Sophie Oak - Once Upon a Time in Bliss

Five years before present day

A classified location in Colombia

The man known only as Bishop looked down at his handiwork.

So much fucking blood. Why did the human body have to contain so much blood? The average male body contained six quarts of blood. Thirty-six quarts of blood. That was what he’d spilled today. Thirty-six quarts of evil, drug-running blood, and it wasn’t enough and it never would be. The US government would make sure of that.

Bishop took a long breath, the hot Colombian air humid in his lungs. He was so fucking sick of foreign countries. He didn’t go to the nice ones. He went to the pits of the world—the places where humanity and rights were a distant dream. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraq. Now here in a drug-torn section of Colombia.

The SEAL team he’d gone in with high-fived and smiled. They were heroes. They’d done their job, and they’d done it with precision and the perfect amount of mercy. They didn’t play with their targets. They took them out quickly when they could, giving the vicious killers an easier death than they deserved, but they were soldiers, not animals.

Not like Bishop. Bishop did know what it was like to play with his targets. He was well versed in the art of getting what he needed. He knew the fine line between torture and reward and when to walk it. Yes, he knew how to get what he needed.

The question that was increasingly plaguing him was what did he want?

Lieutenant Wilder walked up, a smile on his face. Wilder was a big man, six foot seven at least. He dwarfed Bishop. He was lean and mean, and Bishop would bet Wilder had nothing on him when it came to brutality. “Hey, Mr. Bishop, are we done here? What more do you need from us? I’d like to call the extraction team and get my boys home.”

Home. For SEAL Team 4, home was Little Creek, Virginia. For Bishop, home was a one-bedroom in DC with nothing in it. He lived out of a suitcase. He roamed from place to place with nothing to call his own. Nothing except the next bloody plan.

Wilder’s brow furrowed as he looked at Bishop. “Come on, man, you gotta be happy about this. We just took down the biggest drug cartel in Colombia. Do you know how much coke we’re going to keep out of the States?”

He didn’t have the heart to tell Wilder the truth. Even if he had, he was contractually obligated not to. This operation wouldn’t keep an ounce of cocaine off the streets. The CIA and the American government had taken down one cartel to give the business to another. A more US-friendly drug dealer. One that would prop up the US-approved government.

But SEAL Team 4 was just a tool, and they didn’t get to make the big decisions.

Fuck, the world would be a better place if they did. “Yes, Lieutenant. We’re done here. You can call the extraction unit.”

The choppers would come for them all, and he would be taken right back to Langley where he would debrief all the right people and say all the right things, and spend a night or two in that bland apartment that held nothing of his soul before being shipped out to the next hellhole.

What was his soul? He was thirty-five years old, and he had no idea who the hell he was. He was who the Black Ops team had made him. He was who the CIA had molded him into.

His parents were gone. His home had never really existed.

He could get on that chopper, but it wouldn’t take him anywhere close to home. He didn’t have one. He’d given up his search for a home the minute he’d decided to join the CIA and forgo the whole “have a life” thing.

At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. Years and experience had proven otherwise. He hadn’t made a difference. He’d just made it easier for blood to flow and the power players to get exactly what they wanted.

There was no such thing as good. No such thing as humanity.

He sat down in a chair that had likely been chosen by a dead man. He didn’t want to get on that helicopter, but he didn’t know where he would go. He had no place. No friends.

Well, he had one. Bill Hartman, his former CO. He hadn’t thought about Bill in years. Bill had been the one who told him he shouldn’t leave the Army to join the CIA. Bill had offered him a job in his business back in Colorado. He’d been like a father, but Bishop hadn’t had a father in so long, he’d forgotten to listen.

What if he didn’t go back to DC? What if he decided to come in from the cold and find somewhere warm and private? What if he walked away from it all?

His real name was gone. Erased. He had no home. No family. No life.

He was nothing. Nothing at all.

Bishop sat in the dead man’s chair, the sun moving over the horizon like a veil closing, beckoning him to choose a side. The comfortable side? The one where he was a ghost and he didn’t have to worry about anything but completing his next assignment? Or something new?

Time passed, the sun waning in the background as the blood around him cooled. It was a mess that would be left for someone else to clean up. His brain worked but nothing really congealed. He was stuck. He was lost.

He had no idea how to be found.

“Hey, Bishop,” the lieutenant began as the thud thud of the chopper blades could be heard in the distance. “We need to get to the extraction point. We’re green in five minutes. Back home. First beer’s on me.”

It was a false promise the lieutenant made. He knew damn well that once they hit US soil, Bishop would walk away and they would likely never see each other again. CIA operatives didn’t go out for a cold one with the team afterward. CIA operatives didn’t get close to the soldiers they might have to sacrifice like chess pieces in a nasty game.

How long since he’d sat down for a beer with a human being who knew his real name? Sometimes it seemed so fucking far away. He needed a week. Just a week and then he’d go back to this life he’d chosen. Surely they could wait one week.

He had passports the CIA didn’t even know about. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he could be burned at any moment. He had money and IDs stashed. He could say he’d gotten a lead and had to follow on the down low.

One friend. Maybe it was time to visit him. Just for a week to clear his head.

“Go on. I’ll make my own way back,” he said, rising from the chair, his choice made.

Wilder gave him a thumbs-up. “Good luck, Bishop. Fight the good fight.”

The SEALs jogged out in their tight formation. The good fight? He’d thought he was, but now he wasn’t sure. Maybe there was no good to be fought for.

He turned his mind to his friend. The last he’d heard, Bill was in a little town in Colorado. Bliss.

Bliss was a good thing to seek. He hadn’t had a whole lot of bliss in his life. And he didn’t have a family anymore. He hadn’t really had a family in a long time. It had just been him and his mother, and after she’d died, he’d been through a long stream of foster parents until he’d made his way into the Army. Bill had been his family for a while.

He didn’t have a home to go to. Maybe a friend was the closest thing. If Bill even recognized him now.

Bishop started the long walk to Cartagena. To the airport.

To Bliss.

Two Days Later

Bliss, Colorado

“What should I call you this time?” Bill Hartman asked the question with a little uptick of his lips that let Bishop know he was amused. He was also naked.