Jad Bell: Bravo Part 26

This leaves Robert Larkin, president and CEO of Larkin Industries. Fifty-seven years old, son of Frederick J. Larkin, company founder. Educated Princeton, MBA Harvard, married to Marguerite Pierson, since divorced, father of three, Robert junior, Frederick, and Lenore. Larkin Industries began as a machine manufacturing company but in its fifty years has diversified, becoming what is referred to in government circles as a general service provider. Larkin Industries now supplies vehicles and civilian services to government agencies, everything from the National Science Foundation operations in Antarctica to military bases around the world.

The Architect starts the car, checks his watch, feels a surge of confidence that makes him realize just how much worry he'd been carrying. It's gone now. Brock is dead, and Larkin is coming out and taking the keys for his Porsche from the valet, and Zoya is on her way back to her condo in the West End, and tonight they will fly to either Rio or Berlin, whichever she prefers.

Everything, the Architect feels, is going exactly as planned.

For a moment, crossing the Potomac, the Architect wonders if Larkin is heading for the Pentagon in search of Brock, an act of almost impossible folly. Certainly the cabal is now spooked, but the Architect worries if Brock's absence was too much, if he should have waited before Zoya took him out of play.

It's an ill-founded fear; Larkin turns off almost immediately upon crossing the river. He pulls up at Le Meridien, is out of his car and into the lobby with barely a pause for the valet, and his haste forces the Architect to abandon his own vehicle illegally across the street, and he has to run through the doors, hating the attention it draws. Larkin is already at the elevators. The Architect takes out his phone once more and busies himself with its screen, glances up to see that Larkin and two others are entering a waiting car. He hurries, extends an arm, catching the doors before they close.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry."

Larkin glares at him, and one of the others. .h.i.ts the DOOR OPEN b.u.t.ton, and the Architect steps inside, turns.

"Floor?"

Three lights are already lit.

"Ah, you've already got it," the Architect says, and then goes back to checking his phone. The elevator stops twice on the ride, until it's only Larkin and the Architect, and when it comes to a stop the third time, the Architect cuts in front of him to step out first, then pauses again with his phone. Larkin steps around him, heading down the hall, and he's taking out his own phone in one hand, digging for his key card with the other. There's no one else in the hall, a housekeeping cart at the far end, but that's all. The Architect hangs back, waits until the key fits the slot, until Larkin is pushing the door open.

"Sorry," the Architect says. "Robert Larkin?"

Larkin turns, suspicion, and it's flaring into alarm, but by then it's too late. The Architect hits him in the face with the base of his palm, connecting with the man's chin, forcing his teeth together with a definitive clack. Larkin's arms go out and he steps back, into the room, and the Architect punches him once in the stomach, closed fist and knuckles this time, kicks him in the knee. Larkin drops, and the Architect pivots, shoves the already closing door shut, throws the lock. When he turns back, Larkin is trying to get up on one leg, and the Architect slaps him across the jaw with full force, knocks the older man into the bureau against the wall.

"Brock is dead," the Architect says.

The Architect steps forward, Larkin straightening up, dazed. He's leaking blood from the corner of his mouth. The Architect grabs him by his necktie, slaps him twice more, releases him. Larkin blinks, unsteady, tries to raise his hands again. His phone and the key card are now both on the floor.

"Jesus Christ," Larkin says. "Stop it."

"Brock is dead," the Architect says again. "Do you know who I am?"

Larkin shakes his head, but the Architect reads it as an attempt to clear it, not as a confession of ignorance. He takes a step forward, and Larkin immediately takes another step back, waving him off.

"Stop hitting me."

"You know who I am," the Architect says. "And I know who you are. I know who Emanuel Frohm is, and Donald Lenhart, and Victor Anderson, and I can tie each of you to Emmet Brock and the late Lee Jamieson. I can tie you to California. Do you understand?"

Larkin wipes two fingers at the corner of his mouth. He looks at the blood he's removed. "What do you want?"

