he hated that.
Then make him afraid. Do it. He tried to kill you. Do it. Katie. Mom. Dad. Do it do it do it DO IT.
The common door opened to his left. He glanced over. It was Sarah.
“Stop it!” she yelled.
Ben glanced over at her, then back to Alex. “Last chance,” he said.
“Alex, are you insane?” Sarah said. “Put the gun down. Just put it down!”
God, he wanted to do it. And the thought of caving in to his sneering piece-of-shit brother brought up a fresh wave of nausea.
But he couldn't. He knew it. And the realization that Ben knew it, too, had known it all along, was infuriating.
Without thinking, he cocked his arm and hurled the gun at Ben's head. It cracked him in the forehead and Ben went down.
Sarah yelled, “Alex!”
“Okay,” Alex said. “Now it's your turn. Go ahead.”
Ben sat up. A rivulet of blood oozed from a gash in his forehead. He picked up the gun.
“You want to kill me?” Alex said, jerking his thumbs at his own chest. “You killed everyone else. Go ahead. Kill me, too.”
Ben wiped his fingers across his forehead. He looked at the blood on them, then wiped them on his robe. “If I gave a shit about you,” he said, “I would. But I don't. We're done. You're on your own.”
He walked over to the pile of clothes on the floor, dropped the robe as though Alex and Sarah weren't even there, and pulled on his pants, then his shoes, then the buttonless shirt, and then his jacket. He picked up his bag and pulled Alex's and Sarah's cell phones from it. He tossed the phones on the bed and slung the bag over his shoulder.
“Ben,” Sarah said. He walked right past her, into the bathroom, as though she weren't there. A few seconds later he came out with a washcloth pressed against his forehead.
“Ben,” Sarah said again.
Ben paused and looked at her. “It was a mistake,” he said. “Forget about it.”
Then he opened the door and walked through it. It clacked closed behind him and he was gone.
The room was weirdly silent for a moment. Sarah said, “What the hell happened?”
“Nothing,” Alex said, suddenly resenting her. He'd brought her along just to help her, because she might be in danger. And she repaid him by fucking his brother. Alex was up all night cracking Obsidian while the two of them went at it like bunnies. Well, the hell with that. He didn't need her. He didn't need anyone.
“I'm going home,” he said. “I'll see you at the office.”
“How can you go home?” she said. “Ben just told you-”
“I don't want to hear it!” he said, more sharply than he'd meant. “Just… like he said, forget about it. Just forget it.”
He walked across the corridor to the third room to collect his stuff. He didn't care if people were still after him. He didn't care about anything. If someone killed him, it was going to be on Ben's head anyway. Just like the rest of it.
28
STAND DOWN
Ben walked the few blocks to the Chinese Hospital on Jackson Street, the morning sun low in the sky, the glare enough to make him wince. His head was throbbing from where it had stopped the flying Glock, and his emotions were roiled from everything that had happened just before, but he still took precautions along the way.
Alex throwing the gun had caught him by surprise. It was a reminder of how dangerous an amateur could be. Because no operator in the world would think to hurl a pistol, at least not one that was fully loaded and functional. It was just… counterinstinctual.
Of course, this one wasn't loaded, although Alex hadn't known that. While Alex was on the floor sucking wind, Ben had pulled the magazine and emptied the chamber. He knew Alex wouldn't spot the difference. And while he was only trying to shame and humiliate the little prick with his taunts, and was sure he wouldn't have the guts to pull the trigger, there was sure and there was sure.
He grimaced at the pain in his head. He had some QuikClot hemostatic bandages in his bag and could have used them to dress the wound and stop the bleeding, but he was this close to a hospital… might as well have it disinfected and closed up properly, and save the bandages for a real emergency.
Yeah, he'd been right about Alex's guts, or rather his lack of them. But he wasn't sorry he'd stacked the deck in his own favor just in case. What was that saying? The stupidest last words ever spoken are “You don't have the guts.” No sense taking that kind of chance.
The real chance he'd taken was putting his hands on Alex in the first place. Because when Ben was that angry, starting was a hell of a lot easier than stopping. Already, he couldn't remember all of it. Alex had accused him of killing Katie, he'd finally said it out loud, just what Ben had known he'd been thinking for all these years. Ben heard the words and then… what had he done? There was a red mist, and then he was choking him, wasn't he? Yeah, choking him.
Choking? Say it. You were killing him. You knew it. You felt it. You wanted it.
But he'd stopped himself. He didn't know how, but he had stopped. That had to count for something.
He walked into the hospital emergency room and filled out a form using a fake name and ID. He was lucky- no emergency cases ahead of him. They sat him down right away and went to work on his forehead.
Unbelievable. He'd been through two firefights in as many daysplus the thing in Istanbul a few days earlier, why not count that, too?- and he'd walked away from all of it without a scratch. It took his brother, who apparently couldn't tell the difference between a Glock 26 and a fucking rock, to do him some damage.
He almost laughed at the thought. Despite how pissed he was, he had to give Alex credit for showing some balls. At least he'd fought back. And he'd tried to use the gun, even though Ben had seen him reaching from a mile away and easily stopped him.
Five stitches and two ibuprofen later, he walked out of the hospital and picked up his car where he'd left it the night before. He thought about what he wanted to do. No new orders, and after Istanbul, he didn't expect to receive any for another couple of weeks at least. Maybe go to Bragg, use the range, stay sharp. Or fly to Cabo for a few days. Yeah, Cabo, do some diving, lie around on the beach, see what happens. That would be good.
He would just swing south on the way out. To see if he could find that Volvo. Not for Alex-fuck him. Just to satisfy his own curiosity, that was all.
Forty minutes later he was cruising the quiet morning streets of Ladera. It took him a long time to find the guy's car-a silver S80. He'd parked in a clever place, Dos Loma Vista Drive, only a half mile from Alex's house as the crow flies, but several miles away by car. The guy had clearly studied a topographical map and understood that with the night-vision goggles he could easily hump the short distance to Alex's house by cutting through yards, while keeping the car in a place where even someone searching for it wouldn't immediately think to look.
When Ben saw the Volvo's lights blink in response to the key remote, he parked and got out. Dos Loma Vista was a heavily wooded cul-de-sac. No one was around. No one was going to see him.
He checked the underside of the car for IEDs. It was clear. Then he examined one of the back doors. If someone had booby-trapped the car, most likely it was the driver's door that would be wired, but they'd out- thought him once already, and he wasn't going to let it happen again. The back door was okay. He got in the car and did a quick search. The inside of the car was empty. No registration, not even any rental-agency materials. There was just one thing, in the glove compartment. A cell phone.
Gotcha.
Ben pocketed the phone and paused to write down the vehicle identification number from the dash under the windshield. Unlikely it would lead to anything other than the legend the guy had used to rent the car, but you
