Jad Bell: Bravo Part 22

"He's already made contact with you, he can meet with you."

Brock feels the gla.s.s in his hand, the etched crystal heft of the tumbler, and he wants to throw it in Larkin's face. He wants to overhand it, pure fastball, see the gla.s.s. .h.i.t and shatter and punish Larkin and his arrogance.

"You're questioning my patriotism," Brock says. "You're all f.u.c.king talk. Talk about saving our country, talk about needing to put the fight where it belongs, talk about G.o.d and socialism and government repression and correcting our national course and right down to the f.u.c.king Resurrection. Nothing but talk, but now your a.s.s is on the line, and you need to step up."

"Emmet." It's a warning. It doesn't take.

"No, shut up, listen. You and the rest, you were happy to pay the money so this f.u.c.king Architect would attack us in our home. So he would kill people in California, so he will kill more people G.o.d knows where. You're happy to have me run between you and him, all to make the war you believe in, but you won't go further. You won't go all the way."

"You believe in it, too," Larkin says. "Your words, if I recall, were 'We're not making war, we're just trying to win it.' Don't divorce yourself from what we've done. You've as much to gain as any of us."

"Don't bulls.h.i.t this back on me. I know your interest as much as I knew Jamieson's. At least Jamieson was a true believer, at least he thought he was doing Christ's work. How's business, Bobby? You short-selling those stocks tomorrow? You got some other way to make another cool billion off of what might-and I stress might-happen this weekend? Don't bulls.h.i.t me."

"It doesn't matter why we believe it needs doing, just that we agree it needs to be done."

"Sure, so long as you never have to get s.h.i.t on your white shirts." Brock finishes the last of his drink, sets the gla.s.s back upon the tray. "You're getting to clean the s.h.i.tter now, Bobby, and it's backed up and full to the brim. One way or another."

Larkin goes back to looking at the shelves, but Brock can tell he's not seeing the books or their t.i.tles. The hour and the moment have further conspired to reveal Larkin's age, the slight sag of the flesh at his cheeks, the lines defining his mouth. He frowns, purses his lips for a moment.

"I'd like a drink, if you would," Larkin says finally.

There's enough in his tone to let Brock know he's won. He knows Larkin now sees what Brock has been staring at from all angles since he left Jordan's apartment, left without even seeing her to say good-bye. Left with the Architect saying that Jordan would see him the next morning to give him the details of the meeting.

"What's your poison?" Brock asks.

"Genuinely?" Larkin shakes his head. "I don't care."

Brock leaves Larkin and drives home, and although he's had enough to drink to know he shouldn't be behind the wheel, he hasn't had enough to make him wrap himself around a tree. He wonders if that wouldn't be a better resolution, to take himself out of the equation entirely. He's never had a suicidal thought before in his life, not even at his worst, but alone in his car he's dwelling on death, not least of all his own. He's lived far more of his life under pressure than not at this point, but this is different. This is inevitability. He's half expecting to find the FBI or CI or both waiting for him in the den when he gets to his house.

So wrapping the car around a tree at seventy miles an hour, that's not out of the question.

He remembers wondering what the Architect was like, the imagined man, Eurof.a.g and effete. He hadn't been prepared for the real thing, the confidence and the arrogance. He'd been plain, average-even the clothes were average, midrange and off the rack, not the tailor-made bespoke suits that Larkin and his ilk favor, that Brock will never be able to afford. It was an alpha-male reaction, Brock measuring himself against this man, the one who had Jordan. They'd f.u.c.ked, he could tell. He was probably f.u.c.king her right now, and that thought keeps him on the road, keeps him driving toward home, keeps his mind focused.

The end may be inevitable, but it will not, Brock resolves, be his end alone.

Larkin calls the next morning, while Brock is having his breakfast. His wife had been asleep when he'd returned, had already left by the time he rose. That was their life, had been for years. Brock made coffee for himself while wondering what she was doing, where she was going, whom she was seeing. He couldn't remember the last time they'd exchanged more than a dozen words all together. He thinks the only reason they've not divorced is because they're too old and it would be too much bother. He used to wonder if she had a lover or a string of them. He had ways of finding out, but after he'd met Jordan, he couldn't stomach that hypocrisy. She did her duty by him, stood at his side at the White House, at other events. Beyond that, she'd made her own life, and he wasn't in it. It was one of the things that had made Jordan so appealing when they'd met. The choice between her and the work required to repair his marriage had been an easy one.