"I want you to understand." The Architect takes another step forward, and, despite himself, Larkin takes another step back.

"Stop hitting me."

"Do I have your attention?"

"Jesus Christ, we were willing to meet with you. Why do it like this?"

"I can find you," the Architect says. "I can find your children. I can find your friends, and your partners, and their children. You have wealth. I have wealth and power. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand. Jesus Christ, I understand."

"Then tell me why I'm here."

Larkin clears his throat, a wet sound.

"You're warning us. You'll take us down if we betray you. If we ever talk about you. You don't have to worry about that. No one is going to talk. No one is going to touch us."

"Brock is dead."

"Brock lived in a different world. His world made him touchable. We're not touchable."

"Look in a mirror."

Larkin loses some of the color he's regained. "That's not what I meant. We have friends. Anything Brock could've said, he'd have fallen, not us."

"For your sake, I hope you're right."

The Architect turns to go.

Larkin says, "The contingency. It's still on?"

The Architect stops with his hand on the lock.

"You're going to go through with it, yes?" Larkin asks. "We'll get what we paid for?"

"Mr. Larkin," the Architect says. "I couldn't stop it now even if I wanted to."

The rental is where he abandoned it, and the Architect is pulling away as the tow truck is arriving. He grins at the vehicle receding in the rearview mirror, feeling pleased with himself. It has been a long time since he's gotten his own hands dirty, since he has inflicted violence instead of inciting it, and the adrenaline is still singing to him. He feels good.

Larkin understood, he knows. His arrogance had been broken enough by the beating to listen, and the Architect thinks that the warning will take, that it will be shared among the entire cabal. Once Larkin knows for certain that Brock is dead, he will have no choice but to tell the others about what's just happened, and not one of them will believe the Architect's threat is an empty one.

He drives, early rush-hour traffic now beginning on this Friday afternoon, and it's almost five o'clock before he's back in the West End. He leaves his car around the corner from the condo, starts along the sidewalk up to the home of Jordan Webber-Hayden. There's light foot traffic, heavier on the street, and something in the movement of people, in the pattern, catches his mind, sends him a warning. It registers as instinct first, and he heeds it, continues past the front doors without breaking stride, trying to find what it was he saw without seeing. Is it the man down the block and across the street, leaning against a parked car? The woman he pa.s.sed who wasn't actually going anywhere but was arguing on her phone?

He stops, looks up, looks around. From this angle he can just see the facade of the condo, can count the floors to what should be Jordan Webber-Hayden's home. The curtains are open.

She does not leave her curtains open.

He keeps going, and the victory he's been feeling is gone, replaced by a whole new dread. This is a town filled to cracking with security and spies and surveillance; it is a dangerous town to operate in, and he knows this. If he's walking through an operation, it needn't be one targeting Zoya, targeting him.

Wishful thinking.

A man dressed as a jogger is at the end of the block, stretching his calves against the side of the building. Everything about him looks right, the shoes, the shorts, the shirt, but he's got a f.a.n.n.y pack resting at his stomach. There's a discoloration at his ear, so faint the Architect could believe it's nothing but a shadow rather than an earpiece.

There is no doubt.

He rounds the corner and continues walking, rounds the next, and makes the full circuit until he's back to his car. His hands are shaking as he drives back to his hotel.

They have her residence. If they have the residence, they have her. If she is alive.

The thought that she might not be is too much to bear. It nearly brings him to panic, and the Architect has to pull over and catch his breath. His grip on the wheel tightens, tightens, until he forces his fingers to unclench. He has to think. He has to plan. It's what he does.

They found her through Brock, he concludes. That's the only way they could have, which means they found her after Brock died, or Brock is still alive, or he doesn't know, but Brock didn't go to the meeting. If they found her through Brock, then they found Brock, and they found Brock through the death of Tohir.

He thinks about Zoya, and he again asks himself whether he is a monster, or someone forced to do monstrous things, but he already knows the answer. He's answered it years ago, and seeing her again only proved he was correct.

