Arctic Fire

CHAPTER 8

Troy’s photograph was prominently displayed on a large easel in the middle of the mansion’s great room. In the picture he was standing on a dock in front of the Arctic Fire with his arms crossed defiantly over his chest as the ship lay at rest in Dutch Harbor.

A crewmate had snapped the photo minutes before they’d sailed, and Troy had e-mailed it out to Bill from the computer on the bridge as the ship reached open waters. That was three weeks ago to the day. The day Troy Jensen had finally taken on a challenge he couldn’t conquer. The day his daredevil life had begun to catch up with him and the fuse leading to his death had ignited.

Jack felt that familiar pang of jealousy knife through him as he gazed at the picture of Troy that Cheryl had turned into a three-by-three-foot monument for the memorial service. Troy was still the headliner, still larger than life — even in death. He looked amazing standing there with his dirty-blond hair, chiseled cheeks, strong chin, perfect dimple, and sparkling steel-blue eyes that dazzled every woman who had the misfortune of glancing his one-night way.

“You bastard,” Jack whispered. “How am I supposed to compete with you now?”

“That’s a tough one, I’ll grant you.”

Jack’s eyes raced from the photograph — to Hunter Smith. This was the first Jack had seen of Hunter today.

“I’d really started to think Troy was bulletproof,” Hunter said as he gazed at the photograph. “Almost untouchable,” he added in a reverent voice. “It’s a good lesson for all of us.”

“It’s not a lesson. It’s common sense. You can only give death the finger so many times before it nails you. He got what he was looking for. He got what he—”

“Don’t say it,” Hunter interrupted sharply.

“Say what?”

“You’ll be sorry, Jack.”

“Ah, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just trying to—”

“He got what he deserved. That’s what you were going to say.” Hunter shook his head as if he was relieved. “I’m just glad I said it first. See, that’s why I’m good for you, Jack. I say the things you want to say but shouldn’t.”

Jack grinned faintly despite his irritation. “So that’s why you’re good for me, huh, Hunt? That’s what I get out of us being friends?”

“Yeah and I’m still trying to figure out the symmetry. I’m still trying to figure out what I get out of being friends with you.”

“Try this one,” Jack suggested. “I introduced you to your wife and you’re damn lucky I did. Amy’s a hell of a catch.”

Hunter squinted as if he were thinking hard about what he’d just heard. “Debatable.”

“You’ve got no business being married to that woman, and we both know it.”

“Well—”

“Don’t even start with me on this.”

A throw-in-the-towel shadow slid across Hunter’s face like a cloud sliding in front of the sun. “OK, OK.”

“Without me,” Jack continued, “you wouldn’t have had a chance with Amy.”

Hunter put his hands up. “OK already, you’re right.”

“I was an idiot not to go for her myself.” Jack searched the crowd quickly. “Maybe I should get her a drink and have a talk with her. Where is she anyway?”

“Stay away,” Hunter warned. “I’ll kill you if you go anywhere near her.”

Jack’s half grin grew into a broad smile. Hunter Smith was as gentle a man as had ever walked the earth. In the fifteen years they’d been friends, they’d never even come close to blows.

Jack couldn’t say that about all of his old friends. He’d never been the one to throw the first punch, but he’d never been one to walk away from a fight either. He’d put two guys in the hospital with broken jaws after ducking punches, then firing back. Both of them had apologized later for what they’d said and for firing first, but Jack hadn’t accepted. He didn’t live by the second chance rule when it came to violence, especially when the violence had started after a comment about him being adopted.

“I’d never go behind your back, Hunt.”

Jack had known Amy since grade school, and he’d gotten his chance to do that two years ago at a Jensen Labor Day party. She’d had too many cocktails during the course of the afternoon, and she’d tried to persuade him into one of the mansion’s third-floor guest bedrooms. But he’d guided her straight back to Hunter as soon as he’d understood what was happening.

Amy had called him the next day to thank him for being a gentleman. Despite what had happened, Jack still figured she was a good girl and that Hunter was lucky to have her. She’d sworn it was the only time she’d ever come on to anyone since she’d been married to Hunter. And Jack believed her because he’d always known her to be a straight arrow, almost a prude.

“Never,” he repeated emphatically.

Hunter looked down at the floor and nodded. “Yeah, I know you wouldn’t,” he acknowledged quietly. “I definitely know. Amy told me.”

Jack had wondered if she had. Well, it had been two years and they were still together. It must have taken a lot for her to tell him, and Jack admired her for being so honest. He admired Hunter for sticking around too.

He glanced again at the picture of Troy standing in front of the Arctic Fire. Being with each other constantly was about the toughest thing two people could do, he figured. Which was why so many marriages failed, he believed, and why he’d always be a bachelor. He wasn’t a loner, but he liked doing things his way. Compromise wasn’t a priority for him. Not nearly enough of one to get married, anyway.

Women came on to him a lot even though he didn’t consider himself that handsome. Pretty women too, and he found the attention curious. It had to be the money they thought he had. Or maybe they were trying to get to Troy through him. If that was the case, they wouldn’t be coming on to him much anymore.

“Troy did get what he deserved,” Jack said, still gazing at the photograph, “and I’m not afraid to say it.”

Hunter checked around the crowded room, trying to see if anyone had heard that. “And I was so sure you’d be in a good mood today.”

There was something about the picture that had really caught his attention. It was as if the picture were trying to talk to him, as if it were trying to send him a clue or a connection to something vitally important. But he couldn’t figure out what that was, and it was driving him crazy.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Hunt?” he asked, finally looking away, frustrated by his inability to decipher the message. He was almost sure he knew what Hunter had been driving at with the remark, and it was pretty brutal. But he wanted to hear the confession. “Well?”

“Nothing,” Hunter said, guiding Jack away from the easel as two sad-eyed young women approached. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”

Jack thought about pushing it, but let it go. Hunter was one of the few people he hated to confront. With almost everyone else, it wasn’t a problem.

It was early December, and Connecticut was enjoying an unseasonably warm and sunny stretch of weather. It was a good thing for the Jensen family too. So many people had come to pay their last respects to Troy that the mansion alone couldn’t have accommodated the crowd. The place was huge, but not huge enough. Fortunately, the beautiful weather allowed Bill and Cheryl to use the sprawling stone porch at the back of the house too.

“Sahara scotch,” Hunter ordered after they’d moved outside through a set of French doors and made it to the nearest bar. “Johnny Walker, half an ice cube, and an H₂O molecule.” He held his hand up. “On second thought, hold that ice cube and the water molecule in the name of conservation.”

Jack nodded to the bartender. “Same.”

When they had their drinks, they slipped through the crowd to the stone wall framing three sides of the raised porch. From here they had a panoramic view of the Jensen barns and pastures, which stretched to an unbroken line of oak and pine trees a quarter mile away. From where they stood, they couldn’t see another house. This was pricey real estate even in a pricey town. Wall Street had been good to Bill and Cheryl.

“Here’s the thing,” Jack said. “Troy took crazy risks all the time, and I don’t care what anybody says about how modest he was and how he didn’t care if people noticed. He cared, Hunt, he cared a lot. He was a show-off in his own way. Look at that damn front-page article he got himself in the Wall Street Journal about the Seven Summit thing. Jesus, what a stick-your-finger-down-your-throat-and-gag-yourself-until-you-puke crock of self-promotional crap that was.”

“Your father got him that article,” Hunter reminded Jack. “Troy had nothing to do with it. Your father’s the one who’s friends with that editor at the Times.”

“You mean my adoptive father.”

Hunter groaned. “You’re thirty years old, Jack. When are you gonna get past this thing?”

“When Bill and Cheryl start calling me by whatever my real name is.”

“What’s wrong with Jack?”

Jack shrugged as he leaned down and rested his forearms on the wall. “Nothing. It’s a great name. It’s just not mine. It’s the one they made up and hung around my neck when they brought me home to Connecticut in the limo from the secondhand baby supermarket in Brooklyn. It’s the name they gave me so they could feel better about me. So they didn’t have to call me Sonny or Vito or Carlo and think about who I really was every time they said it.”

Hunter took a healthy gulp of scotch. “I love you like a brother, pal, but you are one stubborn son of a bitch, especially when the liquor starts talking.” He made a sweeping gesture at all that lay in front of them. “Look at this place. It’s amazing. And Bill’s gotten us both jobs downtown, even the second one, even after we got canned at the first place. And if you ever did have money problems, you know Bill would take care of you. So if you don’t mind me asking — no, no,” Hunter interrupted himself, “even if you do mind, especially if you mind. What the hell are you bitter about? From what I’ve heard, if they hadn’t adopted you, your ass would be riding the back of a garbage truck in the Bronx or sweeping the floors of some housing project in East New York.”

Jack could feel the anger and frustration boiling inside him like it always did when he thought about this too much — especially, as Hunter pointed out, when the alcohol caught up with him. “They adopted me because they thought Cheryl couldn’t have kids. When Troy came along out of nowhere two years later it was all over for me because he’s blood and I’m not. Full stop. They would have given me back if they could have.”

“That’s bullshit, Jack, and you know it. They’ve always loved you. They’ve always treated you and Troy like equals.”

“Now that’s bullshit. At least as far as Bill goes.”

