Suddenly, he saw a light penetrate the darkness. He looked down slowly and realized that his iPhone was glowing through his pocket as a text message came through. The light was like an alarm, awakening something that Richard had long since laid to rest. He watched it blink for a few seconds more. Then he pulled the phone from his pocket and saw his memories come to life.
There was no number. The text was from a private caller. Not that he needed a number to know who they were. After eight years, they’d found him, just like he’d always known they would.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and kissed his wife’s cold lips. “Goodbye, Corrine.”
Richard took off his wedding ring and placed it gently against her breast. Then he rooted under the bed for the 9mm Ruger he’d always kept, waiting for this day to come.
He snapped in a clip and chambered a round, quickly throwing on a T-shirt and sneakers. He took a deep breath and told himself it didn’t matter if he made it through the night. By daybreak, his past would be buried, one way or another.
Richard held the gun at his side and crawled down the steps to the kitchen. The dead man who’d crashed through the window was still slumped against the counter. Richard made his way over to him the way he’d been taught, flat against the ground and pulling himself forward with his forearms.
Quickly, he searched the body. In his right pocket, there was nothing. In his left, there was a Glock 9mm with a silencer. Richard took it, then crawled to the stove, extinguished the pilot, and turned the knob.
“Richard!”
The voice calling from outside his house was familiar. It was a sadistic verbal smirk that was at once arrogant and deadly.
Richard didn’t answer.
“Come on out, Richard,” the man said. “We can talk.”
Richard knew that talking was the last thing they would do. He had crossed the line with them. And once you crossed the line with people such as these, there was no turning back, there was no statute of limitations, and there was no reprieve. They could never allow him to live. He knew it, and they knew it. So as the kitchen filled with gas, Richard ripped a piece of cloth from his pant leg and wrapped it around his face. Then he knelt down next to the dead man and hoisted him up from his seat on the floor.
As his wounded leg began to throb, sweat dripped down into his eyes. The rain seemed to tap harder against the broken glass. The wind whipped up angrily. He counted to three. Then he was up, running toward the door and bursting through it as he held the dead body like a shield.
Bullets whistled from muzzles equipped with silencers. A barrage poured in through the kitchen window, sparking a blast that ignited the house and lit the night sky.
Richard dropped the body and leaped to his left, running across 33rd Street and into the park. The rain poured down thicker, and as four men emerged from the gutted school bus at the old tire shop across the street, they lost sight of him for just a second. It was long enough for him to disappear.
“Okay, he’s in the park,” said the hefty man with the smirk in his voice. “My guess is he went southwest, but I think he’s hit, so he couldn’t have gotten far. Tyson and Robinson, you two take the right side of Reservoir Drive. Me and Montgomery will search the woods on the left.”
“And if we find him before you do?” Tyson asked.
“Try to take him alive.”
The men fanned out and melted into the shadows of the blackout while Richard disappeared into the park. He passed by the driving range with its dilapidated caddy shack and ancient golf cart. He moved through the heavy foliage surrounding the Frisbee golf course. He heard sirens from fire engines and police cars blaring in the distance.
As the pain from the bullet wound in the back of his leg intensified, he stopped with his back to a tree, panting and looking over his shoulder at the flames from his burning house. He imagined Corrine, trapped inside without him, her body being consumed by the fire. The thought of it was grisly, but he’d gladly trade places with her now, because the hell of living without her was far more severe than the flames that were cooking her flesh.
He looked away, his bitter tears mingling with the rain. In that instant, the grief she’d spent months helping him to overcome rushed back. A moment later, the grief was gone, and it was replaced with an emotion he knew all too well-anger.
Richard checked his pockets. He still had the phone. He had his Ruger, and he had the Glock with a silencer he’d taken from the dead man in the kitchen.
He looked out from behind the tree once more and saw dome lights whirling outside his house. If he were anyone else, he could’ve tried to make his way back to the house. He could’ve told the police that the same people who’d killed his wife had tried to kill him. He could’ve clarified that he’d acted in self-defense. But Corrine was right. Richard had something to hide, and it all began with the scar on his chest.
Chambering a round in the Glock, Richard stuffed the Ruger into his waistband. A second later, his phone buzzed and his pocket glowed as he received another text message.
For a moment, he considered ignoring the message and leaving the phone behind, but he wanted his pursuers to use the phone to track him. That would bring them closer, and make them that much easier to kill.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the phone, cupped it in his hand, and read the message while the rain pelted the screen.
A chill went through Richard’s body as he reread the message and checked the source. The text had come from a phone number with a 202 area code, which meant they weren’t trying to hide their identities anymore. They were CIA, just like the teams he’d fought alongside in Afghanistan.
He’d learned two things about those teams during the war: the only thing that mattered to them was the objective, and they didn’t care how they reached it.
Pocketing the phone, he crawled through the slippery, leaf-strewn grass to the edge of Reservoir Drive-the road that snaked through the park from 33rd Street. Then he limped across and climbed a rain-slicked hill until he reached a chain-link fence.
The faded sign on the fence said,
Richard lay on his stomach on the reservoir’s concrete embankment and held onto the fence with both hands. He was flat on his belly and the rain pelting his wounded leg felt almost soothing. Then the fence rattled, and any comfort he felt disappeared.
Sliding into the water, Richard flipped onto his back and allowed himself to float while holding the Glock he’d stolen from the dead body. When the first of two men came sliding along the slippery embankment to see if he was alive, Richard remained still. When the man got closer, Richard opened one eye. When he was almost upon him, Richard sprung into action.
He flipped over in the water, raised the Glock, and fired, hitting the man three times. Before his victim fell into the water, Richard submerged and swam hard to his right. Ten bullets bored into the water around him, but none of them found their target. By the time he surfaced, he was nearly fifty yards away, and the man who’d shot at him was frantically searching for him in the darkness.
Richard climbed the gate and fell on the sloping grass, wincing at the pain in his leg as he rolled to the bottom of the hill. He looked up and saw the man who’d shot at him climbing the gate about forty yards away. Then he heard footsteps running around the bend.
He’d lost the phone and the second gun in the water, but there was no time to lament. Richard got up and hobbled across Reservoir Drive, heading toward the old mansion at Smith Memorial Playground. He crouched as he passed orange construction barriers near the massive house that was buttressed by scaffolding.
Richard’s limp was more pronounced than it had been just seconds before, and when he reached the mansion, bullets struck the metal scaffolding. Richard aimed his gun at the lock on the door and fired a shot of his own. A second later, he was inside.