"Lenhart can't make it before noon," Larkin says. "But he'll come straight. We're set for two."

"He can't get there any sooner?"

"You're lucky he's coming at all. You're lucky any of them are coming. They don't understand why this is needed. I don't understand why this is needed."

"Mutual survival," Brock tells Larkin. "Or mutual destruction."

"We've no reason to trust him."

Brock doesn't bother responding to that.

"Two," Brock says, and hangs up. He drinks his coffee, finishes going through the correspondence and reports that have backlogged over the last eighteen or so hours on his computer. Everything looks normal, no signs of him being cut out of the loop. There is nothing about an Indigo operation gone wrong or an Indigo operator's murder, but it doesn't matter. Brock thinks, at the most, he's got a day before the trail leads to him.

He takes his coffee with him into the small home office where he and his wife have their desks, positioned back-to-back rather than facing each other. He picks up a piece of his monogrammed stationery and a pen, spends the better part of a minute staring at the blank page before he begins writing, and is finished in less than another. He folds the paper, closes it within an envelope, then takes it with him upstairs.

He bathes, goes to dress, stares at his uniform on its hanger on the hook on the closet door, feels a surge of disgust. He cannot go into work today. He cannot wear it.

He replaces the uniform in the closet, puts on civvies instead, then kneels and opens the trapdoor to the small compartment hidden in the floor. He puts his fingers into the slots of the safe, taps in the code with his other hand, and the lock snaps back. He takes one of the bundles of cash, another burner phone, the gun, the ammunition, and the magazine. Some of the ammunition goes into the magazine, and the magazine goes into the gun, and for the first time in years, the gun goes onto his hip. He closes everything up, heads downstairs, grabs his jacket, and stows the envelope in an inside pocket. He pauses at the window, looks out at the street. It's another in this string of endlessly sunny summer days. A kid with his pants too low skims past on a skateboard. Brock sees no signs that he's being watched, but he knows that means nothing.

He leaves the house without his laptop or his secure phone, and as he pulls out of the driveway, he thinks this is the last time he will see his home.

It's less than ten minutes to the nearby Starbucks on Connecticut Avenue, where Jordan is already, standing in line and waiting to order. She shoots him a smile when she sees him, one unlike any that he's seen from her before, genuinely happy. He wants it to be because of him. She moves to pick up her drink, and Brock doesn't bother with the pretense of ordering one of his own, just waits until she's done and holds the door open for her, following her back outside.

"He let you out alone?" Brock asks.

She moves to her Jetta without pause, but smiles at him again. "You make it sound like I wear a collar and chain."

"Don't you?"

"Jealousy unmans you, Emmet."

"Where is he?"

"Are you asking if he's watching us?"

"Is he?"

"Did you talk to your people?" She's reached the car, unlocks it with the fob, opens the door. He watches her bend and put her drink in the cup holder between the front seats. She's wearing a summer dress, and her legs are bare, and the length and tone of muscle is magnetic. Then she straightens, turns so she's wedged between door and seat. "Do we have a place and a time?"

"I talked to them. They're not happy."

"Well, we knew they wouldn't be, didn't we? Where and when?"

Brock tells her. He can feel the gun at his hip, acutely aware of its weight, the way it presses against the bone. He puts a hand lightly on hers where it rests on the frame of the door, his skin ruddier, so much older and more used than hers. She's watching him, curious.

"I want you to come with me," he says.

"Where?"

"Anywhere."

She laughs softly.

"Come with me," Brock says. "We can go right now."

She stops laughing. "You're serious?"

"You and me. We can go, right now, we can go, Jordan."

She looks past him, turns her head slightly, as if checking their surroundings. Her expression doesn't change, but her manner, he thinks, does, a new weight settling upon her.

"You think we'd be able to hide?" she asks. "Honestly? You think we could get away from everyone? Your people? Him?"

It's a question that gives him hope, and he seizes it. "I told you before, I can protect you."

The smile remains, but now he can read the change, the edges of a sadness he's never seen from her before, even a fatigue. "I think you really are in love with me."

"It was what you wanted me to be."

"Yes."

"Then you shouldn't be surprised."

She takes the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, again switches her focus past him, over his shoulder. Her hand on the door frame, beneath his, turns, and he feels her fingers entwining his. She kisses his lips lightly.

"He has a plan," she says. "It will work."

"His plan," Brock says. "For him."