Hunter shrugged. “Well, what do you expect? He sends you to Exeter, one of the best prep schools in the country. And the day after you get there you tell the headmaster your name isn’t really Jack Jensen. You tell him it’s really Sonny Carbone or something like that and that you’re a made man in the mob. Then you tell him to fuck off in Italian in front of half the student body. Which would have been fine because he didn’t understand Italian, but you flipped him the bird too.”

“Yeah, well I’m not ashamed of whatever my real name is,” Jack grumbled. “I don’t appreciate Bill being ashamed.”

“He isn’t. He’s just—”

“Look at me.” Jack came up off the wall and rose to his full height of six two. “I look Italian. I look like my name ought to be Sonny Carbone. I’ve got jet-black hair and a Roman nose the size of New Jersey. I’ve even got a little olive to my skin, which means I’m a mutt even in Italy. I mean, could I ever pass for a blue blood? Would anybody ever believe my last name is really Jensen? Of course not,” he answered his own question quickly before Hunter could say anything. “Goddamn it, I’ve been trying to pass this joke of a twig of the family tree off for a long time, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the smirks and the eye rolls I get all the time when Bill introduces me to his society friends as his son. Everybody knows I’m really just an artificial limb.”

“First of all,” Hunter said, “your nose isn’t the size of New Jersey.” He grinned. “It’s more like the size of Delaware, and what do you care? It’s never affected your ability to get women. The way they throw themselves at you always amazes me. Troy too. He told me that last fall when he was home. I think he was really jealous of you for that.”

“That’s such a bunch of crap. He had absolutely nothing to ever be jealous of me for because—”

“Second,” Hunter broke in loudly, “you’re wrong about Troy. He didn’t care about getting ink. I’ve never heard him talk himself up once, and this is coming from a guy whose brother is one of the biggest self-promoters of all time. Muhammad Ali was a modest man compared to my brother.” Hunter paused when he saw that Jack was actually listening. “Third and most important, Troy did care about you. He cared a lot about you. I know that for a fact because we had a long talk about it that last time he was home. He told me how you always took care of him on the playground when you two were kids, and how much he learned from you over the years. How in a way you were still taking care of him. Which I didn’t understand and he wouldn’t be specific about, but I could tell he was being real serious. He said he missed you a lot too.” Hunter paused again, giving Jack time to think about everything he’d just heard. “So I don’t like hearing you say that Troy got what he deserved. You’re a better man than that, Jack. A lot better. And Troy doesn’t deserve to have that said about him, especially not by you. Look, he was a hell of a guy, and I know it wasn’t easy having him as a brother because he was the real deal. Everybody idolized him, and that was tough for you. It would have been tough for anyone to deal with that. But he still ought to get better from you, especially now.”

“I know,” Jack admitted softly. “I guess sometimes how different I am from everyone else in the family catches up to me.” He shook his head. “How different I am in every way. Even the way I think.”

Hunter rolled his eyes and groaned. “You have another one of those political arguments with Bill?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, I was over here one morning last week after we blasted that town in Afghanistan with cruise missiles, and Bill and I got into it.”

“You call him Attila the Hun again?”

Hunter knew him so well. “Nah, this time I called him Adolph. I’m tired of calling him Attila.”

“Did he tell you how you’re nothing but a bleeding heart liberal, and how you have no idea what it takes to run this country? And how you have no respect for the men and women of honor who keep you safe at night?”

“Doesn’t he always? And, for the record, I do have respect for those people, a lot of respect.”

“I know you do. You just wanted to see how hard you could get that vein in his forehead pumping, right?”

Hunter knew him so damn well. “I just think the United States ought to act with more compassion. Being the bully never makes anyone respect you. It pisses people off and makes them do stupid things. It makes teenagers take guns to school. And it makes terrorists fly planes into buildings.”

Hunter gazed out at the pastures. “Yeah, but I’m not sure compassion is the way either. Not with the freaks we’re fighting now.”

“Not you too, pal.”

“You know which side I come down on, Jack. You always have. Maybe I’m not as far right as Bill, but every once in a while we have to back up our rhetoric with some serious action. That is, if the rhetoric’s ever going to mean anything.”

“Even if that action means we kill children?”

Hunter rolled his eyes. “Come on, Jack, that’s not fair.”

“OK, OK.” Hunter was right. That wasn’t fair. “Do you have a problem with us torturing people we believe might be terrorists?”

Hunter thought about it for a few moments. “No, I don’t. I mean, as long as we’re pretty positive they are.”

“Jesus Christ, Hunt. You’re just like Bill. Down deep you think we ought to wipe those people off the face of the earth.”

“I do not, damn it. But I don’t want to be on top of the new World Trade Tower one day and see a plane hit the building twenty stories below me.” Hunter shut his eyes tightly. “I still think about those poor people who had to choose between being incinerated or jumping from a hundred stories up that morning. And I’m sorry, but I don’t have a problem with some water-boarding if that keeps the skies over our country safe. Or whatever else they use to make those people talk.”

“What if it’s you someday?”

Hunter gave Jack a WTF look. “What are you talking about?”

“What if they arrest you and start asking you crazy questions about things you’ve said on the phone or they want to know about people you’ve met with? What if they tie you upside down on a plank and start dumping cold water down your nose? What then, Hunt?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. No one’s going to arrest me for being a terrorist.”

“How do you know? They didn’t even give that guy in Yemen last year a chance to be tortured. He was an American citizen and they murdered him in his convoy.”

Hunter stared at Jack for several moments, as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Are you talking about al-Awlaki? The dude who was a senior al-Qaeda guy?”

“Right,” Jack agreed. “That guy.”

“Come on, pal. Buy a ticket on the real world train and come to sanity town where it’s always warm and sunny. We’ve got a nice couch waiting for you on the—”

“How do you know he was an al-Qaeda leader?”

Hunter winced as though he were in serious physical pain. “I know what you’re going to say, Jack, but even the New York Fucking Times said he was. That wasn’t a case of our government lying to us, not even close. That was a bad dude we killed.”

“You never know, Hunter. I think we have to be very careful when we start executing our own citizens without a trial.”

“And I think we have to protect our good citizens any way we can,” Hunter replied loudly. “We have to trust our leaders to do the right thing.”

“That’s a big leap of faith in this day and age.”

“In any day and age,” Hunter agreed, “but we have to. That’s why we elect them.”

“I don’t know.” Jack finished what was left of his scotch and put the empty glass down on the wall. He closed his eyes as the realization that Troy was gone finally started sinking in. “Troy did deserve what he got, Hunt,” he said quietly. “But I’m not glad he got it, I’m not glad he died.” Why the hell had Troy gone on that damn crab boat? Why hadn’t Bill steered him away from it? Bill had that power over Troy, the only one in the world who ever had. “At least, I don’t think I am.”

Hunter patted Jack’s shoulder. “You better figure that out, my friend. And you better figure it out soon.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed after a few moments. “I guess I better.”

Hunter finished his scotch and put the glass down on the wall beside Jack’s. “Have you ever wondered what Troy was really doing all this time?”

They were both facing away from the mansion, but when Jack heard what Hunter had said he turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

Hunter shrugged. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that Troy graduated from Dartmouth six and a half years ago, but he never settled down?”

“Not at all. Look, he was an endless-summer kid who never grew up. He loved how athletic he was and what he could do with all that talent. He loved being a rolling stone too. And he loved having all those different women.” Jack snickered. “And he loved that Bill paid for everything.”

“He was on the Arctic Fire to make money,” Hunter pointed out. “And he worked in that mine in Argentina two years ago.”

“He couldn’t possibly have made enough money doing those things to support himself in the way he wanted to live. He was a Jensen, remember? A real Jensen. He needed money, and he needed lots of it.”

“He wasn’t like that and you know it. He wasn’t materialistic.”

Jack was getting annoyed. “So what are you saying, Hunt? Spin it out for me.”

“I wonder if there was more going on with him than we realized. I’ve always wondered that.”

“Like what?”

Hunter shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about ever since I heard he died.”

Jack grabbed his glass off the wall. “Ah, you’ve always been a conspiracy guy. Accept the situation for what it is. A rich kid taking advantage of what he fell into just by being born.”

“Maybe,” Hunter said quietly, “but maybe not.”

Jack waved at Hunter dismissively and shook his head. “I’m getting another drink.”

As he stalked toward the bar, Hunter’s words echoed in his head. Jack had been wondering the same thing for a while.

CHAPTER 9

“Good afternoon, Mr. President.”

Carlson rose stiffly from the leather couch and extended his right hand beneath a practiced smile of indifference that came to his face automatically within the walls of the Oval Office after so many years. This was the eighth administration he’d served, and it no longer impressed him that he had direct access to the person the public and the press called the most powerful man in the world. Now he was more impressed by people who actually risked their lives every day in the shadows. People like Shane Maddux.

“I trust you’ve been well, sir.”

“Of course, of course,” President Dorn answered cheerfully. “I’ve got the best job in the world, I’ve got a wonderful family, and I’ve got my health. I have no excuse for feeling anything but absolutely outstanding. It would be a crime for me to complain about anything, Roger.”

The president’s greedy display of appreciation for his good fortune was a function of being in office less than a year, Carlson believed. The pressure of making decisions that affected billions of people every day — many of them negatively — hadn’t gotten to him yet. As he’d told Maddux, Dorn’s infatuation with the job would wear off around the first anniversary of taking that momentous oath on the Capitol steps on that blustery January day. At that point being president would turn into a grind, just like every desk job ultimately did.

