by Mason Cross
She opened her mouth to say something. She didn’t know if it was going to be a threat or a plea or something in between, but suddenly she couldn’t remember. Whatever she had been about to say wasn’t important. It could do nothing to this man who had just destroyed them. Destroyed her. And all because Murphy had persuaded her to go after him.
“I don’t want to see you, or anyone who works for you again, Faraday. If you try to come after me … I’ll find a way to really hurt you. Is that clear?”
Faraday dropped the tablet on the seat. She closed her eyes and nodded. Message received.
And then, as quickly as he had appeared, Carter Blake was gone. Faraday barely registered the noise of the door slamming shut. She barely heard the sound of his footsteps echoing off the concrete walls of the underground parking lot. She kept staring ahead at the place where he had last been.
In her coat pocket, her cell phone began to ring.
TWO MONTHS LATER
EPILOGUE
COLORADO
The early-evening drive from the county airport had been slow going at first, but as we headed north, the roads seemed to clear up. I settled into an unhurried cruising speed of fifty and thought about the events of the last few weeks as I snatched glances at the beautiful scenery of the Animas River Valley during the occasional straight sections of the winding road. The days were getting longer, and the sun was still way above the level of the San Juan Mountains.
The revelations about Winterlong’s operations, and particularly the assassination of Senator Carlson, had provoked a shitstorm in Washington. Faraday had been right about the initial reaction: widespread shock and disbelief, an announcement by the president, a full investigation. Charges. Jail time. She had been wrong about the other thing: It had taken weeks to drop off the front pages, and the aftershocks were still making themselves felt all these weeks later.
The special operations organization unofficially known as Winterlong had been disbanded, of course. That was an understatement. All personnel were called into Washington pending an exhaustive investigation of their actions going back for the previous decade. A couple of men were already up on murder charges. The information on the Black Book showed that Usher had carried out the Carlson hit, which meant that my killing of him had robbed the nation of a trial. Everyone from senior personnel to the lowest levels had been hauled over the coals and charged on any hint of involvement with the crimes of the organization.
At all times, spokespeople for the Department of Defense were at pains to point out that Winterlong was a bad apple, an outlier. A concealed tumor. By virtue of its classified and top-secret status, it had been allowed to operate way beyond its original remit and authority without the knowledge of anyone outside of its immediate command structure. Catastrophic mission creep, they called it. It was a convenient line. It also happened to be mostly true. But not entirely. It would have been impossible for them to operate and continue to be funded without someone higher up knowing a little about what they did, even if all that person knew was not to ask more questions.
Faraday had taken my advice. She had managed to get in front of the investigation before it could really pick up momentum. She had cooperated fully, explaining how Drakakis had covered up the worst activities of the group, aided and abetted by Murphy and some of the other men. The black hats. She agreed to testify in the hearings, cooperating fully. She explained how she had been focusing on cleaning house, thwarted again by Murphy, who had manipulated her into authorizing seek-and-destroy missions against former operatives. Her career had taken a hell of a hit, but she might just stay out of jail.
After the events at the house, when the worst of the blizzard had abated, Bryant and I had made our way back to the nearest town. I had called John Stafford at Moonola from a phone booth, reversing the charges. After letting him vent his anger at me for a couple of minutes, I told him I had good news and I had bad news. Being a pragmatist, he asked for the bad news first, and I gave it to him: Bryant had gotten away from me, and I had no leads on his whereabouts. The good news was I had both copies of MeTime, and he would quickly be able to verify that no other copies had been made. I was sending those to him by secure courier.
Stafford still wasn’t happy about letting Bryant go, and now he was even less happy about doing so without having a chance to berate him in person. I told him I hadn’t finished, that I was returning the software together with a full refund of his fee. It’s not often I fail to deliver, I said, and for the sake of my reputation, I couldn’t take his money.
Stafford had mulled it over and decided the deal was acceptable, assuming he could authenticate the MeTime copies and that no other copy ever turned up anywhere else. Damn right it was acceptable. A priceless asset returned to him for the price of a phone call. Bryant had helped me out by cracking the sunset code on the Black Book and setting up secure coordinated distribution to the media. Considering that, plus the small matter of him saving my life, I felt that I owed him one.
“Are we nearly there yet?”
The sweet voice from the booster seat in the back pulled me out of my reflections and ruminations. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Alyssa Bryant’s face creased into a ball of impatience.
I glanced to my right and exchanged a smile with her mom. Jasmine Bryant was wearing a red summer dress and a black cardigan in deference to the lingering chill in the air.
“She beat me to it,” she said.
I calculated how far we had to go. “Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
There was a grunt from the back. “That’s for-ever.”
Eighteen minutes later, we crossed over the Animas River itself, the tires thumping on the expansion joints of the bridge, and entered the town of Durango, Colorado. A couple of minutes later we took a left off the main road onto a short cul-de-sac of four modest-sized houses. I pulled the Ford into the gravel drive of the house at the far end, applied the hand brake, and turned off the engine.
