“I hate to see anybody be above the law,” Dom said. “Present company excluded, of course.”
“I hate stupid laws,” Jonathan countered. And yes, he’d caught the irony in Dom’s words, but he chose to ignore it.
There was a moment of silence as Dom sipped from his own mug. “You make terrible coffee. I might as well put a pinch of grounds between my cheek and gum.” An awkward silence. “How’s your friend Dylan?”
“I can’t talk about Dylan,” Jonathan said. That was because the entire Nasbe family was being assigned a new life. If you think it’s hard to hide someone from the mob, try hiding them from the CIA. Just because Dylan did something heroic and helpful did not clean the slate of the bad stuff. Jonathan wished him well, but he didn’t think it could end well for him in the long run. Frankly, Jonathan lost a lot of respect for the man when he decided to suck his family into his disappearance instead of just going away solo.
But it was not for him to judge.
“Okay, Digger,” Dom said. “I’ve been here for fifteen hours. We’ve drunk through the night and now it’s morning, and we still have not had a meaningful exchange. Let’s have it. Why am I here?”
Jonathan said nothing.
“Dig, you suck at this. You don’t invite me for private getaways unless there’s something private that you need to get away from. So let’s have it. Consider my confessor hat and my shrink hat to both be on my head.”
For as long as Jonathan had been in the business he’d been in, Dom had been his single relief valve. It helped that as both a psychologist and a priest, he was compelled by both manmade and holy laws to keep secrets secret, but mostly, he depended on Dom as a friend. Perhaps his only true friend.
“What the hell am I doing, Dom?” Jonathan asked.
“I need way more than that.”
“This op into West Virginia. We killed a lot of people. We maimed even more.”
“Forgive me, but you say that as if it’s a first time. Meaning no disrespect, you’ve been killing and maiming people for a long time. What’s different?”
While those words were exceptionally harsh, Jonathan knew that Dom meant no harm. One of the reasons their friendship had lasted so long was because they communicated bluntly with each other.
“Jolaine Cage took pleasure in burning people alive.”
“Did you take any pleasure out of burning people alive?” Dom asked.
Jonathan felt his ears go hot. “Of course not. I was horrified.”
“So how did you channel your horror?”
Jonathan knew that Dom knew, but there had to be a reason for him asking. “She’s done,” he said. “She’s off the teams.”
“Done and done,” Dom said. “How’s Box with that?”
Jonathan shot him a look. “Less than happy. But I think he gets it.”
Dom kept watching the tree line. He seemed to understand that Jonathan handled moments like this best without eye contact. “Not to repeat myself, but done and done. You’ve chosen a path for yourself, Dig, that doesn’t allow for a lot of introspection. It’s a little late to change, don’t you think?”
It was a valid point. Scorpion had committed more murders than Jonathan cared to count over the years, but he got through the day by convincing himself that every killing was justified. People chose the courses they chose, and at the moment when they chose to cross the line that threatened other people’s lives, they’d abandoned the most important clause of the social contract. The fact that Jolaine had wandered so far off the reservation didn’t rest directly on his shoulders, and the fact that he’d fired her removed any of the burden that remained.
“How did your chat with Wolverine go the other day?” Dom asked.
Jonathan chuckled. “If only the public knew,” he said. “It turns out that our Victor Carrington is in fact a US Army officer named Ian Martin. He’s a complete whack job, but he’s claiming that General Manfred Brock, also of the US Army, is involved with the plot to overthrow Washington.”
“I know that name,” Don said. “General Brock.”
Jonathan turned his head and waited till he had Dom’s gaze. “He’s the chief of staff of the United States Army.”
“A coup?”
“Yep. Of course, there’s no proof beyond the rantings of a crazy guy. Wolfie doesn’t think anything will ever come of it.”
“So the guy just walks?”
“Welcome to Washington,” Jonathan said. “Wolfie hadn’t even shared the details with the president. Apparently, the Honorable Mr. Darmond does not like to hear bad news unless it is accompanied by hard evidence.”
