Rapture

Chapter Fifty-one

Across the street from Mels’s house, Matthias stood in the lee of a large maple, arms crossed over his chest, feet planted a hip’s distance apart.

He could see her in the upstairs dormer, at her desk, her head bent, her brows down hard in the light shining from the ceiling above her. From time to time she eased back in whatever chair she was sitting in and stared straight ahead—then she returned to her laptop.

She was going through everything.

His job was done.

So why didn’t he feel at peace? Surely this was his prove-it-or-lose-it crossroads, this confession through her that was going to go out to the world? On that single flashdrive, he’d undone his years of work, sending his organization into a free fall that was going to wipe it out: The operatives would scatter for cover. The politicians would go ultra-earnest and disavow all knowledge. A congressional or senatorial special committee would be convened. And at the end of countless taxpayer dollars and months of inquiry, the matter would be closed.

And then another arm of the operation would be started by someone else: Dirty work was still going to be sought by this otherwise lawful nation, because sometimes you had to sink to the lower level of your enemies and play ball in their sewer.

That was reality.

So why the hell was he not, at this very moment, dragging himself to Manhattan, getting his cache, and hitting the road for parts and countries unknown?

It wasn’t Mels.

Leaving her was the death of him in a lot of ways, but he was okay with that. His disappearing was the right thing for her, and that was all that mattered—even though he was going to miss her for every heartbeat between now and when he actually died and stayed that way.

And it wasn’t his conscience. He didn’t feel the need to turn himself in just so his enemies could find him and kill him in a prison. His only chance of survival was out in the real world—and it wasn’t like the constant hiding was going to be a party.

That shit was just a movable set of bars.

He was going to pay for the rest of his life for what he’d done.

So what the hell was his problem?

Abruptly, a scene in the desert came to him, the recollection of him and Jim in that crude hut, the sand under his operative’s feet…the bomb under his own.

Matthias hadn’t remembered anything after the explosion, not the horrible pain he must have been in, not the miles through the dunes or the Jeep that Isaac Rothe had come in or that first, endless night after he’d blown himself apart. But he knew what had happened a little while afterward: Jim had come to his bedside and threatened to expose what he’d nearly done to himself.

He had granted Jim his freedom from XOps then, giving the man a pass to get out.

The only one.

And then, after two years, their paths had crossed once more, up in Boston. In contrast to what had happened on the other side of the planet, that slice of the recent past was still unclear to him, the precise ins and outs of what had gone on fuzzy, even as the rest of his life was clear as a bell—

At the end of the block, a man turned the corner at a lazy pace and entered into the pool of light beneath a lamppost. He was walking a dog, a large dog, and he was dressed in some kind of suit…an odd suit, something that looked old-fashioned—

It was the man from the Marriott’s restaurant.

Matthias put his hand into his pocket and settled his palm on the butt of the gun he’d gotten from Jim.

When you were in the situation he was, just-in-case was the only way of thinking.

The man came closer, going out of the reach of the illumination briefly before reentering into the lit skirt of the next streetlamp.

The dog was a wolfhound, an Irish wolfhound.

And as the pair passed, the man looked at Matthias with eyes that seemed to glow. “Good evening, sir,” he said in an English voice.

As Mr. Dapper kept going, Matthias frowned. There was something off, something wrong….

The guy didn’t throw a shadow, he realized. Except how could that be?

Matthias quickly looked up to Mels’s window. She was okay, still sitting there at her desk, reading about him—and when she dialed her phone and put it to her ear, he wondered who she was calling.

Time to go.

It was his theme song with her, wasn’t it.

He glanced back, expecting to see the man and the regal beast.

They were gone.

Okay, he was losing his ever-loving mind.

Turning away, he walked over to his rental car and took out the key with its little laminated tag. As he opened the door, Jim Heron was still on his mind, almost as if the guy had been placed there, like a cognitive billboard.

Matthias got in, locked the doors, and started the engine. Doing a three-sixty with his eyes, he double-checked that there was no one around, making sure that dog and the Englishman hadn’t decided to magically reappear—

At that moment, a sedan turned in off the main road and traveled at a slow pace right to the driveway of Mels’s place. The garage door went up, and a tidy-looking woman got out and went inside, pausing to hit the button to reclose the panels.

Mels was not alone.

This was good.

Matthias hit the gas and took off, thinking about the information, the challenge, the opportunity he’d given her. The good-bye that he hoped, maybe over time, would recast their short tenure together in her mind.

He was an evil man, and she had brought the only good out in him he’d ever had. Perhaps she would believe that someday. After all the truth was ugly, but hopefully it had served a purpose—

Matthias jerked in the driver’s seat, shock flooding through him as the last thing he’d looked at before signing off on that desktop at the Marriott came back to him: his profile, his live profile, his current one that had not been included, on purpose, in his cache of exit strategy intel—

Jesus Christ.

That made no fucking sense.

As far as XOps knew, he was dead—it had been right there, so blatant he hadn’t paid any attention to the red check by his picture.

So why the hell had they sent an operative to Caldwell for him?

He hit the brakes for a stoplight at the very moment it all became clear. “Oh…shit.”

The first operative had come to the Marriott. The second had shown up at Jim’s place at that garage. And in both cases, everyone had reasonably assumed the assassins had been sent for Matthias.

Except he wasn’t the target.

Jim Heron was.

The man’s dossier had been marked orange, which meant his death hadn’t been confirmed in person when he had “died” in Caldwell. So as far as the organization was concerned—and they were right—Heron was living and breathing.

And they were going after him.

The first rule of XOps always had been no loose strings. And there had been a number of people who had disapproved of Matthias’s letting the man go—and now that he was out of the picure?

Heron was fair fucking game.