Carlson always looked forward to that anniversary because dealing with a new president and his administration became infinitely easier. By that one-year mark the president no longer questioned the morality of what was going on in the shadows. By that time he fully appreciated knowing that there were people out there quietly killing the enemies because he’d come to realize how many people wanted to kill him and, bottom line, how vulnerable he was despite all of the Secret Service’s efforts. In fact, after that first anniversary, the president usually started wanting more of what Carlson delivered — much more.

That was the progression with the liberals. The conservatives were in it up to their eyeballs right out of the gate, even before they took the oath — especially the neocons. They were the easy ones to deal with.

Unfortunately, President Dorn was as far left on the political spectrum as any commander in chief of the United States could be. He was a tree-hugger from Vermont who thought the ACLU was the most important group ever founded; that the death penalty was a barbaric ritual that only lunatics could support; and that the founding fathers had made a huge error in judgment when they’d decided that everyone had the right to bear arms. David Dorn made Bill Clinton look like Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan look like Joseph Stalin.

“Well,” Carlson said, “I’m sure we could get you off with a small fine and some community service if you did complain about something.”

The president laughed heartily. “You’re amazing, Roger.”

Dorn was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a full head of dark hair who radiated charisma as impressively as the core of a nuclear power plant radiated energy, and couldn’t have looked more presidential if he’d tried. In fact, Carlson thought of Dorn as the floor model. He just wished Dorn’s political views weren’t so severely left of left. He’d never cared about a president’s political affiliation before, but he was starting to with this one. He hadn’t fully dismissed Maddux’s words of caution.

“You’re in your seventies, right, Roger?”

“Seventy-three, Mr. President.”

“But you look fifty-three.”

That was crap, Carlson knew. His gray hair was thinning, he had deep creases at the corners of his mouth, crow’s-feet at the corners of both eyes, and he’d started to get those brown spots on his arms and legs. And though he didn’t really need the cane he used when he met with Maddux, he still hunched over when he walked because of a bad disk in his back that should have been operated on ten years ago — but there’d never been time. He looked like an older man because he was an older man.

Lately, he was feeling like one too. He was pragmatic, he always had been, and he knew his days of dealing with the constant pressure of running Red Cell Seven were numbered. It was almost time for him to be done with this crazy thing he’d been devoted to for over four decades. It was almost time to yield the awesome responsibility of this job to someone younger, and he knew exactly who that would be. There would be a quiet approval process, but it would be only a formality. He just needed to get President Dorn in line before he could turn over the reins to Shane Maddux and ride off into the sunset.

“And you act thirty-three,” the president continued, gesturing for Carlson to sit back down. “I hear people half your age can’t keep up with you.”

Carlson turned his head slightly to the side, as though he was deflecting the remark. How the hell would the president know that people half his age couldn’t keep up with him? How would the president know of anyone at all who was trying to keep up with him? He shouldn’t.

Maddux’s warning rattled around in Carlson’s brain again, but he shook it off. The president’s comment had to be just an innocent, off-the-cuff remark.

“How about we settle on me looking sixty-three and acting fifty-three?” Carlson suggested as he sank back onto the sofa. “That work for you?”

“All right, Roger, all right.” The president chuckled as he sat behind his big desk. “So, how are you this fine, fine autumn morning?”

“Well, Mr. President, I woke up breathing.”

The president raised one eyebrow. “As I recall, that’s your favorite response to the question. It’s what you say every time I ask you.”

“You’re right, it is.” This was a first. The other seven men had never noticed that answer. At least, they’d never said anything about it. “I think it puts everything into perspective simply but elegantly, and I—”

“You woke up breathing all right,” the president interrupted, his tone turning measurably less friendly. “You woke up without a limp too.”

Carlson’s eyes raced to the president’s — and instantly he regretted his reaction. He hadn’t been taken off guard like that in years, and his transparent response to the remark was infuriating. He’d confirmed the truth with his shocked look like some peach-fuzz-covered adolescent would have to his father about breaking a window with a baseball. The surprised expression had lasted only a second, but if he’d done that in the field, he’d be maggot-food right now.

“No cane when you went for your coffee at the Starbucks down the street from your house in Georgetown this morning,” the president continued, “but you were using one the other day when you went out to that place you people have in Reston.”

Here was more bad news. President Dorn knew about the web of safe houses they operated in Reston, a northern Virginia suburb of Washington. The houses looked like the typical neighborhood homes of normal upper-middle-class suburbanites, but they weren’t typical at all. Dorn probably knew about the underground corridors that connected them too.

“Excuse me?” Carlson said hesitantly.

“You heard me,” the president replied as he scanned a memo. “But I’ll say it again. The other day you were limping. Today you aren’t. The other day you had a cane. Today you don’t.”

There was no way for Carlson to deny any of this. Protesting would only make him look foolish. “So what?”

“Well, if you’re deceiving people who’ve worked under you for decades and who idolize the ground you walk on, why wouldn’t you deceive me someday? That’s how I look at it.”

Carlson made certain to stare back at the president with an unwavering gaze. “Is there a point to all of this?”

“There is, Roger,” Dorn acknowledged, putting the memo down. “I want you to know that I have great respect for what you and your people do and the dangers you and they face every day. Your organization is a valuable weapon in what I’ll call my twilight intelligence arsenal. It has been for many administrations, for many presidents before me. I get all that,” he muttered as though he didn’t get it at all, and didn’t care that he didn’t. He held up a hand when he saw that Carlson was about to speak, and his expression slowly became one of irreversible resolve. “But I’m not going to let anyone around me run free, even if they’ve had that room to run for a long time. It’s too risky in this day and age, when every reporter out there is trying to break a career story every minute of the day and will stop at nothing to do it. So there will be limits to what you can do without my direct approval. Strict limits. I won’t always be watching, but I could be. Make it easy on yourself and assume I am. That’ll make it easier on everyone.” He hesitated. “Another thing, Roger. You’ll no longer have direct access to me. It’s too damn risky to have you traipsing in here as some hush-hush special advisor no one knows. Too many people are asking questions.

“So I’m going to put a buffer between us,” Dorn continued, “maybe even a couple of them. And that only makes sense because you’ll be meeting with this person a lot more than you’ve been meeting with me, much more than I’d ever have time for. See, I want to know exactly what you’re doing at all times because I’ll be approving all of your major initiatives before you execute any of them in the field. No more running free in the shadows, Roger. No more freedom to handle things any way you choose. I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but that’s the way it’s going to be. I am commander in chief of the United States of America and that’s an order.”

Carlson took a measured breath. He could have allowed that LNG tanker to sail into Boston Harbor and blow the city to hell — but he hadn’t. In fact, he’d lied to Maddux because he hadn’t told Dorn about the potential disaster that had been narrowly averted thanks to Maddux and his crew of Falcons, one of them in particular. About the plot Maddux had disrupted that would have killed so many people and thrown one of the nation’s biggest and most important cities into total chaos.

Carlson exhaled the breath as deliberately as he’d taken it in. Maybe next time he’d let that tanker explode; maybe next time he wouldn’t call the SEALs and avert the disaster. Maybe then the president would have more respect for his twilight intelligence arsenal.

He gritted his teeth at the awful thought. He could never do that. He could never let all those people die. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did. Those were the people he’d taken a blood oath so long ago to protect.

“Don’t be upset with me, Roger,” the president kept going. “It’s all part of a process, all part of us figuring out how best to protect this country in difficult and changing times. Remember, at the end of the day we’re all on the same team. We all wear the same jersey. Don’t take it personally. You’ve made a great contribution to the country. You should be proud of most of what you’ve done.”

Carlson wanted to puke. He wasn’t proud of most of what he’d done. He was proud of everything. He had no regrets at all, and David Dorn needed to understand what an incredible insult he’d just tossed out there.

“Was there something else you wanted to see me about?” Carlson asked in a tone intended to make the president understand in no uncertain terms just how personally he’d taken everything. “Was there some other reason I was summoned to the mountain?” Carlson muted a satisfied smile when the president crossed his arms over his chest defensively. Dorn had gotten the damn message, and he’d gotten it good. “When I’m as busy protecting the country and you as I am.”

The president blinked several times and cleared his throat twice. “There’s been an inquiry about a young man named Troy Jensen. Do you know who he is?”

This time Carlson made sure his eyes shifted deliberately to the president’s and that his expression displayed no emotion whatsoever even though that was a very interesting bit of information he’d just gotten. “No,” he lied gruffly. He’d seen that intimidated shadow slide across the president’s face moments ago. The sudden display of weakness and uncertainty that had appeared on the handsome face sitting behind the great desk was indescribably satisfying to Carlson. “No, I do not,” he lied again, just as convincingly.

The young man — one of Maddux’s Falcons — had stolen the leaky forty-foot fishing boat at ten o’clock last night and managed to sail it out of the small harbor fifty miles north of Shanghai by himself without attracting attention. Now he was a hundred nautical miles out in the Pacific Ocean, just a tiny dot on a vast dark canvas beneath a full moon. There were only two hours of darkness left before the sun would begin brightening the eastern horizon ahead of him. Fortunately, the skies were clear and the winds were calm. He doubted this bucket of rotting wood and rusty bolts could stand up to much in the way of weather. A squall line and a couple of ten-foot waves in a row and the thing would probably sink straight to the bottom.

