Locke listens in absolute, unbroken silence. He doesn't interrupt, doesn't rage, doesn't minimize the strange, tragedy-laced reality of Knox's last words. He just absorbs it, his heavy chest rising and falling beneath my hand.
"It was sad, really," I say. "He realized what he was right at the moment he couldn't fix any of it. He died knowing he built his own hell."
"A lot of men don't figure that out until the bullet is already traveling," Locke says quietly. "Doesn't clean the blood off his hands, Zara. But if it gave you closure... then I'm glad he had the sense to say it before he died."
"It made me think about Becca, too. How she threw her life away for him. She chose to burn alongside him rather than build something real."
"Becca made her choices a long time ago, baby. Some people
