“To be honest, Isaac, I think you’re being a coward.” As his lids popped, she nodded. “It’s so much harder to live with what you’ve done than go out in a blaze of self-righteous glory. You ever hear of suicide by cop? It’s where a cornered gunman will fire once on a police barricade, and effectively force the badges to pump him full of bullets. It’s for people who don’t have the strength to face the reckoning they deserve. That button you pushed? Same thing. Isn’t it.”

She knew she’d hit the target by the way his face closed up, his features becoming a mask.

“The way to be brave,” she continued, “is to be the one who stands up and exposes the organization. That is the right course of action. Shine the light no one else can on the evil you’ve seen and done and been. That is the only way to come close to making amends. God . . . you could stop this whole damn thing—” Her voice cracked as she thought of her brother. “You could stop it and make sure no one else gets sucked into it. You could help find the ones who are involved and hold them accountable. That . . . that would be meaningful and important. Unlike this suicidal bullshit. Which solves nothing, improves nothing . . .”

Grier got to her feet, closed the top of her suitcase, and snapped the brass latches down tight. “I don’t agree with anything you’ve done. But you’ve got enough conscience in you to want to get out. The question is whether that impulse can take you to the next level—and that’s got nothing to do with your past. Or me.”

Sometimes reflections of yourself were exactly what you needed to see, Isaac thought. And he wasn’t talking about the puss-in-the-mirror kind.

More like the eyes-of-others variety.

As Isaac frowned, he wasn’t sure which was more of a shocker: the fact that Grier was totally right or that he was inclined to act on what she’d said.

Bottom line? She was spot-on: He had been on a suicidal bender ever since he’d broken away from the fold, and he wasn’t the kind to hang himself in the bathroom—no, no, it was much manlier to be gunned down by a comrade.

What a pussy he was.