He sure as hell didn’t want to be out here long enough to find out, because that fisherman back in town was going to figure out very soon that his boat was gone. It wouldn’t take much time for the local police to contact the Communist authorities in Beijing when the report of a stolen fishing boat came in. A few minutes after that, they’d scramble jets from several of China’s coastal air bases, and a short time later one of those jets would send a missile screaming through the hull of this thing, and then it would definitely go straight to the bottom — in lots of little pieces.

The authorities in Beijing were onto the stolen fishing boat gig. They figured anytime that report came in now that the perpetrator was a Western spy getting the hell out of Dodge. Three times out of four they were right.

The handheld GPS device indicated that he’d reached the rendezvous location seven minutes ago. Since then, he’d been drifting along in neutral. The ocean was fairly well illuminated tonight thanks to the full moon and the stars, and he’d come out of the wheelhouse to the foredeck to get a better view.

As he checked his watch for the third time in the last two minutes, the conning tower of the attack submarine USS Nevada broke through the surface of the ocean inside a massive boil of bubbles less than a hundred feet from the fishing boat. This was the fourth time he’d been removed from country this way, but it still startled him when the massive sub rose from the surface just beside him like that.

Tremendous relief rolled through his system now that the cavalry had arrived. God, it was a wonderful feeling.

A few minutes later he was aboard the Nevada and the fishing boat was headed to the bottom of the ocean after two explosives experts from the sub had detonated enough charges in its engine room to put a gaping hole in the hull.

CHAPTER 10

Jack followed Bill’s longtime executive assistant into the spacious fortieth-floor office of the First Manhattan Bank headquarters and sat down in the wingback chair she pointed to.

“Your father should be back in a few.”

She was Rita Hayes, and her voice still had the faint strains of a Brooklyn accent she’d been trying to erase for years — at Bill’s suggestion. She was fifty-two and still very attractive and vivacious, but she’d never been married.

Which Jack had always found interesting. He’d caught her gazing at Bill in very affectionate ways before, though after thirty-three years together maybe that was understandable. Rita was good friends with Cheryl too. So there couldn’t be anything going on behind Cheryl’s back.

“Bill’s downstairs on the equity trading floor with the head of syndications,” she explained. “They’re going over final pricing on a new issue that’s hitting the street tomorrow.”

Rita was basically part of the Jensen family. She and Cheryl often rode horses together out in Connecticut on weekends, and then she’d join Cheryl and Bill for dinner afterward. So she heard all the family dirt. Every last speck of it, Jack assumed.

Still, she was a professional and never let on to what she knew. She never gave Jack attitude when they saw each other or spoke on the phone, which he appreciated.

“Want anything to drink while you wait?” Rita called over her shoulder.

“No thanks.”

When she reached the door, she stopped and turned around. “Was Bill expecting you? I didn’t see you on his calendar.”

Jack shook his head. “No, I just dropped in to say hi.” He saw the surprise in her expression. He’d never come by on his own like this before. He’d always been summoned. “I wanted to surprise him.”

“Oh, OK. Well, if he isn’t back up here soon, I’ll call and let him know you’re waiting.”

“Thanks.”

When she was gone, Jack got up and moved cautiously to the office window. Wall Street was a long way down, and he could feel his heart starting to thump as he neared the glass. He stopped a foot from the window and leaned over to peer out. He’d always had nightmares about being way up in a skyscraper when an earthquake hit. He’d had one of those nightmares just the other night, after Troy’s memorial service. And there was a serious fault not far north of here.

Wall Street was small and narrow, so most people were disappointed when they saw it for the first time, Jack knew. Despite its unimpressive appearance, the street was still one of the world’s most competitive arenas. And Bill Jensen was one of its most successful players. He was a bona fide superstar because over the last three decades he’d made First Manhattan a fortune in fees taking companies public and presiding over what had become the top mergers and acquisitions department in New York City. Now he was CEO of the huge bank, which had offices in all fifty states and most countries around the world.

Jack backed away from the window and moved to a long credenza that was positioned against the opposite wall. Covering the credenza and the bookcases and attesting to Bill’s incredible success was a gallery of tombstones. Lucite-encased announcements of the IPO transactions he’d led, which had originally been published in the Wall Street Journal when the deals had gone down. The many pictures of him shaking hands with politicians and sports stars, which rose from among the tombstones like tall buildings on the Manhattan skyline, only heightened the intimidation factor people experienced within these four walls, Jack knew.

Jack was thirty, but he still felt like a naïve kid when he came in here. That little brokerage shop he traded bonds for on the other side of the island was as about as important to the world of high finance as a pimple on the ass of an ant. First Manhattan was the lion that ate the anteater that ate the ant.

Jack picked up a photo of Bill standing next to the governor of New York and nodded. Bill always stood the same way in pictures. With his suit coat unbuttoned and his thumbs hooked inside his belt about a foot apart.

“Hello, Jack.”

Jack looked up quickly at the sound of the deep voice. “Uh, hi, Bill.”

Bill grimaced as he closed the office door and limped stoically toward the big leather chair behind the platform desk. He was a tall, silver-haired man who’d put on a few pounds after suffering a nasty knee injury playing squash several years ago — which was why he’d turned to skydiving to get his kicks. He couldn’t cover a squash court anymore, but he could jump out of an airplane. He’d already reinjured the knee twice smashing into the ground on landing, but neither injury had stopped him from going back into the sky as soon as he could.

As Bill eased into the chair and it creaked beneath his weight, it struck Jack that he seemed worn out — physically and emotionally. He’d seen Bill tired, but not like this.

“Why have you always had such a hard time calling me Dad?” Bill asked somberly.

Jack put the photo back on the credenza and sat down in the wingback chair that was positioned directly in front of Bill’s desk. It always reminded him of a witness stand whenever he came here. This time was no different.

“What do you mean?”

“You called me Bill just now. Why not Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

Because you try to throw me out of a plane in the middle of the night and then tell me you wish I was more like Troy when I fight you off.

That was what Jack wanted to say, but he didn’t. He was looking for peace today. He’d thought a lot about what Hunter had said at the memorial service.

“I mean, I know I’m not your real father,” Bill went on, “but I’ve taken care of you like your real dad would. So why don’t I get that handle?”

“I guess because—”

“I don’t feel any closer to you today than I did when you were a kid,” Bill kept going. “Maybe not as close, and we weren’t very close then. At least you called me Dad back then.” He shook his head, still frustrated. “Jesus, we didn’t talk at Troy’s memorial service last weekend. I’m not even sure I saw you there. Were you?”

“Of course I was,” Jack answered defensively. “You and Cheryl were so busy with everybody else. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“That’s another thing. Can’t you at least call her Mom? I guess it’s OK if you want to call me Bill like I’m some old uncle you only see a few times a year at family functions. I guess I don’t really care. But it would mean a lot to Cheryl if you’d start calling her Mom, especially now that Troy’s gone.”

Jack fidgeted with the cell phone he’d dug out of his jacket. He had no intention of actually trying to reach anyone, but he desperately needed something to do. “Well, I—”

“What do you want, Jack?”

Jack shrugged. “Can’t I just stop in to say hi?”

“Sure, but I don’t think that’s what’s really going on.” A smug grin seeped its way into Bill’s expression. “On your way to Brooklyn? Got something going on over there?”

Jack’s eyes flashed to Bill’s. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Incredible. Bill must have had him followed at some point. That was the only way he could possibly know what was going on in Brooklyn. Christ, he was a control freak. How the hell could Cheryl have put up with him all these years?

“I mean it, Bill. If you’re talking about—”

“I don’t think you’re stopping by just to say hello,” Bill said loudly as his smug grin faded, “because of an e-mail I got a few minutes ago.”

“I don’t care about—”

“It’s from Jamie Hildebrand.”

Bill had called Jamie a few years ago when Jack and Hunter were fired from their previous jobs, and within an hour he had new positions for them. They weren’t great jobs because Tri-State wasn’t a great firm. But the salary covered Jack’s living expenses, including rent on his one-bedroom apartment outside of Greenwich.

Of course, if Bill had really wanted to help, he would have gotten them jobs at his huge bank the way he was always offering to do for Troy. Good traders at First Manhattan made the big bucks, much more than traders at Tri-State, because they had so much more money to play with. But the old man had never done that.

Bill pulled out his cell phone, donned his reading glasses, and worked his way to the message. “It says here you walked into Jamie’s office an hour ago and quit. Didn’t give him a reason, didn’t thank him for taking you and Hunter on when jobs in New York were scarce because the economy was in the tank. Just quit for no reason.” He looked up over his glasses. “Mind telling me why?”

Despite that edge to Bill’s voice, Jack felt a wave of positive energy surge through his body. It was time for them to connect, for them to get close, for him to lose his bitterness about being adopted. And he was convinced that what he was about to say would do it.

“I’m going to Alaska, Bill.”

“Excuse me?”

That didn’t sound good. “Uh, I’m going to Alaska, to Dutch Harbor.”

“Why the hell would you do that?”

That definitely didn’t sound good. “I want to find the captain of the Arctic Fire and see if he told the cops the truth about what happened to Troy. Or if there’s more to the story.”

