in you, your mouth ruined, this doesn’t hurt much. You want me to dig the bullets out for you?’ Jargo grinned.
Gabriel shuddered.
‘See, Donna Casher turning to an ex-CIA drunk is truly the million-dollar question. Why you? I believe you were willing to take a bigger chance. For more than money. Tell me. For your family’s sake.’ Jargo leaned down, whispered into the man’s devastated ear. ‘Buy their safety.’
Gabriel’s chest heaved. He cried. Jargo restrained himself from cutting the man’s throat. He hated tears. They lessened a person so.
Gabriel found his breath. ‘The message meant she was ready to run.’
‘Thank you,’ Jargo said. ‘Running with what?’
‘Donna had a list.’
Confirmation. ‘A list.’
‘Of a group of people. Inside the CIA… running illegal, unauthorized operations. Hiring out assassination and espionage work to a freelance group of spies she called the Deeps. She had your CIA clients’ names, she had account information on how they had paid for your services. Like I always suspected.’
‘And never proved,’ Jargo said. ‘Describe the data, please.’
‘This freelance group, the Deeps, she said they had clients inside the CIA. Inside the Pentagon. Inside the FBI. Inside MI5 and MI6 in England. Inside every intelligence agency in the world. Inside the Fortune 500. Inside governments, all high-ranking people. Any time someone needs a dirty job, forever off the books… they come to you.’
‘They do,’ Jargo said. ‘You can see why my clients wouldn’t appreciate you taking their names in vain.’ He brought the knife closer to Gabriel’s throat. ‘Did Mitchell Casher know about your arrangement to be his wife’s bodyguard?’
‘She said he didn’t know about her having this client list, or her wanting to run. He was on an assignment for the Deeps – for you – and she said we would meet him in Florida in three days. That was his reentry point after his assignment overseas. She wanted me with her when she talked to him. To convince Mitchell they had no choice but to run. I was to pose as a CIA liaison, tell him they were getting immunity and new identities in exchange for the data. Then they’d run, the whole family, together.’
‘Donna made this a fait accompli.’
‘She didn’t want to give her husband a choice. She was burning their every bridge.’
‘Where was she running to?’
‘I just had to get the Cashers safely to Florida. They would run from there. Anywhere. I don’t know. Didn’t Donna tell you this before you killed her?’
‘Dezz killed her. In a rage. Because she would not speak. She was stronger than you. And she had better training.’ He wiped blood off the knife. ‘And so she summoned Evan to Austin.’
‘Donna planned to explain to him they had to run – tell him the entire truth. That she worked for your network, she wanted you brought down, that she would give me the data to bring down every one of your clients. Then we were driving to Florida. She wanted to avoid airports.’
‘Lucky for him you arrived.’ Jargo brought his face close to Gabriel’s. ‘This client list and some related files were on Evan’s computer. We saw it. We erased it. You’re telling me he didn’t know he had the files?’
‘I don’t know if he knew or not. I’m telling you what his mother knew. He… he doesn’t seem to know much.’
‘Does he know or not?’
‘I don’t… think so. He’s dumb as a stump.’
‘No, he’s not dumb.’ Jargo ran the tip of the blade along Gabriel’s chin. ‘I don’t believe you. Donna cleaned the files off her computer. She sent a backup to Evan’s computer. But she would need the files to convince Evan of the need for them to vanish. You don’t simply just go and run away from your life. So Evan must have seen the files. And taken the precaution of making a copy and hiding it.’
‘He doesn’t know.’
Jargo jabbed the knife into the bullet wound in Gabriel’s shoulder, and Gabriel’s eyes bugged, the veins popped on his neck. Jargo clamped a hand over Gabriel’s mouth, twisted the knife, let the scream run its course under his fingers, removed the knife, flicked away the blood.
‘Are you sure?’
‘He knows,’ Gabriel gasped. ‘He knows. I told him. Please. He knows your name. He knows his mother worked for you.’
‘He fought you.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Beat you.’
‘He’s thirty years younger than me.’
‘Given your reversal of fortune,’ Jargo said, ‘I think you’d like for Evan to bring me down.’
Gabriel met Jargo’s stare. ‘You won’t live forever.’
‘True. Where were you supposed to meet Mitchell in Florida?’
‘Donna knew the location, I didn’t. He wasn’t expecting her. She was intercepting him on his way home.’
‘Where will Evan run? To the CIA?’
‘I warned him off the CIA. I didn’t want…’
Jargo stood. ‘Ego, ego, ego. You wanted the files for yourself. To bring me down. Humiliate the CIA. It would ruin them, you know. Revenge. See where it’s gotten you?’
‘I’ve kept my promise.’
‘Tell me. Do you often respond to any crank who contacts you to help you in your vendetta against the CIA? She must have offered you proof of her credentials. A taste for what was to come.’
Gabriel looked into Jargo’s face and said, ‘Smithson.’ Smiled as Jargo went pale. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
Jargo struggled to keep his emotions from surfacing on his face. My God, how much had Donna told this man? Jargo pretended as if the name Smithson meant nothing to him. ‘Evan left a large amount of cash behind in your son-in-law’s Suburban. But no IDs. Presumably you didn’t plan on the Cashers flying out of Florida under their own names. I need to know the identities on the documents you created for Evan.’
Gabriel closed his eyes. As though steeling himself for the answer.
Jargo sipped at the whiskey, leaned over close to Gabriel, and spat whiskey onto Gabriel’s facial gash.
Gabriel spat back.
Jargo wiped the string of saliva from his cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You’ll give me every name Evan’s got documentation for. And then we’ll go-’
Nowhere. Gabriel whipped his head downward and to the right. Jargo still held the long silver blade of the knife in his hand, and Gabriel pounded his throat onto the point with one breathless blow.
‘No!’ Jargo jerked away, letting go of the knife. It wedged in Gabriel’s neck. Gabriel collapsed to the floor, eyes clenched shut, and then his breath and his piss and his life unfolded out of him.
Jargo slid the knife free. He tested for a pulse; gone.
‘You can’t know. You can’t know.’ In a fury, he started kicking the body. The face. The jaw. Bone and teeth snapped under his heel. Blood splattered across the calfskin. His leg started to get tired, his pants were ruined, and the rage drained out of him and he collapsed to the soiled carpet. Smithson. How much had Donna told Gabriel or told her son?
‘Did you lie to me?’ Jargo asked Gabriel’s body. ‘Do you know our names?’ He couldn’t risk it. Not at all. He had to assume the worst. Evan knew.
He could never let his clients know they were in danger. That would start a panic. It would destroy his business, his credibility. His clients could never, ever know such a list existed. He had to bring Evan down now.
He cleaned the blood from the knife and called Carrie’s cell phone. ‘Get back here. We’re leaving for Houston. Immediately.’
No debate now. No discussion. Evan Casher was a dead man, and Jargo knew he had just the perfect bait to grace a trap.