"For all of us."

Brock squeezes her fingers in his. "Do you really think he cares more for you than I do? Do you really think that when it comes down to survival, his or yours, he'll put you first?"

"But you will?"

"I love you. Of course I will." He says it knowing the hoped-for response won't come. Her answer delivers on that antic.i.p.ated disappointment, yet brings with it an exquisite elation.

"I love him. But I think I might love you, too. I don't know what to do."

"Will you be there this afternoon?" Brock asks.

"If he wants me there."

"You can't trust him."

"He has a plan, Emmet."

"So do I," Brock says.

A flicker of something in her expression, the corner of her mouth turning down slightly, and Brock thinks, for the very first time, he's seeing confusion, even doubt, from her, and it renews his hope.

"There's a Hilton near BWI," Brock says. "The one on West Nursery Road. Meet me there. I'll leave a note at the desk for you. Just meet me there, we can go, he'll never find us."

"You don't know what he can do, Emmet. You don't know how far he can reach."

"I know what I can do. Noon. Can you meet me there at noon?"

She slips her fingers free from his.

"Will you be there?"

She kisses his mouth softly a second time, then climbs behind the wheel. He holds the door open as she puts her hand out to close it, and there's a moment where he feels her pulling, and he can't bring himself to let go. She looks up at him, that sad smile, and he releases his grip.

"Maybe," she says, and the door closes, and the engine starts, and he watches her drive away.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

"IT'S BROCK," HEATH says. "If I wasn't sure before yesterday, I'm solid f.u.c.king gold on it now."

"That doesn't make sense," Nessuno says. She looks to Ruiz for support, but he's already up and getting on his sat phone. She looks to Bell, who's seated on the floor just inside the door of the hotel room, his back to the wall, looking as wrung out as she feels.

Nessuno turns her gaze back to Heath. "You're saying our oversight, Interdict's oversight, is rotten."

"I know d.a.m.n well what I'm saying, Chief. You think I'd throw that down without paper to back it up?" Heath gestures at the folder spilling its guts on the little round table in the corner, where Ruiz was seated until a moment before. Now the colonel has retreated to the far corner of the room, by the curtained windows, and he's got someone on the other end of the line, and he might as well be alone for all the attention he's giving them.

"It doesn't track," Nessuno says.

"Not that you're seeing."

"And you are? The only reason to kill Tohir is to keep him from talking, to keep him from fingering Echo, right? You don't have that if we don't have Tohir to begin with, and we don't get Tohir without BI putting me next to him! It's not like Brock didn't know what I was doing!"

Heath gets angry. "I'm not explaining it, I'm telling you what it is, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. This is the f.u.c.king evidence, Chief, this is the paper trail, this is the call logs, this is the G.o.dd.a.m.n time stamps, you clear? This is Brock accessing Indigo personnel files. It's not a motive, no, it's not, but you know what? f.u.c.k the motive. I don't know the motive, and none of us will until we've got that ratf.u.c.k son of a b.i.t.c.h in irons and talking, which, by the way"-Heath pivots, points at Ruiz-"better f.u.c.king well be what you're working to achieve right now."

Ruiz hears that, raises an eyebrow, continues speaking on the phone. By the door, Bell clears his throat.

"Sir," Heath adds.

"There's another reason," Bell says.

Nessuno shakes her head. "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that Tohir was about to give up the action."

"That's what I'm thinking."

"That a.s.sumes Echo cares about the action."

"You think he doesn't?"

"I told you-the only thing Echo ever seemed to care about was money." She takes the vacated seat at the table, finds herself sitting more heavily than she'd intended, bone-tired and aching. It's well after midnight here in Westminster. The last thing she ate was the breakfast Bell made that she barely touched, and that seems eighteen days, not eighteen hours, ago.

She thinks of what happened in that apartment in Provo, and the shame scores her so suddenly and sharply she has to fight the physical response, the urge to vocalize. The last they'd heard, two of the SWAT team were dead from their wounds, one was still in surgery and it didn't look good, and one was post-op and in recovery.

She wants this day to end.

She's covering her sector, her slice of the room, and the blast comes, and before she can stop herself, even as she's thinking she shouldn't, her head turns to the noise. The SWAT team is stacked at the door the way they've taken each door, one after the other-breach, banger, clear-except at this one there's chaos, and Nessuno can see blood spatter on the door and the wall, pieces of drywall and wallpaper all flying.