“What do you mean, ‘more to the story’?” Bill demanded. His expression was suddenly an angry mess. “Troy went overboard in a storm. He was out on top of the crab traps trying to tie one down when a rogue wave hit the ship. It happens up there on the Bering Sea, and it’s as simple as that.” Sadness rippled through Bill’s expression, mellowing the fire. “Troy never should have been on that damn ship in the first place. I should have told him not to take the job. It was my fault, not the captain’s. End of story.”

“Well, yeah, that’s the official word we got. But don’t you want to be sure?”

During the last few days Jack had researched the Alaskan crab boat business on the Internet and called an old friend from college who was living in Alaska to ask him about it. It turned out that most of the captains who sailed from Dutch Harbor were stand-up guys with good reputations. But a few weren’t. Sage Mitchell, the captain of the Arctic Fire, was one of those men who weren’t.

Something about that photograph of Troy standing in front of the ship was still bothering Jack too. Really bothering him. He felt like he was so close to making some kind of breakthrough, but he couldn’t quite get there.

“There were four other men on the Arctic Fire that night,” Jack kept going. “All of them survived the storm. It’s always been the other way around when something like that happens around Troy. He makes it and the others don’t. Or he saves the others.” Jack shook his head. “It doesn’t add up, Bill. Troy’s a survivor. He’s incredible when it comes to that. He was basically bulletproof, almost untouchable.”

“How do you know there were four other men on the ship?”

“I’ve got a friend up there,” Jack explained. “He’s pretty connected, and he found out. It’s not really that big a state when you get right down to it, not population-wise, anyway.”

“Who is he? What’s his name?”

That seemed like a strange question to ask right now. “What difference does it make? Look, I just think we ought to—”

“Stay away from Dutch Harbor,” Bill warned as his expression turned steely again. “You hear me?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jack shot back, rising out of his chair. This conversation wasn’t turning out right at all. “You can’t keep me away from there.”

“I won’t give you any money,” Bill countered, coming out of his chair too. “You can’t have much saved, which, I’m sure, is the real reason you’re here. What are you going to do without it?”

“I’ll figure it out.” Though Jack wasn’t sure what “it” was going to be. Bill was exactly right. He didn’t have much saved. And it bothered him to hear how Bill knew that. “I’ll figure it out,” he repeated.

Bill glared across the desk. “Why are you really going to Alaska?”

“Because you haven’t,” Jack snapped. “Because you’ve been sitting on your ass for a week and you haven’t done anything.” It had taken every ounce of courage he had inside him to say that. “And I can’t believe you haven’t. I mean, you’re so suspicious of everyone and everything, and you’ve bragged to me so many times about how being paranoid has been such a key to all your success in the business world. So why would you take some crab boat captain’s word for what happened? Some guy you couldn’t even pick out of a police lineup who claims Troy was the only one who went into the water that night. The other four guys on the ship are all family, they’re all close. Troy was the only outsider. Something doesn’t seem right about all that, Bill.” Jack could feel perspiration seeping from every pore in his body, but he’d stood up to Bill Jensen in his office on Wall Street. It had been terrifying at first, but now it was an awesome moment he’d never forget. “You loved Troy so much.”

“But I’m trying to figure out why you hate me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve tried taking care of you, Jack. I’ve always tried making you feel like my own son even though—”

“See, that’s the damn problem. You’ve always had to try. You never had to try with Troy.”

“Well, I—”

“Admit it.” Jack had a reputation for not taking crap from anyone. In fact, the only person he’d ever bowed down to consistently over the years was Bill. But now that was over, and it felt good. In that instant it had felt like he’d grown up all the way. “You know it’s true.”

“Leave Troy alone,” Bill warned. “My God, what’s wrong with you? What’s all this really about?” As Bill’s voice trailed off, a look of understanding slowly slid across his face. “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to dig up dirt on him so you can throw mud on his grave. Still competing with him even though he’s dead, are you?”

“No. I just want to—”

“Leave him alone!” Bill shouted. “Let him rest in peace!”

“Give me a break, Bill! Look, maybe if I go up there I can finally do some good for this family. Maybe then I’ll feel like I’m part of it. Maybe then I won’t think about how I’m adopted.”

Bill gazed at Jack steadily for several seconds, and then his chin dropped slowly to his chest. “You really think that, don’t you?” he mumbled. “That you’re adopted, I mean.”

“I think about it every day,” Jack admitted, trying to figure out what the hell Bill was driving at. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

He could have sworn he’d seen a mist in Bill’s eyes as the old man’s chin had gone down. He leaned slightly to the side and checked again. Sure enough, there were tears, and suddenly Jack felt a fear he’d never known. A fear that started as a slight uneasiness but quickly intensified.

Bill Jensen rarely talked about his emotions, and he never showed them — not sadness or fear, anyway. He hadn’t broken down even as he’d given an incredibly emotional eulogy at Troy’s memorial service. His voice hadn’t cracked once even as people in the audience had sobbed.

It seemed surreal for Jack to see Bill like this. And for the first time he understood how much he’d depended on this man over the years for everything. How Bill had been everyone’s rock for so long.

“What is it, Bill? What’s wrong?”

Bill sank back into his chair. “You never figured it out,” he whispered.

“Figured what out?”

Bill turned his head to the side and grimaced as if he were remembering something that caused him great pain. Like the image of a horrible accident that was burned so indelibly into his memory that even though the tragedy had happened years ago, it was still vivid in his mind.

“Come on. I—”

“You’re Troy’s half brother,” Bill admitted almost inaudibly. “Cheryl’s really your mother, but I’m not your—” He coughed several times as he fought to keep his composure. “Six months after we were married, Cheryl and I separated. We didn’t get divorced, we just separated.” His voice was shaking. “She went away for a few years because I was so damn focused on my career. And by the time I got around to begging her to come home, she was eight months pregnant with you by someone else. She stayed away until she had you, and then she came back. We kept everything very quiet,” he explained, “and on the advice of a psychiatrist who was a friend of my father’s, we told you and everyone else that you were adopted.” He shook his head dejectedly. “It was stupid, but we were young and we didn’t know any better. Once we told everyone, we couldn’t take it back.” He swallowed hard. “And I guess I was hurt, even though I had no right to be hurt because I was the one who wanted to be on my own again without any responsibilities. I was the one who sent Cheryl away, and I was such an idiot to do it. Anyway, the story about adopting you from someplace in Brooklyn was a bunch of crap. I…I just assumed you’d figured all that out for yourself somewhere along the line. Or that Cheryl had told you. I really thought she would have by now.”

Jack stared over the desk as the old man went quiet. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

He stood behind the bedroom door, focused on his breathing, on regulating it as he’d learned to do long ago. The front door had just slammed shut, and the sound had sent an explosion of adrenaline bursting through his system.

He heard the footsteps on the stairs come closer; heard the man’s humming grow louder; saw the figure flash past him through the crack between the wall and the door; and watched the man toss a jacket onto the bed and go into the bathroom, still humming happily.

Then he stepped from his hiding place and silently closed the bedroom door. The man wouldn’t be humming much longer.

“What the—” The man whipped around as soon as he saw the reflection in the mirror over the sink. “Who the hell are you?”

“Death.” It was what he always said at this moment, and simply uttering the word sent another mad rush of near-ecstasy-inducing adrenaline searing through his system. “Justice.”

The man’s eyes bugged out of their sockets as he stabbed in the air. “Get the hell out of my house right now, asshole, or I’ll kill you!” he yelled. “I swear to Christ I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands, you little shit.”

For a split second Shane Maddux caught his image in the mirror behind the man and he had to smile. No wonder the man wasn’t intimidated. The guy in the mirror was a little shit. Five-six and 140 pounds dripping wet, with a face only a father could love. Only his father hadn’t loved him. And maybe that was ultimately why he’d grown so fond of the deal he’d forged with Roger Carlson. One of the reasons, anyway.

“Do you have any last words?” Maddux asked calmly.

The man rushed toward Maddux before he’d even finished, screaming wildly as he tore across the bathroom floor.

Maddux delivered a wicked chop-kick to the man’s left kneecap, then stepped smoothly aside as the man collapsed to the floor, writhing and screaming in pain.

Maddux’s eyes narrowed as he stared down at the man struggling on the floor. The guy was a confirmed sex offender who four years ago had raped two young boys in the next town over. He’d admitted to everything during his initial interrogation with the detectives, but he’d gotten off when his case had finally come to trial because of a technicality and a young prosecutor’s inexperience. In fact, he’d laughed about the prosecutor’s mistakes in front of a crew of reporters on the courthouse steps a few minutes after the judge had been forced to let him go.

Maddux pulled a pistol from his pocket, pressed the barrel to the man’s forehead above his terrified eyes, and fired.

The order Carlson had given him in that envelope had been executed — and justice had been served. The system didn’t always work. Sometimes it needed help. Maddux was happy to provide that assistance.

He stared down at the dead man. Blood was pouring down the guy’s face like a stream racing down the side of a steep mountain. Maddux had always wanted to do the same thing to that priest who’d assaulted him four times in less than two weeks when he was a kid. He’d always wanted to put a bullet through the bastard’s head.

That priest was retired and living happily outside of Chicago. Maddux took a deep breath. Maybe it was finally time for a trip to the Midwest.

