knowing it was no help.
They might have luck trying to catch the person who had initially tried to shoot Anthony in public, but Elliot suspected that wasn’t the same person who’d planted the bomb. The police would have to do a lot more than just look for the shooter, they’d have to dig through the underworld of Port Dale to try and discover any criminal with both power and a grudge. Elliot wasn’t quite sure how to tell Anthony that he was probably going to have a target on his back for a good long while.
Anthony smiled wearily. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” Elliot asked.
“Deal with the specter of death hanging over your head the whole time? I know you had to have dealt with your fair share of that in the service.”
Elliot snorted softly. “This might surprise you, but you get used to it. Humans are...pretty resilient, and we’re pretty flexible too. Given enough time, a person can get used to just about anything that doesn’t kill them right away.”
“That gets a little ironic when my whole problem is being terrified of what’s trying to kill me.”
Elliot nodded, turning off the highway. “Yeah, but even that, you get used to.”
“I’m not sure this is a feeling I want to get used to.”
Elliot didn’t blame him. One of the biggest reasons he’d chosen to go into the protection field was so people like Anthony could feel safe and not have to worry every step of the way. Elliot’s training and experience set him up perfectly to deal with life or death situations, and he had wanted to use it in order to make other people’s lives easier somehow.
Most of the time, it worked. The woman with an abusive husband had relied steadily on Elliot while she’d gone through the process of divorce and then moving where he couldn’t find her anymore. The businessman with prime real estate breathed easier with Elliot around to make sure no further ‘accidents’ happened before the police finally caught the culprits.
In the few years Elliot had been doing his job, he’d helped dozens of people. Sometimes it was directly, other times, it was merely through consulting. He’d faced down thugs, abusive partners, and on one memorable occasion, a man so spaced out on some combination of drugs that he had no use for reality, or pants for that matter. Yet Elliot had never faced a targeted threat aimed at someone he was protecting, not one where the targeter was probably a professional.
Anthony looked over at him. “I’m guessing from your silence, you’re not going to try and console me, are you?”
Elliot grimaced. “There’s really nothing I can say that will. And I’m not going to lie.”
“Not even a little?”
“If I lie, then I’m not doing my job. I have to protect you, and you knowing what the score is will make you careful, and keep you safe, more than if you walk through your life completely blind.”
“Is that a personality trait of yours, or just one drilled into you by the Marines?”
Elliot chuckled. “If you think the military makes you honest, you might want to look up Intelligence and Counterintelligence. That and well, they’re not on the up and up in general.”
“So, a personality trait.”
“It’s both. I was being a smartass about the Marines. They really do push honor and integrity on the new recruits, and constantly harp on about it the whole time you’re there. The reality is different for a lot of people, but for me, it just stuck.”
“A bit of both then.”
“Pretty much.”
His mother had always been an honest person, and she’d encouraged her son. He could still hear her telling him that a person’s integrity was all they had left in the world, and could never be taken away, only given. And while he had known the reality of being in the service, and knew people weren’t going to be as honest as he was, he had stuck to his guns. Just because the rest of the world was happy to lie, manipulate, and trick others to get what they wanted, didn’t mean he had to do the same.
Elliot pulled onto the private road that led through the woods in front of Anthony’s house. The road was winding and lined on each side by thick foliage. Elliot had tried to convince the man to stay somewhere that was less of a logistical nightmare, but it had been one of the few things Anthony had put his foot down about, citing