Rain watched him. “You want to know what Treven didn’t say?”
Again, Larison didn’t answer. The dresser was eight feet away. Could Rain really stop him?
“He didn’t say the other thing we were all thinking. Which is that you weren’t just going to punch Kei’s ticket. You were going to try to punch everyone’s.”
Larison gritted his teeth. He’d never felt so exposed. They knew too much about him. They’d seen through him. Somehow he’d faltered. It was all out in the open now. All of it.
“Were we wrong?” Rain asked.
Larison looked at him. “Stop fucking around. You want to finish this, let’s finish it.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“You’re trying to fuck with my head, and I don’t like it.”
Rain walked over to the dresser.
Larison, distracted by his own inner turmoil, was slow to react. He said, “Don’t!” But in the time it took him to get the word out, Rain had already opened the drawer. Rain glanced back at him, then reached in and came out with the Glock.
Larison watched, fascinated. A weird placidity settled over him. He tried to think of something to say. Nothing came out. There was a moment of weakness in his knees, but he thought that was relief more than fear. Yes, relief.
Rain checked the load in the Glock. He held the gun and looked at Larison. His expression was grimly purposeful.
Larison smiled. It seemed important to let Rain know he wasn’t afraid. That, on some level, he was even complicit.
Rain tossed him the gun. Larison was so astonished he almost couldn’t react. At the last instant, he got his hands up and caught it. He stood staring at it for a moment in shock.
“What a waste,” Rain said. “Overall, we’ve been a pretty solid detachment. We’ve survived two ambushes and a hunt by the national security state; we’ve scored a hundred million dollars; our biggest enemy just neutered himself, as you put it…and we’re going to cash all that in because we just can’t help killing each other. Does that make sense to you?”
Larison blinked. Was Rain fucking with him? He could tell by the Glock’s weight the magazine was full. Still, he racked the slide to be sure. A bullet ejected. Larison caught it in the air and looked at it. Standard nine- millimeter round. The gun was loaded.
“What are you doing?” Larison said. He was holding the gun, but he felt suddenly terrified.
“I’m doing for you what Dox once did for me. The thing I told you about in Vienna-Kwai Chung.”
“You told me he saved your life.”
“That was the obvious part. He also proved to me I could trust somebody. Of the two, I think the second had the more lasting effect.”
Larison tried to think of something to say and couldn’t access the words.
“How do you think Horton wants it?” Rain said. “You think he wants you killing everyone who might know your secrets? Or trusting people to watch your back?”
Larison looked at him. He wanted to ask what Rain meant by “secrets.” But to ask would be to reveal. And besides, he could sense, on some deep, unexplainable level, that Rain…already knew. The same way he could sense that he also didn’t care.
“What about the others?” he heard himself say. Christ, it sounded so weak. So pleading.
“Dox expects people to act honorably,” Rain said. “If you let him down in that regard, he also believes the honorable thing is to track you down and shoot you. But he does like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“I can’t figure him out.”
“He grows on you. Anyway, you think Dox or Treven cares about you as anything other than a friend or a foe? Each of us just pocketed more money than we can ever spend. The trick now is to live to enjoy it. And we have a better chance of doing that watching each other’s backs than we do trying to preemptively kill each other. Isn’t that what you told me in Vienna you wished you had? Someone who really had your back? Well, how are you going to get that if you reflexively kill people because you’re terrified of trusting them?”
Larison blew out a long breath. Then another. He felt like he was going to jump out of his skin and told himself to Calm. The Fuck. Down.
Rain looked at him. “You mind if I take my gun out of the dresser?”
Larison shook his head. A minute ago, he would have killed Rain to stop him. Now…it didn’t matter.
Rain took out the Wilson Combat, checked the load, and eased it into his waistband.
“What’s the plan?” Larison said, unable to let go of his own gun, though he had no intention of using it.
“Well, it might be selfish,” Rain said, “but I’m pretty sure the three of us are going to Nebraska to try to stop a massacre.”
“Why is that selfish?”
“Because you could argue we’re not doing it to save the lives of others. You could argue we’re doing it so we can live with ourselves.”
Larison didn’t answer. He knew Rain was deliberately echoing what Larison had told him in Vienna, about the nightmares. It had been weak of him to tell Rain that, and he wasn’t sure why he had. But…the idea that there was something he could do, that there was a way to beat back those awful dreams…he wanted to believe it.
“I didn’t know it when I agreed to this op,” Rain said. “At least, I didn’t know it consciously. But I need to take all the shit I’ve done and the horror I’ve inflicted and do something good with it. And yes, Horton used that notion to manipulate me, and even though it turns out I was wrong about what the op was really about, it also turns out that maybe I’m going to get my chance anyway. And I don’t want to blow it.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because if we make the wrong choice here, I don’t think there’s a way back. I’ve come close before, very close, right up to the edge of the abyss. I don’t want to fall into it. And right now, I’m teetering.”
Larison swallowed. He thought he’d never been so confused. Or so suddenly exhausted.
“I need…a little time,” he said.
Rain nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I remember the shock of trusting someone. It fucked me up, too. You get used to it, after a while.”
Larison shoved the Glock in his waistband. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “What the hell did you just talk me into?”
“I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. You were just trying not to hear it.”
Rain held out his hand. After a moment, warily, Larison shook it.
Dox drove the Honda Treven had stolen east, toward Union Station. From there, Kei could catch a Red Line train and be home in no time.
He’d hated having to zip her back into the cargo bag to get her to the car, but Treven was right, no sense taking chances about her figuring out where they’d held her. The truth was, he was less worried about her being able to run to the police than he was that she’d feel bad if she didn’t. Better to just deny her the ability, and therefore save her the guilt.
The worst part of it was how willingly she’d let him do it. He’d taken the headphones off her and said, “Darlin’, I’m not comfortable waiting around for the bogeyman to get back here. He’s just too unpredictable for my tastes. So, with your permission, I’d like to take you home now.”
She’d looked into his eyes, smart enough to search for a lie, trusting enough to want to believe none was there, insightful enough to see that none was. Then she’d nodded and said, “Okay.” And that was that. He carried her out in the bag, unzipped it inside the trunk, closed her inside, and drove off, taking care to use an indirect route with plenty of bridges and underground parking garages along the way.
He’d been driving for nearly an hour when his mobile phone rang. He picked up. “Yeah.”
Treven’s voice: “All right, they’re back. The stones are real.”
“Well, that’s good news. What’s going on with our friend?”
“I don’t know. Your friend is alone with him right now. Trying to talk him down, I think.”
