The Shop

just as good stuff at RadioShack as you could going high-end. In the military they even had an acronym for it: COTS—commercial off-the-shelf. And Landry liked a bargain.

Stepping outside into the diamond-hard sunshine, holding the RadioShack bag with the boxed microphones inside, Landry looked in the shop window next door. He gathered the store sold clothing for the new generation, casual stuff you could wear to class or on a skateboard. Navy hoodies were displayed in the window, a photo above showing an unshaven twenty-something rappelling down from a helicopter. The clothing line was called “SEALS.”

“If you only knew,” he said to the display. The kid in the ad would likely want no part of SEALs training he’d endured at the Naval Amphibious Base on Coronado.

That evolution of BUD/S training was to keep him from drowning by making it a working proposition. He, along with the other trainees, was thrown into the water bound hand and foot. Hands behind the back. Normally, he was pretty tough. He liked to train—no, make that, he loved to train —and he was strong. Stronger than the guys who quit. Stronger than the guys who stayed. He was bigger than most, but he was able to keep up with the little guys, the compact guys who excelled in SEALs training. He was near the cutoff at the top of the age range, but he was as good any of them and smarter than most. Invincible. But when he plunged into the nine-foot-deep pool, something inside him broke loose. It was mortifying, this rebellion at the idea of drowning, apparently hardwired into him. There was yelling, there was berating, there was the water closing over his head as he sank. There were other bodies in the water, wires of refracted light cutting their bodies into pieces.

Commotion at three o’clock. Guy flipping out. Had to be taken out of the pool. Thrashing like a fish on a hook. Landry felt like flipping out too, felt like he really was drowning, even though he wasn’t. Straining to breathe. Chest burning. The first time his feet touched bottom he had forced himself to stay under, using what little breath he had, holding it for the required minute before shooting up to the surface like a cannon. He was expected to bob on the surface for five minutes. Any way he could, but ideally, he should conserve energy. There was some fuck with a watch. Yelling at him. That fuck was his BUD/S indoc instructor, a real hard-ass named Keogh, a man he admired. No, make that a man he worshipped. But right now he was just the fuck who was stretching the time out, way past five minutes. Fifteen minutes, maybe. How could he get away with that? It was blatantly unfair, but that was something Landry’d learned first thing: the SEALs were not about fairness. They were about unfairness. He could feel himself slipping under the water. Blow it out. Grab a breath. Chin up. His body bucked, got torqued around. He looked like a prisoner and he felt like a prisoner. At this moment, he was less than a human being.

He was less than nothing and more than everything, because if he made it through, he truly would be invincible.

This was how you were forged.

This was what made you a warrior.

His swim buddy was having trouble. He couldn’t let that happen. His bond with his swim buddy was greater than his bond with his wife. They did everything together. They never left each other’s side. They even went to the head together. He managed to get closer, managed to throw him some confidence. At least he thought that’s what happened, because they both made it. Float, bob, swim, forward and back flips. Other stuff. Interminable.

They called it drown-proofing. It was the worst thing he had to do, the one thing where he thought he would break, where he thought he would give up the dream and admit defeat.

But he didn’t break that day. He didn’t quit like some of the others.

He didn’t have quit in him.

Landry stared at the mountain above town, thinking about last night.

Mars cooperated as much as he could, but he didn’t really know anything. He said his father kept him on a tight budget. He needed money, and when some guy approached him at J-Bar with a proposition, he was happy to oblige. What it came down to was babysitting some guy and making sure he left the party at the house on Castle Creek Road by a certain time. Mars said he tried everything, even enticing Nick Holloway with a ride in his Lamborghini. As time grew short, he got Nick to walk down the hill toward the street to get some air, and “just sort of pushed him over the edge” into the garage, which was cut into the hill below the house. But Mars had no real information on the guy who hired him—it was a cash transaction.

Mars died hard, from a combination of opiates and Valium. His choice. But he had a seizure. His feet drummed on the polished pine floor of his Starwood condo.

It looked like an accidental drug overdose, which was what it should look like, but the whole thing bothered Landry. It was not his style to let someone suffer.

If Mars had not glanced out the window and seen Landry without his ski mask, Landry would have let him live. But once that happened, Mars was doomed.

And now Landry was no closer to finding out who ordered Brienne Cross’s death, or the deaths of the others.

He worked for a shadow company that worked for a shadow government, and up until now he thought he was on the right side.

Now he knew better.

He walked. It was a nice day. Clear. Lots of people on the street; he was just one of them. Thinking about how he got here.

He’d started out pure. Like white socks, straight from the department store. You wore them once and they got a little worn. The threads stretched, almost imperceptibly. There was the slightest discolor. Enough so that you cared about them a little less. They were no longer white and new, fresh off the cardboard. They’d been in your shoe. By the end of the week, after a washing, they weren’t new in any way. Then you got careless. One day you wore them to mow the lawn. You got grass seeds in there and sweat from your feet, and they started to yellow. Before you knew it, they were just old socks.

He was a warrior. He’d stood up for his country. He did good and bad things, but they were all for his country. And when he felt he couldn’t go on—when he realized that he was pushing his luck and five tours were enough—he returned stateside and became an instructor at BUD/S. They say a racehorse has only so many times he can run down the track. That was the way Landry felt when he returned from active duty. He’d run his requisite number of times, and after that, he was through. But then he wanted to go back, he was restless, and he had a way to make a lot of money. Warfare and money together: the best of both worlds. That was when he took the sock out of the cardboard. Eight months working for Kellogg, Root & Brown. Making money hand over fist. Feeling the resentment of the soldiers. Their eyes on him: You sold out.

That’s how he came to kill a bunch of kids in Aspen, Colorado.

He arrived at his destination and waited. It didn’t seem like a long time.

He saw Nick Holloway leave his condo and drive away. He watched the car get smaller as it proceeded down the street. He watched until it turned the corner and was lost from view.

He bugged the condo. In and out in five minutes.

20

Long ago in a galaxy far away, Jolie was a sharpshooter. She’d earned three sharpshooting medals, attaining the designation “Expert.” Her instructor had a saying. Miss one day of practice, you know it. Miss two days of practice, your instructor knows it. Miss three days of practice, everyone knows it. Running wasn’t the same as shooting, but Jolie felt rusty when she started out on the street outside her house. It was still dark. Misty halos wrapped the streetlamps. Dew glittered on the grass. She smelled bacon and eggs coming from the bungalow on the corner of Conch and Highway 98. Crossed the deserted two-lane highway and took the easement through to the beach. Once on the sand, she picked up the pace. The regular sand, not the hard-packed. The scene before her grooved into her memory. The beach, the slow-heaving blackness beyond, the constantly rearranging fringe of surf in between. The rumble and sigh. Her calves felt like heavy bags of sand, hard to move. Being rusty bothered her, but only a little. The job got in the way, and since the job was her life, that was