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“Yeah. I think Angelica’s got writer’s block. She’s been at least 15 percent more insufferable lately.”
I sighed. Susan patted my hairline, where the bump Nick had given me was receding.
“Trip was that good, huh?”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said as we headed toward the house. “Right now I’m going to finish this coffee and then I think I need to lie down.”
“Got a hangover?”
“More like existential dread, I think.”
“Well, you’ve got half an hour. Shauna Bulger’s on her way over.”
“What?” I stopped beside her at the bottom of the stairs. “She’s coming here?”
“She just called.” Susan shrugged. “Said she needs your help.”
Desert Outside Bagram, Afghanistan, 2010
Nick might have looked at the bodies on the floor. The children. The women. He wasn’t sure. Later, visions of them would come, push their way into his brain in the cold hours of early morning, but they were always different. Sometimes, in his visions, they were so perfect it was like they were all huddled asleep on the earth floor. Other times, he saw the deaths in all their gory specificity. Eyes wide. Blood coughed like black stars onto faded fabric. He was only in the room for seconds before Roger Dorrich dragged him out of the house and slammed him into the warm brick wall of the little house, his rifle shouldered and two hands clutching Nick’s tactical vest.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you—”
“Shut up, Jones. Shut up. Let me talk.”
“You killed them! You killed them! You killed them!”
“Jones!” Dorrich snarled, grabbing Nick’s jaw and shoving his head into the wall. “There’s no time for bullshit! We’ve gotta move fast!”
Rick Master was there, leading a stiff-legged and gasping Karli Breecher out of the house. Master was carrying a battered old farmer’s rifle with duct tape wrapped around the stock.
“Listen up,” Dorrich said as Breecher was thrown against the wall beside Nick. “What just happened, happened. Everything’s under control. All you have to do is follow our lead. The scouts will have picked up the gunfire. There will be teams on their way here any second. We need to set this up properly and call it in.”
“What the hell is this?” Breecher was huddled into Nick’s side, her rifle gripped against her chest. “What are youdoing?”
“It’s whatwe’redoing,” Master said. “Look, everything’s gonna work out. Just fall into line. Jones, you’re going back up to the edge of the slope and fire on the house and car. Breecher, I’m sorry. But you’re going to have to be the one who takes the hit.”
“What do you mean?” Breecher asked. Her voice was quavering badly. Dorrich reached forward and grabbed the shoulder of her vest, pushed her sideways. Nick reached out to scoop her back against his side, an automatic reaction, but the shock had slowed him, numbed him. He would remember the sight of her there, silhouetted against the light of the house’s interior, bent slightly as though bracing, as though she knew what was coming. Master stepped back, actioned the farmer’s rifle and shot her in the stomach.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SHAUNA BULGER STOPPED just outside Gloucester, on a forested strip of side road dappled with sunlight. She waited ten minutes, her eyes on the rearview mirror, anticipating with dread the appearance of the two men in the battered truck she had spotted outside her home in Needham.
She’d hopped into Mark’s pale-blue truck, leaving soon after she saw Kylie and Don off. She’d driven quickly past the two men, hoping against hope that they’d head into the house looking for the contents of the safe instead of following after her. Just in case they did, she had made a twisty, turny route through the suburbs as she headed for the highway. Nothing. They didn’t appear now. But they knew what the truck looked like. She’d need to get rid of it.
She got out and went to the back of Mark’s truck. She looked at the big suitcase lying on its side at the head of the truck bed, strapped into place between two similar suitcases loaded withMark’s clothes and shoes. There was no blood seeping from the middle case. No ominous stains. Nothing to indicate what terrible cargo was curled within it.
Shauna got back into the truck and picked up the dead woman’s phone. It didn’t need an access code, which was an unexpected blessing. The device told her the flood of calls that had come in that morning were from a contact named simply “D.” There were no messages from that number. Shauna flipped through the recent messages in the lead-up to the intrusion at her home.
Yo Mar, you bringing somethat good shit to Franks party on Sat? Will pay.
We need reup at Smithton house. 50caps.
Shauna had spent enough decades as a cop’s wife to know what reups, caps, and bringing “good shit” to parties meant. It meant the female intruder and the one named Pooney were drug dealers. Shauna could have guessed something like that from their faces, their jittery movements, the terrible planning surrounding the break-in. All Shauna had to do now was find out who their boss was. She wanted to find the man who had sent them, the man who had set in motion this runaway train on which Shauna was now trapped, barreling down the side of a mountain. She again scrolled through the messages, each contact labeled only with a single initial. She stopped when she discovered texts from “P,” which she supposed must have been Poon.
Where u?the contact labeled P asked.
Dunkies,was the reply.
