Redemption

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

                For the moment, silence hung in the room. That wouldn’t last, Niki knew. Soon, Robert Feyler would shout at her some more and he’d probably continue on for hours if he could. It was the day after Darius had rescued Viceroy, and Niki and the others were back home. Most went about their usual activities, while others recovered from injuries and Niki was being yelled at. Niki looked at Barton, hoping he would step in and stop Feyler’s rant.

                “You let him escape!” Feyler said, shouting the same thing for the twelfth time. Niki had been counting since she realized he would yell that many, many times. “You had him right there and you let him escape!”

                Thirteen.

                “In case you didn’t realize it, Laporte isn’t your friend! He might have hugged you, but he shot several other of our people! You’re damn lucky we only lost one life last night! Your mission was to kill or capture, not hug him and ask what he’s been doing for the past two years! If any other Anitreh die because of him, it’s on you! Just like Connor Samson’s death is! You had the chance to stop him and you let him escape!”

                Fourteen.

                “That’s enough, Robert,” Barton said softly. Despite the great difference in their volumes, Barton’s voice was clearly heard and Feyler listened. “Maybe things didn’t go quite as planned – ”

                “Maybe?” Feyler interrupted. “There’s no maybe about this!”

                “But we did get some useful information,” Barton said, ignoring the interruption.

                “No information is worth the life of one of our people,” Feyler interrupted again.

                “No,” Barton agreed. “But we could hardly expect Ms. Sokolof to shoot one of her friends, so we should at least consider how valuable the information is before blaming her for the death of Mr. Samson. I don’t think you can put that one on Mr. Laporte, either, since he was killed while Ms. Sokolof was talking to him. He didn’t come alone.”

                “Only according to a few statements,” Feyler argued. “Which came from very stressed individuals who could have remembered it wrong.”

                “There certainly was another person with him,” Barton said firmly. “Someone with an affinity for altering the mind. It explains quite a bit about how Mr. Laporte was so easily able to sneak inside the compound. And why, interestingly enough, there were so few casualties.”

                “One is too many.”

                “But if Mr. Laporte is as bad as you say, why weren’t more killed or injured? Wouldn’t he have simply come in shooting instead of hiding and sneaking around? Once the data is analyzed, it’ll be interesting to see how many injuries were really because of him. In fact, this is one of the valuable pieces of information we learned last night.”

                “That he killed only a single person? And injured eight others?” Feyler frowned. It was obvious he wasn’t following Barton’s thinking, but Niki thought she knew where he was going.

                “Yes,” Barton said. “Anytime we discuss Mr. Laporte, one of the arguments to simply killing him is that we don’t know for sure that he’s really as big of a threat as the circumstantial evidence would have us believe. You think that Mr. Laporte is responsible for going into Anitreh compounds and killing every last person there. If that were true, why didn’t he do that last night when he had more at stake?”