Theaella

42

The wail of sirens reached him now, still miles out. They both knew that help would not arrive in time.

Petro’s face trembled. “Who is Jack Merriweather to you?” His voice held something more than fear. Something like outrage.

Matthew said, “Someone who needed my help.”

Petro stared at him, his forehead twisted in disbelief. Spilled espresso snaked between the flagstones, joining a rivulet of crimson. The dead air smelled of dark roast and iron.

“Who are you to him?” Petro asked.

Matthew said, “Nobody.”

Petro’s dark beard bristled around a wavering mouth. No words emerged.

Matthew said, “But now it’s over for him.”

Petro coughed, and blood speckled his lips. He smiled a wobbly smile that put a twist in Matthew’s gut.

The sirens notched up, ever louder, ever closer.

Matthew sighted on his forehead.

A final round ended the mission.

The Whole Story

Matthew found Jack in the swampy backyard of the Lincoln Heights house, staring at his reflection in a brown puddle. His shoes were muddy, as were his arms up to the elbows. He held a wrench cloaked with slime.

When Matthew stepped through the cracked sliding-glass door, Jack started and grabbed his chest. “Jesus. Why didn’t you knock?”

“I did.”

“Oh. I guess I zoned out … I don’t know, contemplating the human condition.”

“In a mud puddle?”

He shrugged. “Where better?”

Matthew frowned, conceding the point. His eyes snagged on the wrench. Jack followed his gaze to the dripping tool in his hands.

“I figured there was a broken connection down there. Usually the T-joint stubbing up to a sprinkler head.”

“But there are no sprinkler heads.”

“There used to be,” Jack said. “See how the ground’s mounded up there?” He pointed with the wrench, but Matthew saw only mud and more mud. “So I went in and fixed it.”

“For who?”

Jack shrugged again. “I figured for once it might be nice to leave a place better than it was when I got there.” He looked at his hands, the dirt now cracking across the knuckles. “I don’t have a lot of ways to say thanks anymore.”

“To Violet?”

“To anyone.” When his gaze lifted, Matthew was surprised by the dread it held. “What happened?”

“I took care of the other thing,” Matthew said.

“How?”

Matthew pictured Petro lying pinned beneath his bodyguard in the courtyard. That speckling of blood in his silver hair. He hadn’t raised an arm against the bullet like so many did.

Instead he’d smiled.

Matthew hadn’t liked that smile. Had it held something knowing? Or was it merely a final show of pride, a refusal to give in to fear? Maybe it was that simple—he hadn’t wanted to give Matthew the satisfaction.

Matthew said, “They’re all gone.”

Jack took a step back, his shoe plunking in the puddle. It pulled free with a sucking noise. Around them mosquitoes whined and swirled. “Am I safe now?”

Matthew hesitated, caught a flash of Petro’s dying moment in his mind’s eye. He’d asked about Jack. What had Matthew said? Now it’s over for him. And then Petro had smiled.

Why the hell had he smiled?

Matthew had eliminated Vincent and his crew. Unmasked the laundering ring. Run up the chain of command to the man at the top and left him lifeless on the flagstones of a courtyard beneath a mound of bodyguards.

It was done. Any peripheral players who remained no longer had an operation to plug into. Their leadership was dead, the files blown. They likely had no idea who Jack Merriweather was, and even if they did, no incentive remained for them to harm him.

Theaella would continue to do her best to match code names from Grant’s books to the bottom feeders in the scheme, but it was time to get the case back into the hands of the authorities, where it belonged.

What was Matthew supposed to do? Keep Jack holed up in a tear-down house indefinitely? Because of a smile?

“Am I safe now?” Jack asked again.

Matthew’s head throbbed and then throbbed some more. “Yes,” he said.

“So where … where should I go?”

Matthew tossed Jack the zip drive onto which Theaella had copied all of Grant’s files. “Hollywood Station. Let them finish what your cousin started.”

Jack wiped his hands on his jeans and pocketed the zip drive.

Matthew said, “You never called me. You never met me. You never saw me. You went to Grant’s office alone, and a guy tried to shoot you. You got scared, went underground. That’s your story. The whole story. Understand?”

Jack nodded.

The first thing Matthew would do was remove the dried-out contact lens and climb into bed. He’d rest until his head stopped throbbing, the nausea receded, and his vision stopped playing hallucinogenic games with the world. He thought about the row of bottles in his freezer drawer, the world’s best vodkas chilled and waiting. Once the symptoms were gone, he’d go with something smooth and nuanced, like CLIX. Shake it so hard that crystals would mist the surface off the pour. A sprig of basil from the living wall. Maybe a stainless-steel martini glass to retain the cold. He wanted the first sip to make his teeth ache.

A nice reward after a long three days’ work.

But Petro flashed into Matthew’s mind once more, interrupting his vodka reverie.

For a dying grin, it had looked awfully smug. As though Petro knew something Matthew didn’t.

As if he had a secret.

Matthew replayed the conversation they’d had, how readily Petro had deployed his braggadocio: The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think.

Jack said, “Would you mind driving me to my truck?”

Matthew resisted a temptation to clench his jaw. He wanted to squeeze the bridge of his nose, dig his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids to stave off that incipient headache. He wanted to put a check next to the mission, deliver Jack back to his life, and then—for the first time—start his own. A life of his own making.

But yet. That smile.