intelligence services.” She offered a wan smile. “No shortage of people who hate us, hon.”
Pilgrim went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face. A ghostly heat tingled in his hair, left over from the bullet, as though its close path had singed his scalp. Just imagination, he told himself, and he stuck his fingers under the cool jet of water. He didn’t want Teach to see his hands shake. It was strange to think how close he had come to his brains painting the walls and the desk and the surprised face of Adam Reynolds. The poor dumb brainiac.
Pilgrim dried his face. “Reynolds. All he wanted to do was good.”
“Exposing us is not in the national interest,” she said. “It’s necessary for our work that we remain unknown.”
Pilgrim shook his head. “I’m tired of what’s necessary. Necessary sucks. I want to do what’s decent.”
She put her hands on his shoulders. “Pilgrim, you do. Every day. You’re tired and rattled. You’ll feel better when we’re back home. We’ll regroup, plan our next move.”
“Screw the next move. Suppose there’s evidence in his office about the Cellar. Something I didn’t find. What do we do? Hide? Take up new names and new lives, again?”
“You knew what our work was when you signed up. You knew it entailed sacrifice…”
“Don’t lecture me about sacrifice. Sacrifice implies a choice.”
“You had a choice today.” Teach crossed her arms. “You should have let Nicky Lynch believe he succeeded. Track him and see who the hell hired him. Instead you pull brainless macho crap. You probably liked him realizing he’d missed.”
“Yes. I’ll long treasure the surprise on his face before I blew him away.”
“Lose the sarcasm. You didn’t analyze the situation and I want to know why.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t think because-I don’t want to do this work anymore.” The realization was clear in his head, unexpected but sharp.
She came to him and touched his arm, and it made Pilgrim remember the old days, when she first found him, offered him a choice better than a lifetime in a dank hellhole of a prison that smelled of ancient stone, tears, and blood. “You’re just shaken-”
Pilgrim shrugged off her hand. “I’m done. Adam Reynolds found me, when no one else ever has. He knew the aliases I used on the jobs in India and Canada and Syria. He could have plastered the news channels about us. We can’t hide anymore.”
“Wrong. We simply find out how he found us.”
“I don’t want to work for the Cellar anymore. I want a normal life.”
Her frown deepened. “Stop this nonsense. You’re not resigning, Pilgrim.” Teach was like a mother who didn’t hear what she didn’t want to hear, he thought. “We’re dead if our aliases can be exposed. I know you well enough that you won’t walk away from us while we’re under attack.” She picked up her phone, started punching in a number.
He heard his own words again: I want a normal life. He touched his pocket; the notebook was there, where he always kept it. He wanted to go to the lake’s shore, sharpen a pencil, draw the face as he remembered it, as he dreamed about it. But not now.
Pilgrim clicked on the television, surfed to a news channel. CNN showed an aerial shot of a downtown Austin building, police securing the scene. The reporter said one man was confirmed dead in a sniper shooting and another death in a nearby parking garage might be related. No mention yet that the dead guy in the garage was a known assassin. No release of Reynolds’s name yet, it was too early. The talking heads droned on, the reporter on the scene parceling atoms of worthless data and trying to make her words meaty and relevant.
Teach got off the phone. “We’ve got seats on the evening flight to LaGuardia.”
Pilgrim made a walking-away gesture with his fingers. “Have a good trip.”
“You can’t resign…”
Barker stepped into the bedroom doorway. He straightened his glasses. “Good Lord. Are you quitting?”
“False alarm. It’s the shock of nearly getting shot,” Teach said.
“Your timing sucks.” A strange smile touched Barker’s face.
“That’s what I said, he can’t leave us now…” Teach started. She turned to Barker and she stopped. Her body blocked Pilgrim’s view of the young man and he stood.
Barker held a Glock 9-millimeter. Aimed at them.
Pilgrim felt disjointed, still blinking from the surprise of surviving a sniping, and the slight, bespectacled Barker reminded him of poor, foolish Adam Reynolds and he thought: nerds with guns. Then his survival instinct kicked in, an engine in his chest, and he calculated-eight feet to reach Barker, with Teach between them. He couldn’t get to Barker before Barker shot Teach.
“This is disappointing,” Teach said.
“I apologize,” Barker said. “Nothing personal.”
Pilgrim was silent. Barker was stupid, tipping his hand early. Therefore he would do something else stupid. Pilgrim put the worn, tired look back on his face, one that would make Barker smug.
Teach kept her voice calm, but Pilgrim, behind her, could see a shift in her stance, a balancing to shift her weight forward.
Pilgrim said, “You work for the same boss as Adam Reynolds.”
“Wow. Give me a moment to deal with the staggering awe I feel at your mental prowess.” The gun gave Barker a sense of power, shining in his cocky smile. “Retirement is definitely in your future.” Barker kept the gun locked on Pilgrim.
“Put the gun down. I’ll pay you better than whoever you’re working for,” Teach said.
“Shut your mouth,” he said with an eye roll.
Pilgrim said, “Why are you waiting?” because there was no good reason for the kid not to shoot them both. He risked a step to the left. Teach stayed still. “I’m unarmed and I still make you nervous.”
“Consider it your last compliment,” Barker said.
Footsteps approached, boots crunching into pebbles. Teach had chosen a rental house with a gravel driveway-the stones announced feet or tires with a growl.
“They want Teach alive,” Barker said. “So cooperate and she doesn’t get hurt.”
Too much information, Pilgrim thought. “What about me?” he asked.
“You’re dead,” Barker said and Teach rushed him, drawing the gun’s aim. Barker hesitated for a fraction of a second, not wanting to shoot her, obeying his orders. Teach rammed into Barker, catching him in the door frame. Pilgrim seized the gun from Barker’s hand in a swift downward wrench that broke Barker’s wrist with a sickening crack.
Barker screamed and dropped to his knees.
Teach took the gun from Pilgrim and moved into the den. Their guns were gone, hidden by Barker. She locked the back door. “Three more guns, upstairs closet,” Teach said.
Pilgrim ran up the stairs. In a closet, he found two semiautomatic pistols and a rifle. A crash boomed downstairs, glass breaking, a door being knocked loose from its frame. He grabbed the rifle and barreled a third of the way down the stairs. He saw chaos.
Barker still lay splayed on the floor, face contorted in pain.
Teach squeezed off a shot at the first man through the door but missed by a fraction of an inch. Before she could fire again, a dark-haired bruiser of a thug struck her in the arm with the butt of his rifle. She lost the gun and he grabbed Teach as she staggered backward, then shoved her out the door, following her.
Two other men covered the room with semis. Pilgrim raised the rifle, tried to angle the awkward shot past the railing.
Barker screamed, “On the stairs!”
The men spun the guns toward him and opened fire.
The railing splintered around Pilgrim as he retreated upstairs. Blood wet his temple, cut by the flying debris. He reached the second floor, covered the stairs with the rifle, and backed up next to the window. He peered through the glass.
As he dragged her across the yard, Teach struggled against her captor, hitting a well-placed blow to his throat. But he had a hundred pounds and twenty fewer years on her, and with a jackhammer backhand he knocked her into the scrub. She fell like a stringless puppet to the rain-wet lawn.
