Third Strike

even have believed he was doing the right thing, but in truth he was off the books—off the goddamn planet, if I’m any judge,” he said, temper finally cracking through like a whip. “And I will tell you now that I intend to deal with his transgressions most … severely. He may have convinced you he was a patriot but in reality, son, he was a traitor. A traitor,” he went on, beating the message home with measured strokes, “who has brought disgrace to his country and his office … and to the people who placed their trust in him.”

Uncertainty reamed Buzz-cut’s features. His eyes skimmed over the man with the silver mustache, the SWAT team, calculating the odds. It can’t have taken him long to work out that resistance was, indeed, futile. I cursed him from inside my head, spitting soundless screams, as if I could compel him to yield by will alone.

But still he held.

The silence stretched, gossamer threads that sparked and snapped under the artificial lights. My eyes locked onto my mother’s face, the flutter of her eyelids as God knows what thoughts careered through her mind. If she died here, now, then everything we’d been through—everything we’d done—would have been for nothing.

“What we have to decide here, son,” the man with the mustache went on, halfway across the narrow gulf that separated them now, “is just where your loyalties lie. Did you trust Mr. Collingwood’s word implicitly, or did you actively collaborate with him to develop a bioweapon using a company that’s foreign-owned, operating on U.S. soil? The stand you’re making here leads me to believe you knew all the risks. This is the last stand of a desperate man, son, not a patriot.”

“Sir! I am a patriot, sir!” Buzz-cut rapped out, voice close to breaking.

“Well, in that case, son,” the man murmured, “you’d best prove it to me.”

He took a final step, bringing him within a meter of Buzz-cut. He held out his hand, palm up. After a long, agonizing two seconds, Buzz-cut withdrew the gun from my mother’s skull and let the hammer down slowly. He reversed his hold and handed the piece over to the man with the mustache, grip first in smartly formal presentation.

I heard a collective exhalation, the quiet gush of relief from the SWAT team as they realized that today was not their day to kill or die.

The man with the mustache handed off the gun to one of his men, who crabbed forwards to take it. Another yanked Buzz-cut’s wrists behind him and tightened the PlastiCuffs in place.

Buzz-cut stood, head down, gaze turned inwards, as if replaying all the things he’d done without question, on Collingwood’s say-so. More than he could justify, if his misery was anything to go by. More than he could bear. When he lifted his head, his eyes were glistening.

My mother opened her own eyes, very slowly, the shock blatant in them. Sean elbowed his way through the mill of black and brought out the same pocketknife my father had used to torture Collingwood. He sliced through the ties binding her wrists.

With nothing to hold them, her arms flopped forwards and, when she climbed down from the stool, her legs folded under her. Sean tucked an arm behind her knees and lifted her without apparent effort. She clung to him and let the tears fall freely now. When I fell in alongside she grabbed my hand with icy fingers, paper skin over fragile bones, and wouldn’t let go.

As Sean carried my mother past the man with the mustache, he reached out and put a hand on Sean’s arm. The touch was light, the way it can be when it’s backed by limitless strength and power.

“You and Miss Fox wouldn’t be thinking of taking off again, would you, Mr. Meyer?” he said, making it both a threat and a polite inquiry, all at the same time.

Sean paused just long enough to make his lack of intimidation felt. “No,” he said.

The man nodded. “Good, because this time you would have the full weight of the U.S. government tracking you down,” he said. “I believe we have some things to discuss. I trust you’ll make yourself available.”

Sean bridled but kept it in check. “Yes sir,” he said, in the same blankly neutral tone that skated thinly along the borders of insubordination.

“I’m sure that you will,” the man with the mustache said. His gaze shifted onto my father, who’d come forwards, unable to hold back any longer. “This whole thing has been a goddamned mess,” he added in that careful way of his, eyes moving to me now. “It’s going to take some cleaning up.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” I said, injecting just as much steel into my own voice.

I thought I saw a wisp of a smile skim across the older man’s face, but it didn’t trouble his eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure we can,” he said.

CHAPTER 35

“Here,” Terry O’Loughlin said, “drink this.”

She handed me a cone of water from the cooler in the room she’d coaxed us into after the man with the mustache and his team had departed.

I took what I was offered, grateful, realizing as I did so that I still had Collingwood’s Glock in my hand. For a moment I struggled to recall quite how it had got there. Still punchy.

Out of habit, I jammed the gun between my thigh and the chair cushion, keeping it within reach, and took a sip of water. It was cold enough to feel the glassy slide of it right down the inside of my ribs, clutching at my heart as it went.

My mother had been clamped to my father’s side ever since Sean had put her down. My father had snatched her close, splaying his hands across her back and burrowing his face into her hair, like he was trying to take the very essence of her into himself. Proof of life.

I heard sobbing, but I couldn’t have said for certain which of them it emanated from.

I desperately wanted to reach for Sean in the same way but I knew, if I did so, I was likely to break into pieces and it would all come spilling out. And I couldn’t bring myself to do that in front of Parker, in front of my parents. Even in front of Sean. So I shrugged off the hand he put on my shoulder, throwing a quick later smile in response to his frown of concern.

Vondie was lying, I told myself again as I pulled away. No way can it be true. We’ve always been so careful … .

Terry had quietly taken charge, shepherding us gently into what looked like a staff break room nearby, where there were low chairs and tables and the watercooler.

Beside me, Sean sat leaning forwards with his forearms resting on his thighs, shoulders hunched, staring low into nothing.

Pure exhaustion sucked the blood out of my veins. Adrenaline, as I knew full well, was a single-minded taskmaster, strident and brutal. As it dissipated, I felt my system overload by way of retribution. A vicious headache—I told myself it was from the TASER or the drugs—had started hammering at the base of my skull. The more attention I paid to my body, the more I found there wasn’t a part of it that didn’t ache, from my neck and shoulders to the soles of my feet. It was another jolt to remember why.

It had been a long time since I’d killed somebody that way—up close and personal. That part of it didn’t get any easier with practice.

“I won’t ask if you’re all right,” Parker said, hitching the crease of his suit trousers as he sat down opposite. If it wasn’t for those watchful eyes, you’d have thought him urbane, unthreatening. “Because I can see you’re not— any of you.”

“No,” Sean said, and he was looking at me while he said it.

My mind was drifting. I pulled it back on track with effort. “Parker, what the hell are you doing here?” I said. I jerked my head in a vague gesture to indicate the direction in which the man with the silver mustache and his burly entourage had departed. “And who was that guy?”

Parker glanced at Sean, then let his gaze shift to Terry, still hovering by the watercooler. “As soon as it became clear that Collingwood wasn’t on the level, I began trying to go over his head,” he said. He let out a slow breath. “Not easy. Nobody likes to hear there’s something rotten at the core of their own organization, and the kind of agency Collingwood is a part of, well, they like to hear it even less.”

“But you convinced them,” Sean said, and it wasn’t a question. It was praise.

Parker took a drink of water, ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Collingwood’s immediate superior was