Laid out on the table in front of him, the muted gleam of gunmetal was familiar. Comforting even, in a strange sort of way. This was what he knew. What he did. Who he was. The person he’d been after Frankie’s death, the one who fell in love with Sabrina—that wasn’t him. Never had been.
    He could hope and wish all he wanted. For a different life. To find a way clear of the two tons of shit he’d buried himself under. It didn’t matter. Not when faced with the reality of what he really was. Not when he admitted that he would probably never be free of Livingston Shaw. He ran the bulk patch through the barrel of