Read The End Game for Free Online

ten-year-old, I’d seen it on a printout on my dad’s desk. It had sounded funny and caught my eye. When I’d asked him about it, he’d brushed it off as nothing important, and we’d joked about it being a good name for a comic book or sci-fi movie, à la The Mighty Azorian .
    That wasn’t long before I’d found my dad slumped behind his desk shortly after he’d blown his brains out.
    My dad—Colin Reilly.
    CR.
    Seeing his initials alongside a mention of Azorian in the same file that concerned Reed Corrigan had jolted me like few things I can remember. First, my son, and now, my dad too? I was now even more determined to find this Corrigan, not just out of a burning desire to make him pay for what he did to Alex, but to find out the truth about my dad’s suicide, if that’s what it really was. I didn’t know what to believe anymore, and I had a strong feeling there was more to it. I mean, given what this creep and his crew were capable of, and given their abilities when it came to manipulating people, I was imagining all kinds of dark scenarios surrounding my dad’s death.
    It was all the more painful as I never really got a chance to know him. He was a tenure-track assistant professor at George Washington University, an expert in comparative law and jurisprudence, and he was consumed by his work. He wasn’t the most gregarious or emotive person I ever met, and he always seemed to have weightier things on his mind than hanging out with me. I don’t think he was ever able to fully park the issues that fired him up or kick back and enjoy the simple pleasures of a family life. When he was home, he spent a lot of time in that study of his, which was off limits to this ten-year-old, not an unreasonable rule given the books and paperwork that were stacked all around it and my propensity to sow havoc. I do know he was well respected, though. A lot of people turned up to his funeral, men and women who, to me at the time, seemed like a very dour bunch of people, even given the circumstances.
    My mom didn’t talk about it much. Growing up, the subject of his suicide was off limits. Not that I asked much. At the time, all she’d told me was that, after his death, she’d discovered that he’d been depressed and was on medication. It was the most I’d ever got out of her on the subject. I don’t think she ever really dealt with the grief or the sadness that he’d never told her about it. She just bottled it up, same as he had, I guess. Then, when I moved out and went to study law at Notre Dame, she remarried, moved to Cape Cod, and threw herself into her new life. We never talked about my dad after that. It was like her first husband had never existed.
    I learned later that it’s perfectly normal for a ten-year-old boy to repress the memory of his father’s blood splattered against a wall—indeed, the first time in decades I had recalled the memory so vividly was when reading the redacted file from my reluctant CIA source about the man who had brainwashed my son. Mothers, however, are generally expected to ensure that the memory doesn’t become buried too deep. On balance, maybe we both came out of it OK.
    Thinking about my absent father also reminded me of how I wanted to always be there for Alex. My line of work, however, wasn’t the most risk-free of occupations. It was something I needed to figure out.
    One thing I didn’t need to figure out, one thing I knew with absolute certainty, was that I would never forgive the man who subjected a four-year-old boy to treatment that was still beyond belief, even though I’d seen the results with my own eyes. Whatever it took, I was going to find him. Nothing would ever change when it came to Reed Corrigan and me.
    I hadn’t shared any of this with Nick. I knew he could sense it. Ten years of sharing the line of fire with someone usually does that. If it didn’t, you were probably in the wrong business. But he knew better than to ask. He knew that if I wasn’t