The Chaos Kind

by Barry Eisler

  “What’s our next move?” she said, wanting to change the subject.

  He took a bite of satay and chewed, his expression contemplative, then swallowed. “Hard to say without more intel. You heard anything more from SPD?”

  She shook her head. “The chief is giving me a lot of room for once, meaning she’s not pressuring my lieutenant, either. I don’t want to risk any of that by getting in touch. If anything changes, I’ll hear from them.”

  Carl nodded. “Sleeping dogs, I get it. Well, no matter what, it seems to me we need to either get ahold of those videos, or confirm they’re destroyed. Or at least confirm they’re inaccessible by anyone, which amounts to the same thing. I don’t think any of this is emotional for the people we’re up against. They’re just trying to acquire something that’s important to them, whether because it’s valuable or because it’s a threat. If they get it, we don’t matter anymore. If they realize they can’t get it, same thing. Of course, if we get the videos, and they know we have them, or they think we do, anyway, they’re not going to leave us alone. We’ll have to make them.”

  That all made sense to her. Of course, the question was how.

  “What about Schrader?” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “You think he’s alive?”

  He looked away for a moment. “I have a hunch he is, yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he knows the only thing keeping him alive is those videos. If he gives up his credentials, they’ll kill him for sure.”

  “But if they’re torturing him, at some point he’ll break.”

  “True. But even then, they wouldn’t kill him right away. Because if it turned out the information he gave them was false—and by the way, information you torture out of someone is typically unreliable—they’d be shit out of luck. It’s like if you tortured the combination to a safe out of someone. You’d be wise to open the safe before killing the person. Sorry to be so gruesome, but it’s true.”

  “Plus there’s the dead-man switch.”

  “Right. If you want those videos to use as blackmail, they’re not much good once they’ve been released into the wild. Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “Well, if Schrader dies, one way or the other, and there is a dead-man switch like he told Diaz, the switch gets triggered, the videos get released, and we’re all off the hook. I mean, if I knew for sure there were a dead-man switch, I’d happily shoot the sumbitch myself. And I figure, all the men in those videos would have their reputations destroyed, which seems only fair. On top of which, every one of those videos is a crime and evidence of a crime, right? So with the videos out, Diaz could prosecute a whole lot of people.”

  Livia didn’t answer. He was right—some of it was what she had been thinking. But he wasn’t seeing the whole picture.

  “But here’s the thing,” he went on. “We don’t know about the dead-man switch. If it’s a bluff and we kill Schrader, then we have no way to take control of those videos. Someone else could get ahold of them. Or they could be lost forever. Either way, the men who appear in them would go unpunished. And we’d need a way of persuading the people who are after the videos now, like Rispel, that we don’t have them. It could be tricky.”

  All true. But he still wasn’t seeing it. She didn’t blame him. This was her world, not his.

  “There’s something you’re missing,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “The girls. If those videos are made public on the Internet, it’s forever. That kind of thing is a nightmare for the victims. For the rest of their lives, every time they see a strange man looking at them—in a supermarket, in a restaurant, at work—they wonder if it’s someone who has watched them being raped and degraded online. So yeah, I’d like to kill Schrader. And I’d do it, too. But not if there’s a dead-man switch. Not even to take the pressure off us. And I don’t want you or Larison doing it, either.”

  He nodded. After a moment, he said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s not your fault. But now you know.”

  “You know I’m with you. Larison might take some persuading, though. His focus tends to be narrower than mine.”

  “I know. And I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t judge him too harshly. He hasn’t had the easiest life himself. And he has a lot of respect for you and your work.”

  “Then he won’t do anything that would risk those videos being uploaded.”

  He nodded. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

  She looked at him, conflicting emotions roiling inside her.

  “What?” he said.

  “Sometimes you’re so good to me it makes me want to hit you.”

  He smiled. “Well, you could if you like. It’s not necessarily my thing, but I’m notoriously open-minded.”

  She laughed, then said, “I’m serious.”

  “Larison’ll be fine. And I’m happy to talk to him.”

  “I’m sorry I’m so . . . difficult.”

  “I don’t find you difficult. I love being with you, no matter what. Maybe that’s what you find difficult.”

  She was too tired to spar with him. And what he’d said was too true. “Maybe.”

  He smiled. “Tell you what. You want to make it up to me? I mean your difficultness and all that.”

  “Maybe,” she said again.

  “Lie down on the bed with me. And touch my face the way you do.”

  “Yeah, we both know where that leads.”

  “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

  “But also hope springs eternal.”

  He laughed. “Fair enough.”

  She tried to think of what to say. What came out was “It’s okay. I want to, too.”

  He looked at her, his expression so open it almost hurt. “You mean, touch my face?”

  She shook her head. “Everything.”

  “Well, everything could cover a lot of ground. I didn’t bring a Wonder Woman outfit or a golden lasso, but there might be a place open around here even at this hour.”

  She laughed again. She’d never known anyone who made her laugh the way he did. She loved it, even though it also always made her sad.