Jasmine got out, opened Alyssa’s door, and started to unbuckle her. I got out of my side as the front door of the house opened. Scott Bryant appeared in the doorway and bounced eagerly down the steps, before slowing down and walking out toward us. He looked as though he wanted to run but was holding it in check. He was wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt, and he looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Jasmine and Alyssa were still getting out of the car and hadn’t seen him yet. He held his hand out and we shook.
“So you found them.” He smiled.
I affected a look of being insulted. “Of course I found them.”
Jasmine straightened up at the sound of his voice, and they exchanged a look. Neither of them said anything, but a second later they were preempted by a four-year-old comet on a straight trajectory for her daddy.
Bryant caught her in his arms and lifted her up, grinning from ear to ear. “My girl. How did you get so big?”
“Spaghetti, mostly,” Jasmine answered.
Bryant kept Alyssa aloft and turned to look at Jasmine. “I thought she hated pasta.”
“We’ll bring you up to date.” Jasmine smiled.
With a little complaint from Alyssa, Bryant put her down and drew Jasmine in for a kiss. “It’s gonna be okay now,” he whispered.
Jasmine said nothing, but she nodded as though she knew it was the truth.
They had all entirely forgotten I existed, which was fine by me. I gave them another few moments to enjoy their reunion and then cleared my throat.
“So I have to get going.”
“You don’t want to stay for dinner?” Bryant asked.
“Is it spaghetti?” Alyssa cut in.
“Pizza,” Bryant answered.
“Yuck.”
“Thank you,” I began, “but …”
“Please, Carter?”
I looked down at Alyssa’s big brown eyes, my mouth opening to make an excuse, and then surrendered, powerless.
Jasmine and Alyssa went ahead of us. Bryant and I tagged along behi
nd, taking our time walking up to the big old house. There was a red mailbox with the name Milo hand-painted on it. I repeated it out loud.
“Previous owner, I guess,” Bryant said. “I’ve adopted it for now. Scott Milo. What do you think?”
“You don’t really look like a Scott Milo.”
“Who does?”
“Good point.”
We got to the door, and Bryant looked like he’d remembered something. “So what about you, Mr. Man-With-No-Name? What’s the identity of the week now?”
I smiled. With Winterlong out of action, there didn’t seem much point in starting out on a whole new name. Not yet, anyway.
“I’m still Carter Blake.”
“Still?”
I thought about it, really for the first time, and nodded. “It just seems to be my name now.”
Bryant grinned. “Come on in.”
The smell of something good emanated from inside the house. We went inside for dinner. Over conversation and jokes and stories, I began to remember that there were good things in the world, too. I thought about Carol for the first time in a while and wondered where she was now. Wherever she was, I hoped she was with friends, thinking about the good things.
An hour later, full of pizza and soda and ice cream, I was back in the driver’s seat, cruising along the highway as the sun dipped below the hills and plunged the world into twilight. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t thinking about the past anymore. I was thinking about the road ahead. I was thinking about all of the other roads this one connected to and the ones those connected to. I was wondering where they would take me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Once again, it took a lot of people to help me get this book across the finish line.
First of all, thanks to my family. I would probably still be writing this thing if Laura, Ava, Scarlett and Oliver hadn’t let me disappear into my study for long periods to think up new ways to give Carter Blake a hard time.
Big thanks to my editor Jemima Forrester, for being typically great at the whole editing thing, but also for the encouragement, ideas and tireless championing of the books. Luigi Bonomi, for being a kickass agent and always being available to help and reassure. Alison Bonomi, for braving my first draft at lightning speed and letting me know what worked and what didn’t.
Everybody at Orion, particularly Angela McMahon, Graeme Williams, Virginia Woolstencroft, Sarah Bauer, Bethan Jones, Andrew Taylor, Paul Stark and Jon Wood. Eric Meyers, for making me sound great in audio. My long-suffering beta readers, especially Mary Hays, James Stansfield and Mhari Greenwood. Special thanks to Craig Williamson for generously giving up an evening to share his experiences of Afghanistan. I’m also indebted to the members of a top secret organisation with no name, for the support and friendship – crime writers really are the coolest and friendliest people.
Finally, appreciation is due to all the reviewers, bloggers, booksellers and librarians who do such a great job letting people know about the books and helping me to reach new readers.
ALSO BY MASON CROSS
The Killing Season
The Samaritan
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2016 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Mason Cross 2016
The right of Mason Cross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 5966 7
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6TH
THURSDAY, JANUARY 7TH
FRIDAY, JANUARY 8TH
SATURDAY, JANUARY 9TH
SUNDAY, JANUARY 10TH
TUESDAY, JANUARY 12TH
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALSO BY MASON CROSS
Copyright