The Architect fumbles for his laptop, snaps it open, hurriedly pa.s.ses through each plane of his security. He brings up the files Brock pa.s.sed to him via Zoya, the files that had given him the home of Master Sergeant Tom O'Day and his wife, Stephanie, and his daughter, Callie. The files on Freddie Cooper and Isaiah Rincon and Jorge Velez and Jonathan Bell, who has a wife and daughter living in Burlington, Vermont.

If he moves quickly, he can be there in four hours.

He moves quickly.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

THERE ARE A lot of things Athena has come to like about living in Vermont-Burlington in particular. It's a total college town, so there's always something to do, somewhere to go, something to see. It's easy to get around without Mom needing to drive her everywhere, at least when they're not all up to their ears in snow. The winters are spectacular, even if they're cold as h.e.l.l, and last autumn was blazing in its beauty. Then there's the school, Hollyoakes, which is why Mom moved them there in the first place, and as a veteran of more than a few schools in her sixteen years, she can say that it is hands-down the best.

But she can't go to the movies.

Or, more to the point, she could totally go to the movies if she wanted to sit there and try to figure out what it is she isn't hearing. Because not one f.u.c.king theater in Burlington, in a G.o.dd.a.m.n college town, has a theater with audio a.s.sistive technology. Not one of them. They've got a f.u.c.king school for the deaf not more than two miles south of the University of Vermont, but not one place where she and her friends and anybody else who attends Hollyoakes can go to catch the latest thriller or blockbuster or romance or comedy or any of it.

Which p.i.s.ses her the h.e.l.l off, to say the least.

Friday night, she and Lynne are at Gail's, and because there is no point in going to Merrill's Roxy or the Palace 9, they're watching movies on the big flat-screen television Gail's parents bought for the Super Bowl last year. Gail's parents have money, but they're cool about it. Both her parents are doctors; her mom's an ob-gyn and her dad's a pediatrician, which means that Gail is always full of information she's dying to share about the human body.

When Athena arrives at five, Lynne's already there, and Gail's parents have ordered pizza for dinner. They sit around in the TV room eating and watching a Pixar movie on Netflix, and the captioning is good, and they half pay attention. Mostly they talk. Gail's parents come down just past seven to say they're going out to-yep-see a movie, and they'll be back before midnight.

Be good, Dr. Gail's Mom signs.

We will.

So they finish the pizza and they finish the movie, and they're trying to decide what to watch next when Lynne says it should be a romance, and Gail sticks out her tongue like she's going to puke.

No romance.

Athena wants a romance. Lynne grins like she's got a secret.

Athena has a romance.

Athena shows them both the middle fingers on each of her hands, and they laugh.

So have you and Joel done it yet? Lynne asks.

Now it's Athena's turn to grin like she's got a secret. Gail's eyes go wide, and she scoots closer, and Lynne gapes.

No way. Gail signs. You have not had s.e.x he just had surgery.

Athena bursts out laughing, and Lynne socks her in the shoulder.

Not funny.

Very funny, Athena signs.

Gail goes serious. You thinking about it? How far have you gone?

Just fooling around. Not all the way.

Thinking about it?

Athena nods, feeling suddenly shy about the whole thing. She went down to Planned Parenthood yesterday, but chickened out at the last minute, convinced that no one inside would be able to understand her. The idea of trying to lip-read someone, to try to get that person to understand that she was after birth control, was mortifying.

You should wait, Gail signs.

Maybe we made out a lot on Wednesday and it was hard not to do more I really wanted to do more.

It was hard? Lynne waggles her eyebrows. How hard was it?

Athena gives her the finger again.

That is hard but small.

a.s.shole.

Joke.

I know.

What do we want to watch? Gail asks.

Lynne and Athena both find themselves signing pretty much the same thing.

No guns.

It's after ten when Athena texts her mother to say she's on her way home.

Should I come and get you?

Bike remember?

I can put the bike in the car.

Ill ride.

Be very careful. Also "I'll" ride.