“Unbelievable,” Dom said. “I can’t count the number of things I’ve learned from you over the years that I wish I could unlearn.”
“Hey, priest-boy,” Jonathan said. “You chose to be the sin-catcher.”
Dom laughed. “Sin-catcher. I like that.” Then he drilled Jonathan with his eyes. “Quit dancing, Dig. I happen to know that you groove on the political intrigue, so don’t tell me that’s why I’m here. Dig deep, my friend. What’s really going on in that addled head of yours?”
Jonathan closed his eyes. In the past, every mission had left him feeling exuberant, confident that he’d made the world a better place, if only for a few people. “Okay, here it is,” he said. “I think I made a mistake in breaking up Carrington’s operation—Ian Martin’s operation. I believe in my heart of hearts that the world would be a safer place if that abortion of an army had been better trained and more successful.”
Dom’s scowl deepened. “You’re not suggesting that you wish you’d been killed.”
“Of course not,” Jonathan scoffed. “I’m suggesting that the Darmond administration is the most dangerous group that’s ever sat in Washington. And we’ve had some pretty scary groups.”
“So, we should just kill the lot of them?
Jonathan waved that off, too. “No. Dammit, I don’t know what I mean.”
“We get to have another revolution in just three years,” Dom reminded. “Election Day.”
Jonathan now wished he hadn’t said anything. He did not need a lesson in civics.
Dom continued, “And that oath you pledged back in the day was to support the Constitution, not the president. And certainly not some tin pot who considers himself smarter than the electorate.”
Jonathan didn’t need a lecture on his enlistment oath, either.
“So, let’s talk about what this is really about,” Dom said.
“I did.”
“Sure you did.” Dom crossed his legs and sipped at his coffee. They said nothing as they stared out at the beauty.
Jonathan had spent a lifetime keeping the emotional doors of his mind closed. Locked. Hermetically sealed. He didn’t like where his head was taking him because it made no sense to go there. What was done was indelible. The only option was to suck it up and move on. Young people died by the thousands in every war the world has ever fought. Over the years, Jonathan had lost track of the number of young men he had killed. He’d never tried to keep a count. They were the enemy, the force that had to be vanquished in order for larger goals to be met. He offered no apology because there was nothing to apologize for.
So why, today, was he worried that his voice would not work if he tried to talk? Why had he felt this way since hours after they’d returned from West Virginia?
“Did I ever tell you about my observations about stupidity?” Dom asked. He didn’t turn his head away from the view. Jonathan didn’t answer.
“It goes like this,” Dom said. “Stupid is a word we throw around with abandon. Stupid is as stupid does, right? You watch Internet videos, and you wonder what went wrong with the gene pool. People make stupid mistakes, and when they get hurt—or worse than hurt—we say, ‘yeah, well, duh.’ I know you’ve seen a lot of stupid in your line of work, and the price can be ridiculously high.
“But there’s a special breed of stupid that has always tugged at me. Call it gullibility. People g
et talked into doing stupidly wrong things for all the right reasons. There’s usually a powerful demagogue in the mix somewhere. The gullible hear what they want to hear, and then they dedicate themselves to that cause. Heavens, some might say that such is the case with every person I serve at Mass. People who think that way would be wrong, of course.”
Jonathan let him talk. Dom wasn’t given to empty pontification. He had a point to make and he’d make it soon.
“I think it hurts to hurt the gullible. I think it must feel like punishing gullibility with the death penalty.”
And there it was. Jonathan felt as if he’d executed the gullible. He clamped his jaws tight and stared even more intently at the tree line. What was done was done.