  “I just don’t know what it means,” she said.

  “What what means?”

  “Us . . . being together.”

  “I don’t know, either.”

  “Yeah, but what do you want it to mean?”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that?”

  “I feel like I’m . . . I don’t know. Leading you on.”

  “Please refer to my previous sentence.”

  She laughed again, but she felt like he was deflecting. “You don’t feel that way?”

  “No.”

  “I know I . . . vacillate.”

  “That’s fair.”

  “It feels unfair.”

  “You’ve never been unfair with me.”

  She looked at him. “Why don’t you ever get frustrated with me?”

  “I do. All the time. I just don’t show it.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because that wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  “But see? Then I’m the one who’s being unfair.”

  He shook his head. “No, you’re not. You’re just trying to figure things out. And who could blame you for that?”

  “You really don’t?”

  “No.”

  “But what if I never do? Figure things out.”

  “If you’re asking if I’m ready to quit you, the answer is no. Especially not immediately following your offer to do everything with me right here and now in the Silver Cloud Inn honeymoon suite.”

  She laughed. Then she leaned in and kissed him. And for that moment, it really was lovely. Like a wave gently hitting the beach. Without any undertow at all.

  After a moment, he broke the kiss. He looked at her and said, “I’ve been thinking.”

/>   “Yeah?”

  “You know, I don’t always have to be so gentle. I mean, you tend to bring that out in me, but we could try it the way it was that first time, at Saeng Chan Beach.”

  She felt embarrassed talking about it. “I think . . . it might feel artificial.”

  “What if I provoked you?”

  She was surprised to find the thought excited her. “What if you did?”

  “See, I’m doing it already. Putty in my hands.”

  That excited her more. “Bullshit.”

  She didn’t remember what he said next. It was eclipsed by what came after.

  chapter

  forty-eight

  RAIN

  Rain trained the Glock’s sights on center mass. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said. The tone was neither loud nor belligerent. Just an if/then equation: the if being failure to comply, the then being death an instant later.

  The guy was so plainly surprised that for a moment he just stared at Rain, his mouth agape.

  “Hands up,” Rain said, moving slowly in, his tone still deadly calm. “Palms forward. Fingers splayed. Anything else and you’re dead right there.”

  The guy raised his hands. “What the hell is this?” he said. Loudly. Loudly enough to alert a partner.

  Rain didn’t answer. The only reason he hadn’t dropped the guy yet was the hope that he could get close enough to crush his skull silently with the gun butt, rather than alerting whoever else might be around with gunfire.

  Rain hugged the wall to his left and kept moving forward. If the guy was righthanded, which was statistically likely, this way he’d have a harder time deploying a weapon for an accurate shot. He flash-checked his right flank and kept the Glock sights on center mass.

  The guy was ten feet away now. Point-blank.

  Rain raised the gunsights to the guy’s face. “Make another sound,” he said softly, “and you’re done.”

  But the guy must have reasoned that if Rain was concerned about sound in general, he’d be concerned about gunfire specifically. Maybe so concerned that he was bluffing. In an even louder voice, the guy called out, “Who are you? Why—”

  He didn’t get to finish the question. Or even to learn that the bluff he’d meant to call was—oops—not a bluff at all. Rain pressed the trigger. The corridor echoed with a giant BAM! and a small hole appeared in the guy’s forehead. An expression of perfect, vacuous astonishment rippled across his face. He shuddered as though from an electric shock, fell back into the door behind him, and slid bonelessly to the floor.

  Well, so much for the element of surprise. But one less of the enemy to deal with. And though whoever was left would now understand there was opposition, they wouldn’t yet know who had shot whom. They’d come in here with a plan. Now they’d be improvising. Though in fairness, of course, so was Rain.

  And then, somewhere down the corridor, a woman screamed.

  chapter

  forty-nine

  EVIE

  Evie crouched behind the cart, staring through the space between the books, her heart hammering. The sound of footsteps came closer. Closer . . .

  She felt paralyzed with fear. What if she tried to ram him too early and he got out of the way? Or too late, and it didn’t knock him down the stairs? She had only one chance, just this one chance . . .

  She saw brown hair. A forehead. A narrow set of eyes, a stubble of beard—

  He looked right at her. Smiled. “Caught you,” he said.

  She bunched her shoulders and tensed to shove the cart forward—

  Bam!

  A gunshot. It had to be. From out in the corridor below. The man turned to look, his hand going inside his jacket—

  Evie screamed and blasted out of her crouch, shoving the cart toward the stairs with all her strength. The man turned his head back toward her, seeming to move in slow motion now, his hand coming from inside his jacket, holding a gun—

  Evie kept screaming, driving the cart forward like a battering ram. The man’s eyes bulged, he brought up his free hand, and flinched away—

  The cart went past the landing and bounced down the stairs, Evie losing her balance now but still keeping all her weight behind it. It crashed into his side with a satisfying crunch and he fell backward, the cart barreling over him. Evie lost her grip and tripped as she hit him, and then she was tumbling down, tangled up with him, everything spinning past her, the ceiling, the lights, the stairs. The back of her head hit something and she saw an explosion of fireworks. And then she felt a giant thud through her body and all the movement stopped.