The moment he was past the doors of the First Manhattan building and out onto Wall Street, Jack lit a cigarette. After a week of warm weather, it had turned cold again in the Northeast. The temperature was down into the thirties, and the wind was whipping through the steep canyons formed by lower Manhattan’s tall buildings and narrow streets. But Jack wasn’t inhaling the smoke to warm himself up. He was doing it to calm himself down.

He wasn’t Troy’s adoptive brother after all. In fact, they were half blood brothers. He was a member of the Jensen family. At least, a lot more of one than he’d thought he was ten minutes ago.

It was so much to process, and his mind was still reeling. Who was his real father? Was he still alive? And why had Bill chosen that particular moment to drop the bomb? Was it simply that he was so weak because of Troy’s death that he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer?

Jack shook his head as he walked. Bill was a strategic and deliberate man. He usually had an obvious agenda for everything he did — and at least two more hidden ones. As far as Jack knew, Bill had never done anything out of weakness in his life.

He took a long drag off the cigarette as he headed up Wall Street toward the old Trinity Church. Well, to hell with Bill and this new information and to hell with trying to figure out why the old man had picked ten minutes ago to drop the bomb. The answers to all the questions would still be here when he got back from Alaska. They’d been waiting for thirty years. They could wait a little longer.

He was going to Alaska no matter what, he promised himself as he reached Broadway and stopped at the curb, waiting for the light to turn so he could cross. Something was calling him up there, something he couldn’t ignore. And nothing was going to stop him from going.

Except money.

Bill was right. He didn’t have much saved, and the trip was going to cost at least five grand, probably more. He’d been hoping Bill would offer to help, but that possibility had been flushed down the toilet right away. Bill wasn’t going to give him a dime, even though he’d been proudly funding Troy’s worldwide joyride for the last six and a half years.

When the traffic light at Wall and Broadway turned, Jack took one more drag from the cigarette, then flicked it away and stepped off the curb.

“Hey, buddy!” someone shouted from behind him. “Hey, look out!”

Jack’s eyes flashed to the right. A white van was racing down Broadway straight at him.

CHAPTER 11

Jack took several deep breaths, then knocked. It had been thirty minutes since the van had run the light on Broadway and almost killed him. But he still hadn’t completely calmed down, he realized as the door opened in front of him. He still had that irony taste in his mouth from his lungs pumping so hard, and his fingers were still shaking.

“Hi, Jack,” the young woman murmured from inside the apartment.

“Hi, Lisa.”

Lisa Martinez was a twenty-year-old first-generation Puerto Rican-American who lived with her three older sisters on the third floor of this run-down project that was in one of Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhoods. She stood slightly over five feet tall and weighed just over a hundred pounds. She had large, brown, almond-shaped eyes; lovely full lips; and caramel-colored skin. And her beautiful face was framed by long black hair.

“It’s good to see you, Jack. Come in.”

“Thanks,” he said, following her into the apartment. “Are your sisters here?”

“No, I’m by myself. Except for the baby, of course.”

“Of course.”

She led him to a rickety dining room table, which stood in front of a grimy window. The window overlooked a row of basketball courts littered with trash and broken glass. They were used more for closing drug deals than anything else.

As they got to the table, Lisa gave him a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek, then pulled back and motioned for him to sit down. “Coffee?” she asked in her heavy Spanish accent. “It’s really good. We just got it.”

He liked her accent and the way she always waited a few moments to give him that hug and kiss every time he visited. It was as if she was nervous and had to find her courage to do it. “That’s OK.” He eased onto one of the four metal chairs ringing the small table. After just a few seconds of being with her he’d already started to relax. She had this soothing effect on him he didn’t understand — but loved. “But thanks.”

“Cherry Coke?”

He shook his head. “It’s really OK, sweetheart.” It was obvious that she wanted to please him, and he was thirsty. But he didn’t like Cherry Coke, and it seemed like that was the only thing they ever had to drink here besides tap water. “I’m fine.” He searched her dark eyes for clues to how she was really doing. She hid her emotions well for a young woman, though he wasn’t sure she was trying to. It always seemed to him that it was a natural gift, that it wasn’t anything she’d perfected. “Are you OK?”

She looked wonderful for having given birth only two months ago, maybe even better than she had when they’d first met over a year ago. She still had that pregnancy glow about her, but the extra weight was gone. In fact, she looked slightly thinner to him than she had before she’d conceived.

Lisa shrugged. “All right. You?” she asked as she eased onto the chair beside his.

“I’m fine.”

He kept gazing at her. She was so nice and so beautiful, and he understood why Troy had been so attracted to her.

He let his chin fall slowly to his chest and took a deep breath. Troy…he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

“Are you sure? It looked like you were going to say something bad.”

“I was just thinking about this guy I need to call,” he lied.

“Oh.”

He wanted to tell her about the terrible thing that had happened. But now that he was here and he was gazing into those soulful eyes and that vulnerable expression, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t make himself break her heart. He knew how much she loved Troy.

He reached into his suit coat and pulled out an envelope. It had five hundred dollars inside, and that was all he could spare right now. He figured he was going to need the rest of the money he was pretty sure he’d scraped together today to get to Alaska. In fact, he’d probably need more than that when it was all said and done. But he’d work that out later on the fly, while he was in the middle of everything.

“Here.” He held the envelope out for her. “Take it.”

Lisa caught her breath and put a hand to her chest when she saw the cash. “Ay dios mio!” she shrieked, springing out of her chair to give him a huge hug.

“Don’t get too excited,” he said when she finally pulled back. “It’s just five hundred bucks. I’m sorry that’s all I can give you right now.”

“You’re so good to me. Why?”

“I have to be,” Jack answered simply. “That’s just the way it is.”

Lisa gazed at him for several moments, and then she turned and trotted into one of the bedrooms. A few moments later she was back, cradling her two-month-old son in her slender arms. He was wrapped snugly in a blanket and sleeping soundly, but Jack could see the tiny features of his handsome face as well as a shock of jet-black hair protruding from beneath his blue knit hospital cap. This little boy was her first child.

Lisa held the baby out and smiled. “Here, you hold him.”

Just the thought of doing that sent Jack’s heart rate into the stratosphere. He’d only held babies a few times in his life, and he’d been sweating profusely after only a few moments each time.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

Lisa laughed as she pressed the little boy against Jack’s chest. “Make sure you support his head.”

“OK, OK.” He took a deep breath as he gazed down at the tiny human being resting in his arms. “Well, hello there, little Jack,” he said quietly. “It’s nice to see you again.”

CHAPTER 12

Speed Trap was eating dinner by himself at the crumb-strewn table in the galley of the Arctic Fire. Tonight it was two hot dogs and some baked beans that had been sitting in a big, uncovered pot on the stove since yesterday afternoon, undoubtedly attracting all kinds of attention from bacteria. Even in the frigid air on the Bering Sea, those nasty creatures survived. So he’d zapped his helping of beans and the two hot dogs in the microwave that was on the dishwasher beside the stove.

The ship would make Akutan in a few hours to unload a second excellent haul of kings — not quite as big as the first, but enough to make him another fifty grand. And he was using these last few minutes of downtime to put some much-needed energy into his system. He’d eaten nothing for thirty-six hours because they’d been hauling traps back on board almost nonstop, so right now any food at all looked good to him. Even things he wouldn’t touch on land with someone else’s ten-foot pole.

“Hey, little brother.”

Speed Trap glanced up as he stuck the last bite of the first delicious mustard-covered hot dog into his mouth. “Hey, Grant,” he said through the mouthful. His older brother was so tall he had to stoop constantly when he wasn’t outside. “What’s up? Other than your head on the ceiling.”

“Funny, you little hemorrhoid.”

“Shut up.”

Grant took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair opposite Speed Trap’s. On the back of the jacket was a large, multicolored image of the Arctic Fire cresting a wave and the name of the ship written in script beneath the image. Last Christmas, Captain Sage’s wife had made the jackets for all four of the ship’s regular crew members.

“I should take you up on deck and hang you over the side, you little shit.”

“Try it,” Speed Trap shot back. “See what happens.”

Speed Trap had never gotten into a fight with Grant, and the truth was, he never wanted to. Grant was huge and mean. As far as Speed Trap knew, he’d never lost a fight. And when he got drunk, he looked for them. That was when Grant caused riots because people started stampeding out of his way.

“I’m serious.”

“Shut up, little brother. You know I’d kick your ass.”

After grabbing the biggest bowl he could find from the dishwasher, which hadn’t been run in a week, Grant moved to the stove and ladled a healthy portion of beans into the dirty dish. After that, he grabbed some saltine crackers from the cupboard and sat down at the table in the chair opposite Speed Trap’s without bothering to nuke his helping. He’d always had an iron stomach, and the fact that the beans had been around for a while didn’t bother him at all. He didn’t care that they were cold either, Speed Trap knew. Grant’s priority when it came to eating was simply getting the food into his mouth and then his stomach as quickly as possible.

“Hey,” Grant said as he shoved the first spoonful of beans past his teeth, “you just beat your DUI and your resisting charge over in Seward. How ’bout that?”

Speed Trap had been about to start in on the second hot dog, but when he heard Grant’s headline the bun’s forward progress came to an abrupt halt an inch from his mouth. “What?” He put the bun slowly back down on his plate and broke into a broad smile. “Really?” But his smile faded quickly. Grant was always teasing him or lying to him about something, and Speed Trap was worried that he was being stupid and gullible and just taking the bait one more time. He figured Grant was going to bust out laughing at him at any second. “Damn it, are you bullshitting me?”