“Tell you what,” Dom said, rising to his feet. “You stay put. I’m going to go get my stole, and you and I are going to talk.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve been writing novels now for twenty years. In a very real way, each book represents in my mind a chronicle of my family’s journey. Looking back, life’s ebbs and flows are inexorably tied in my head to what I was writing when the big events transpired. The deaths and the births, the frustrations and elations. Life is, after all, an emotional sine curve—the thrill ride of a lifetime. Through it all, the one constant—my rock and my best friend—has been the ever-loving, ever-beautiful Joy. She continues to be my everything.
As does Chris. There is no more profound testament to the passage of time than the series of photos shot over the years of my writing, where the early ones show him barely coming up to my shoulders, and the recent ones show me barely coming up to his. No prouder father walks the earth than I.
As I write this, I am one the cusp of a huge new change. After ten and a half years of holding down a Big Boy Job by day and writing my novels in the off-hours, I will be leaving the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, effective January 1, 2015, making the New Year a new year indeed. A decade is a long time, and during those years I’ve made some friendships among the staff and our members that I truly hope will endure. Against advice of counsel (see the first paragraph of this section), who fears that I will offend through omission, I choose to throw caution to the wind and name some of the people whose company I have particularly enjoyed, and whose counsel I would particularly miss if we fell out of contact. In no particular order: Ed Szrom, John Geiger, Anne Marie Horvath, Kent Kiser, Joe Pickard, Tom Crane, Chuck Carr, David Taylor, David Wagger, Doug Kramer, Cap Grossman, Veronica Costanza, Jerry Sjogren, Lee Twitchell, Bill Rouse, Anatoly Mendelsohn, George Adams, Rick Hare, Kendig Kneen, Randy Goodman, Debbie Hayes, and Tamara Deiro. And yes, I’m sure there are a few whose names I have neglected to include here, but please know that I meant no offense by doing so.
Jonathan Grave knows a lot about weaponry, explosives, and tactics. He’d know a lot less if I wasn’t allowed to pick the brains of some very smart people. At the top of the list are Chris Grall and Lee Lofland, the former for things military and the latter for things police-related. I can’t thank you guys enough for your willingness to keep me from screwing things up. Then there are the folks who I believe would prefer to remain anonymous. Thanks to you folks, too.
My appreciation for all that the Kensington team has done to make my books better than they could ever have been otherwise, and then to support them in the marketplace, deepens and grows with every day. Steve Zacharias sits in the big chair, and Michaela Hamilton makes sure that my plots make sense, that the characters come alive, and that I stay below my quota of adverbs (I wrote smilingly). Special thanks to Vida Engstrand, Alexandra Nicolajsen, Karen Auerbach, and the rest of the outstanding Kensington marketing team.
And Anne Hawkins. Goodness gracious, nothing would be possible without my wonderful friend and agent, Anne Hawkins.
Turn the page to read an exciting teaser excerpt from the next Jonathan Grave thriller by John Gilstrap . . .
FRIENDLY FIRE
Coming from Pinnacle in 2016!
Ethan Falk recognized the monster’s voice before he saw his face. The voice pierced the white noise of chatting patrons at the Caf-Fiend Coffee House and froze Ethan in place, any thought of the relative cleanliness of the milk steamer forgotten. Perhaps the voice by itself wouldn’t have done it. It was the voice in combination with the words. “Be quick about it, if you don’t mind.”
Be quick about it.
With the lightning speed of imagination Ethan was once again eleven years old, his ankles shackled by a chain that barely allowed for a full step, that prevented him from climbing stairs without crawling. The pain was all there. The humiliation and the fear were all there.
Without the voice, he doubted that he would have recognized the face. It had been eleven years, after all. The monster’s hair had turned gray at the temples and hugged his head more closely. The features had sagged some and his jaw had softened, but the hook in the nose was the same, as was the slightly cross-toothed overbite. There was a way he carried himself, too—a square set to his shoulders that a decade had done nothing to diminish—even as he stood waiting for his order.
Ethan felt his face flush as something horrible stirred deep in his gut, a putrid, malignant stew of bile and hate and shame. “Look at me,” he whispered. He needed the confirmation.