  The man was on his back on the floor right next to her. He rolled to his side. Got his knees under him. “You fucking bitch,” he groaned.

  Evie sucked in a huge breath. She saw his gun, on the carpet just a few feet away. And saw him see it.

  He started crawling toward it. Without any thought at all, she shrieked and scrabbled onto his back, trying to hook her fingers into his eyes, to tear them out of their sockets—

  The man screamed. He shook his head frantically left and right and grabbed her fingers, ripping them away from his face. He reached back, got a hand in her hair, and pulled her forward. She tried to hang on, but he was too strong, and he dumped her over his shoulder onto the floor. She barely felt the shock of impact, she was too focused on his eyes again, on getting her fingers in them. The man shook his head again to keep clear, then reared up, raised a fist—

  She saw a shape loom above her. Something arcing through the air. There was a loud crack, like the sound of a home run hit. The man went flying off her. She rolled to her knees and saw Dash, moving in on the man, cocking back a club, no, the leg of the wooden table, like he’d just stepped up to the plate and was about to swing for the fences. The man scuttled back, trying for the gun, and Dash screamed and swung again. The man got his hands up, but the table leg whipped around and blasted the man’s hands into his face and knocked him onto his back. Dash stepped in, still screaming, bringing the table leg back again, but the man managed to grab him around the knees and rolled into him, knocking him down—

  Evie tensed to launch at him. But the gun, it was right there—

  Dash tried to hang on to the table leg but the man was too big. He yanked it out of Dash’s hands, reared up, raised it over his head like a stake—

  Evie grabbed the gun, spun on her knees, and pointed it with both hands the way Marvin had taught her. She squeezed the trigger. There was a BAM! and the gun jumped in her hands. The man twitched—she’d hit him! But he didn’t go down.

  She heard Marvin’s voice in her head: You don’t shoot once and then check. Or hit once, either. You keep going until the threat isn’t a threat anymore.

  She fired again. And again. Each impact caused the man to twitch, but he was still holding the table leg, still on top of Dash—

  She fired a fourth time. And then heard Marvin again: Front sights on the target. Gorilla grip. Roll the trigger.

  She squeezed the grip hard. Lined up the sights on the back of the man’s head. Eased out a breath. And rolled the trigger.

  BAM! The gun kicked. A fountain of blood erupted from the right side of the man’s head. He fell to his side.

  She heard a crash and spun again. The door to the library—a man was running through it. He was holding a gun. He saw her. Evie brought up the gun, but the man was too fast—he dove behind the checkout desk.

  She heard Marvin again: Don’t confuse cover and concealment. Concealment is something you hide behind. Cover means the bullets can’t go through.

  Could she shoot through the desk? But if she didn’t hit him, she’d be wasting bullets. And their own position was exposed—

  “Evelyn!” the man yelled from behind the desk. “Don’t shoot. I’m not here to hurt you. Marvin sent me. He gave me a message so you would know I am who I say I am. Are you listening? Can we talk?”

  Evie was suddenly paralyzed again. Could it be true? But what if it was another trick?

&nbs
p; In her peripheral vision, she saw Dash roll to his knees. He picked up the table leg and stood. She wanted to check him, to touch him, to make sure he was all right. And tell him to hide again, to make himself small, there was another man with a gun.

  But she had to stay focused. Panting, she managed to say, “Tell me. The message.”

  “Marvin told me to tell you that the Orioles should never have traded Machado to Los Angeles. I don’t even know what that means, okay? But that’s what Marvin told me to tell you.”

  Manny Machado had been Dash’s favorite player with the Orioles. Marvin had given him Manny’s walk-off home run ball when they’d first met. And Dash had been heartbroken when the Orioles had traded Manny to the Dodgers. No one else would have known all that. It had to be Marvin.

  “Okay?” the man said again. “Can I come out?”

  “Yes,” Evie said, her hands beginning to shake. “But . . . slowly.” She realized she was still on her knees and came to her feet. The moment she stood, a bolt of pain shot through her left ankle.

  “I’m going to start with my hands,” the man called back. “Okay? You’ll see they’re empty. And then the rest of me. Now I know you’re scared. If you’re pointing a gun toward me, please lower it, okay?”

  “Let me see your hands first.” She realized her voice was shaking now, too.

  A pair of empty hands appeared above the desk. “Okay? Now it’s your turn. Lower the gun. We don’t want to have an accident.”

  She was suddenly suspicious. “How do you even know I’m pointing it at you?” she called out.

  “Because I would be. Now listen. I’m going to move very slowly. But I want you to tell me first you’re not pointing a gun at me.”

  She wanted to believe him so much. But she was afraid to. Still, as long as she could see his hands, it seemed safe to lower the gun.

  A little.

  She lowered it. “Okay,” she said. “It’s down. Not that much, though. So don’t try anything funny.”