“Nope. This is straight dope, dude. I was up on the bridge, and I overheard Uncle Sage talking to somebody on the phone about it. The shit’s been taken care of. All your charges were dropped. You don’t even have to go to court. They even gave you your license back. It’s nuts.”

Speed Trap gazed at Grant for a few moments, then finally decided he wasn’t being set up for that sucker punch after all. “Why? I mean they had me dead to rights. When I went to first appearance the morning after I was arrested, the judge laughed at me. He told me with my record I’d get at least six months in the slammer, probably a year.”

Grant shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, pal.” He gulped down several heaping spoonfuls of cold beans and then stuffed a couple of saltines in behind them. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, like a shark’s did when its jaws closed down on prey. “Weird things like that always seem to happen on this ship,” he said through his mouthful of food. “Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, like how about all those brand new traps that were waiting for us on the dock in Dutch after we put off that first load in Akutan? To replace the ones we lost in the storm, right? I figured we’d be in Dutch for at least a week waiting for new stuff.” Speed Trap shook his head. “So what happens? One day in port and we’re out of the harbor and back on the crab.”

“Exactly,” Grant agreed. “Nobody gets traps that fast. No fucking way.” He stared at the microwave for a few seconds. “What about that guy we picked up in the raft west of St. Paul last year during the opilio season? That was insane.”

“Yeah, that was insane.”

“I mean, there’s nothing at all on the radio about that guy. No heads-up from the Coast Guard boys, no chatter from any of the other boats. Then boom, there he is in the middle of the Bering Sea, waving us on from the raft and tapping his watch like he’s late for a dinner party.” Grant’s eyes narrowed. “The weirdest thing about it all was that Sage didn’t seem surprised. It was like he knew the raft was going to be there.”

“Think he did?”

Grant hesitated. “I’ll tell you this, little brother. We’ve never, and I mean never, dropped traps anywhere near that area of the Bering Sea before. Not during the king hunt or the opilio season. Even before you started crabbing with us we didn’t.”

“And the test line we sank out there wasn’t very long,” Speed Trap added, referring to the line of traps Sage dropped in places they were unfamiliar with to see if crabs were foraging on the bottom. “Uncle Sage doesn’t drop many test lines to begin with, but when he does, they’re longer than that. You know?”

“Yup.”

“It was like he dropped that line to make us think he was into that spot, that he thought it could be a honey hole, but he really wasn’t. It was more like that was our excuse to be in the area. I mean, when we pulled the traps back up there were crabs in them.”

“But we didn’t stick around. Yeah, I’m with you.” Grant reached across the table, grabbed Speed Trap’s hot dog, and took a huge bite — which was nearly half of it — before tossing what was left back on his younger brother’s plate. “You know that guy stayed in Sage’s room until we got back to Dutch too. He never came out once. Not that I saw, anyway. Sage doesn’t let anybody use his room, not even Dad.”

“And when we got to Dutch,” Speed Trap said, pulling his plate far enough to one side that even Grant’s long arms couldn’t reach what was left of the hot dog, “he was off the boat and gone as soon as we got to the pier. He actually jumped off the boat before we even tied up.” Speed Trap looked down at his plate dejectedly. “And we’ve thrown those greenhorns overboard,” he mumbled. “That’s the worst thing of all, Grant.”

Grant chuckled dispassionately. “That’s just because Sage and Dad want to save some money, little brother. That’s just them being big old bastards.” He finished the beans by picking up his plate and tilting it so they dribbled into his mouth. “You and I didn’t see any of that money, did we?” he asked when the last bean was gone. “Technically, we should have split Troy’s share, but we didn’t. I got eighty-one grand. What did you get?”

“Same.”

“I rest my case. Throwing those greenhorns over the side is just about the money. And we’re not the only ship that does it.”

Speed Trap remembered the terror he’d felt as he was hanging off the side of the Arctic Fire in that storm by what seemed like nothing more than one thin strand of the yellow safety harness. And that incredible sensation of overpowering relief that had rushed through his body when Troy had pulled him back on board. For a few incredible moments he’d actually loved Troy Jensen.

A little while later they’d thrown him overboard.

“Troy was a good guy. That’s all I know.”

“So he saved your life,” Grant said callously as he stood up and the spindly chair he’d been sitting in fell over behind him with a loud crash. “Who cares?”

“What do you mean, who cares? I care. I care a lot. It sucked that Uncle Sage threw him over, and it sucked that Dad helped him do it. It sucked that you did too.”

Grant pointed a long, menacing finger down at his younger brother. “You keep your damn mouth shut about it. Don’t you say anything to Sage or Dad, or anybody else for that matter. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“You better hear me, and you better not say anything. Or you’ll be next. Got it? Well, do you?” Grant shouted when he didn’t get an answer immediately.

“I got it!” Speed Trap shouted back. “Christ! Give me a break. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Troy Jensen. Don’t you get that?”

CHAPTER 13

“Thanks for coming, Hunt. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. I mean, it’s not like you’ve got to try real hard to convince me to have a beer with you. So I’m guessing from your tone and the ‘I appreciate it’ that there’s something else going on here.”

“There is.”

They were sitting at the bar of an Irish pub in lower Manhattan near Tri-State Securities. It was a place they’d gone more than a few times after a rough day on the trading floor.

“So, what’s up?”

“What do you mean?” Jack had heard the suspicious tone in Hunter’s voice.

“Where’d you go after you left the trading floor this afternoon? I thought you said you were running an errand, but you never came back. Then you called from your cell phone and asked me to meet you here.” Hunter took several swallows of beer. “It was all kind of mysterious, and you aren’t normally mysterious. You’re more the in-your-face type, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, what’s up?”

Jack tore off the corner of the paper napkin beneath his beer glass as he thought about how much to tell Hunter. They were best friends, but this was a crazy thing he was doing. And the favor he was going to ask for would probably sound even crazier to Hunter than where Jack was going. He didn’t want to have to explain both things tonight because the favor was going to take awhile. Plus, admitting that he was going to Alaska might lead to talking about that bombshell Bill had dropped today in his office.

Jack didn’t want to go in that direction either. He was still digesting the news himself. He wasn’t ready to share that with anyone.

He didn’t want to tell Hunter about the trip mostly because he didn’t have time — he had another meeting in a few minutes. But it was a little because of his close call with that white van on Broadway this afternoon too. Now that he thought about it, maybe it was more than a little about the van, maybe a lot about it.

“I resigned,” he finally answered.

Hunter’s eyes flashed up from his beer glass. “No shit?”

“After I left the trading floor this afternoon, I went into Jamie Hildebrand’s office upstairs and quit.”

“But why?” Hunter asked. “I mean, you never mentioned anything about it.” He shrugged. “It isn’t like you needed my OK before you did it. I just thought we were good friends.”

“Best friends, Hunt. You know that.”

Hunter leaned back in the stool and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve gotta say I’m a little surprised you didn’t at least mention something to me.”

“Yeah…I know.” He could tell Hunter was hurt. “Sorry.”

“Well, what are you doing?” Hunter asked when Jack didn’t volunteer anything more. “Why’d you quit?”

Jack inhaled deeply. “I need to take some time off. I need to get away for a while.”

“Because of what happened to Troy?”

“Is that so wrong?”

“Of course not,” Hunter replied. “I’m sorry Troy died, but I think it’s really good that you’re taking it so…well, so deeply.”

“I am.” More than Hunter could know, Jack thought to himself.

“Where are you going?”

Jack glanced up. “Who said anything about going anywhere?”

“You did. A second ago you said you needed to get away.” Hunter took several more gulps of beer. “It sounded like you meant you were getting away from the area. Or did you just mean you needed to get away from Tri-State?”

Jack needed to come up with something fast. Hunter would figure out pretty quickly that he wasn’t around. The good thing was that Hunter never talked to Bill, so he wasn’t worried about Hunt finding out that his real destination was Alaska.

“I’m going to Florida.”

“Florida? Why?”

“It’s almost winter. It’s gonna get cold for good soon. I was thinking I’d head to the Keys and pick up a bartending job for the season. It shouldn’t be hard to find something like that down there now.”

“Bartending? Are you serious?”

“Sure. Why?”

Hunter shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s such a one-eighty. I know this thing with Troy hit you hard, but don’t you think going to Florida to be a bartender is kind of drastic?”

Jack wanted to tell Hunter what the real deal was. And the words were on the tip of his tongue. “I just need some time,” he murmured, glad he hadn’t given in to the temptation to tell him about Alaska. He was probably being paranoid, but he felt better keeping Hunter in the dark about it. He’d tell him everything when it was all over. “That’s all.”

Hunter looked around the bar sadly. “Guess it’ll be the last time we do this for a while.”

“I guess.”

“Why didn’t we just talk on the train?” Hunter asked, checking his watch. “We could have taken a Metro North home together.”

“I’m meeting someone else down here in a few minutes,” Jack explained, checking his watch too.

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, I get it. First you leave me by myself at Tri-State to go to Florida. Then you stonewall me when I ask an innocent little question. I guess we’re not as close as we used to be. Is this guy your new best friend or something?”

“Give me a break, Hunt. He’s just somebody I need to talk to about something.”