The old woman directly in front of Ethan snapped, “Are you even listening to me, young man?”
Her voice startled him. No, he wasn’t listening to her. She stood there, a silver thermos extended in the air, dangling from two fingers. “You’re out of half-and-half,” she said. Her clipped tone told him that she’d said it before. The heat in her eyes told him that she’d said it maybe five or six times.
Reality had morphed into the past with such violence that her request registered as a non sequitur. “Huh?”
“My God, are you deaf? I said—”
The monster turned. Raven, Ethan’s nominal girlfriend and fellow barista, handed the monster his drip coffee, and as he turned, Ethan caught a glimpse of him full-face. Ethan’s heart skipped. It might have stopped.
The lady with the thermos continued to yammer about something.
Please need cream or sugar, Ethan pleaded silently. That would put him face to face with the man who’d ruined so much. The man who’d beaten him, torn him.
But apparently the monster preferred his coffee black. He headed straight to the door, not casting a look toward anyone. Whatever his thoughts, they had nothing to do with the sins of his past.
Perhaps they had only to do with the sins of his future.
“. . . speak to your supervisor. I have never—”
“No,” Ethan said aloud. The monster could not be allowed to leave. He could not be allowed to torture others.
He could not be allowed to dominate Ethan’s life anymore with recalled horrors.
Another customer said something to him, but the words—if they were words at all—could not penetrate the wall of rage.
Ethan needed to stop him. Stop the monster. Kill the monster.
He dropped the stuff he’d been holding—a tiny pitcher for the steamed milk and the spoon through which to sift it—and was deaf to the sound of them hitting the floor. People looked at him, though. Raven at first looked confused, and then she looked frightened.
“My God, Ethan, what’s wrong?”
Ethan said nothing. There wasn’t time. The monster was on the loose, out in the world, preying on other people. On other children.
Raven tried to step in front of him to stop him—how could she know?—but he shouldered past her. He moved fast, not quite a run, but close to it. Fast enough to catch every pair of eyes in the shop.
As he passed the pastry case, he snagged the knife they used to cut bagels. It had always been the wrong style for slicing bread, with a straight edge instead of a serrated one, but they’d learned as a crew that if you kept a straight-edged knife sharp enough, it will cut anything.
The whole rhythm of the shop changed as he emerged from behind the
counter with the knife. The old lady with the thermos put it down on the counter and collapsed into a fetal ball on the floor, covering her head and yelling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
In a distant part of his brain, Ethan felt bad that he’d inflicted fear on the poor lady—all she’d wanted was a little customer service—but in the readily accessible portion of his brain, he didn’t give a shit. Closer still was the thought that maybe next time she wouldn’t be such a bitch.
The crowd parted as Ethan approached the exit with his knife. He didn’t slow as he reached the glass door, choosing instead to power through it as if it weren’t there. The blast of autumn air felt refreshing after the stuffiness of the coffee shop. Invigorating. Head-clearing.
Where is he?
The shop lay in a suburban strip mall in the suburbs of Washington, DC. There weren’t many people milling about, but this was lunch time, so there were more than a few. The monster could have gone only so far. He had to be here somewhere. He had to still be within view.
Ethan saw a guy from a Subway sandwich shop chatting on the corner with a hot girl from the quick-quack medical place next store. She wore checkerboard scrubs that strained in all the right places. Ahead and to the left, a lady in a red jacket carried a take-out order from the ribs joint. (“You bring your appetite, we’ll supply the bib.”) Beyond that lady, taillights flashed on the back end of a pickup truck, followed by the backup lights.
“Shit, he’s getting away.”
He stopped himself from chasing, though, because he knew that the monster wouldn’t be in the pickup. It was too far away. Not enough time had passed to get that far.
Ethan pivoted on his own axis to look the other way. He stepped around the corner of the coffee shop to look past the drive-through traffic. To scan the parking lot.
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