The guy had been his and Hunter’s boss at the firm where they’d worked before Tri-State. The guy had always said he felt bad for letting them go, and had always offered to help out. So Jack was going to put him on the spot tonight. He needed money badly now that Bill had made it clear he wasn’t going to be an ATM if the use of funds involved Alaska and Troy. Bill had sent him a text a few minutes ago making that clear again—and warning him again to stay away from Alaska again.

“It’s no big deal.” He didn’t want to tell Hunter what was going on because he didn’t want Hunter getting curious and calling the guy.

Hunter held his hand up. “OK, OK. I guess I’m just cranky because my best buddy and his bad but loveable attitude are taking off. No more train rides in from Connecticut together, no more screwing around on the trading floor when things get slow, no more beers after work. I’m not gonna lie to you, pal. This sucks.”

“It does suck,” Jack agreed. He appreciated Hunter’s candor. It made him feel good. “But I have to do this.”

“I know. I guess,” Hunter added as though he didn’t really understand.

For a few moments Jack thought again about telling Hunter what Bill had told him this afternoon in the office — that he wasn’t adopted. But again he decided against it. He had talk to Hunter about that other thing, and there wasn’t much time to do that and get to his other meeting. “I need a favor.”

“Name it and you got it. You know that.”

Jack hesitated. He knew how this was going to sound, but he had to keep his promise. “I need you to look in on somebody while I’m gone because I might be away for a while.”

“OK.”

“And you can’t tell anybody about it. OK?”

“Why not?”

“You just can’t, all right?”

“All right.” Hunter paused for a few moments. “So who’s this person?”

“She lives over in Brooklyn,” Jack answered quietly. “Her name’s Lisa Martinez, and she’s got a little boy.” He glanced around the bar and leaned forward slightly. “His name’s Jack.”

Hunter’s eyes flashed to Jack’s at light speed. “Aw, Christ, Jack. What the hell have you done?”

CHAPTER 14

Jack’s eyes moved from the late news on the TV screen to his front door when he thought he heard something outside the apartment. Then he heard what sounded like a knock, but he wasn’t sure.

It was eleven twenty and he wasn’t expecting anyone. He’d been lying on his living room couch listening to the anchorman’s smooth voice, trying to forget what had happened today. And wondering how in the hell he was going to get to Dutch Harbor, because his seven o’clock meeting had turned out to be a dead end. The guy’s wife had nixed the loan over the phone while they were sitting at another bar near the place he’d met Hunter. Now he had only fifteen hundred bucks left to his name after giving Lisa Martinez the five hundred.

He’d actually heard himself starting to snore as he’d drifted off listening to the news. But at the sound of the knock he was wide awake again and his heart was pumping hard.

He stared across the room through the flickering light coming from the TV screen. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe he hadn’t really heard anything outside. But after almost being killed by that van in front of Trinity Church today, he felt like he had a damn good reason to be paranoid. Thank God for whoever had yelled at him from the sidewalk. If not for that angel he’d be lying on a gurney in the morgue right now instead of on this sofa.

A voice in the back of his head had been telling him to get out of here for the last few hours…just like it had been whispering about that picture of Troy standing in front of the Arctic Fire. He’d called Hunter twice after they’d met for drinks to see if he could stay at his and Amy’s place tonight, but Hunter hadn’t called back yet. Which was strange because Hunter always called right back. Hunter’s cell phone was basically part of his body.

This time the knock was loud and clear.

Jack glanced at his bedroom door as he rose up quickly into a sitting position. He was an avid bird hunter, and he had two shotguns in there. The over-and-under twelve-gauge was empty, but the side-by-side was loaded. He always kept that one loaded.

“Jack. Jack.”

His shoulders sagged as he stood up and hurried to the door. He’d recognized the voice right away, but this was still a strange situation. During the three years he’d lived in this apartment, she hadn’t come by once to see him. He was shocked that she actually knew where he lived.

“Hello, Cheryl,” Jack said as he swung the door open. He cringed. Old habits died hard. “I, I mean…Mom.” The word meant so much more now. “Come in. I’m sorry about the mess.”

“Please don’t apologize. It’s fine.”

“Can I get you something?” he asked as he closed the door behind her. It seemed surreal for her to be here. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you.”

Jack watched her take in what little there was of the place. He saw her glance at the three pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table in front of the couch, the clothes draped over chairs and lying in piles on the floor, and the small desk in the corner, which looked like it had been hit by a tornado. “I wish I’d known you were coming,” he said apologetically, flipping on the light and instantly regretting it. Now she could really see how bad the place looked. But she didn’t seem to care. “I would have cleaned up.”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I keep telling you.”

She’d always been so good to him. “I know, it’s just that—”

“Bill told me about this afternoon,” she interrupted. “He told me you came to his office, and he told me what he said.” She took a few seconds to pull herself together. “I’m sorry we lied to you all these years. It sounds so worthless when I hear myself say it, but I really am sorry. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me.”

A muffled sob escaped her lips as tears formed on her lower lids. The same way they’d come to Bill’s eyes this afternoon. There was so much to talk about, but Jack had no idea how or where to start. “It’s OK, really.” He’d thought about calling her all afternoon, and he’d actually dialed her number twice. But then he’d quickly ended the call before the connection had been made.

“It’s not OK,” she murmured. “It’s horrible.”

It was horrible, but Jack didn’t want to go there right now. This seemed like too harsh a way to begin what he assumed was going to be a long conversation. They should be easing into this, not barreling at it head-on.

“He told me that you’re going to Alaska too,” she said, “to Dutch Harbor.”

That seemed like an odd topic to bring up now. When there were so many other more important things they needed to talk about. “Yeah…I am.”

Cheryl moved so she was standing directly in front of him and their faces were close. “He told you to stay away from there, didn’t he?”

Jack clenched his hands into tight fists. Maybe that was it. Maybe she’d come here to warn him too, and this visit was all part of a well-orchestrated bad cop, good cop routine. “I don’t want to talk about Alaska,” he said firmly.

She put her soft palms on his cheeks and stared up at him. “Don’t let Bill talk you out of it,” she whispered. “Don’t let him scare you. Go to Alaska,” she urged. “Do you hear me? Go.”

Jack nodded hesitantly, not sure he really had heard her — at least, not right. He’d heard the words, but the message seemed full of static. “I heard you. I mean, I guess I—”

“But be careful, Jack. Be very careful.”

“I will. Of course I will.”

Her eyes widened, as if she’d just thought about something very frightening. “Don’t ever tell Bill I was here tonight. All right?”

“All right.”

“You have to remember that, Jack.”

She suddenly seemed more terrified than he’d ever seen her before. “OK, OK, I’ll remember.”

She reached into her purse and handed him a thick envelope. Then she kissed him on the cheek and headed for the door.

But he caught her by the wrist and turned her gently back around. “Mom.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she wouldn’t look up at him. “Mom?”

“What?” she answered, sobbing softly.

Jack swallowed hard. “Who’s my real father?”

CHAPTER 15

Hunter sat in a comfortable chair, hands clasped together tightly in his lap, waiting patiently. He’d been sitting in the chair for hours, but they wouldn’t tell him who he was waiting for or why they’d brought him here.

He’d been watching television the whole time, sitting with the two men who’d stopped him as he was heading down into the subway to go to Grand Central Station after meeting Jack. They’d flashed a couple of big, official-looking gold badges at him and then hustled him into a dark blue Town Car waiting at the curb. They hadn’t forced him to get in, but he hadn’t put up a fight either. He’d always heard it was best to do whatever you were told to do in those situations. To make sure you didn’t piss anybody off and make things even worse for yourself later.

At first, Hunter was petrified that they were arresting him for a stock tip he’d gotten from an I-banker friend one night last month in a bar. The next morning he’d bought a ton of cheap call options on the target company’s stock, knowing full well that a takeover announcement from a European conglomerate was imminent. The announcement had come two days later, and he’d instantly pocketed thirty grand. It was thirty grand he needed like hell because he was basically broke. It was also a clear-cut case of insider trading.

For the first hour of this ordeal he’d been panic-stricken, wondering how in the world he was going to survive in prison. Wondering if all those stories he’d heard about what happened in there to thin blond guys were really true.

Eventually he’d convinced himself that they weren’t the kind of government people who cared about insider trading, so his initial wave of terror had ebbed.

Now his fears were growing again, though for a different reason. All they’d said the entire time he’d been here was that someone needed to talk to him. They wouldn’t tell him who the person was or what branch of the government they were with. Worse, they wouldn’t even confirm that they were actually with the government. And that was why he was getting nervous again. Maybe they weren’t with the government.

He glanced at his watch. It was almost midnight. “Hey guys, I’ve gotta go,” he said firmly, starting to stand up. “My wife will be—”

“Sit down,” the guy in the chair closest to him ordered sharply just as there was a hard rap on the door. “Now!”

A few moments later the man who’d knocked on the door was sitting in a chair in front of Hunter and the other two men had disappeared into another room.

“Hello, Hunter.”

The man wore an expensive suit, a sharp button-down shirt, and a Hermes tie. He looked more like a Wall Streeter than a government guy. He was small — short and narrow — but Hunter still sensed danger about him. He seemed to naturally emit it with his eyes.

“Sorry to keep you waiting so long,” he said with a thin smile.

Hunter sensed that the smile and the friendly demeanor were forced. Maybe they were going to grill him on who’d given him the stock tip after all. Maybe they were after bigger fish and it was a plea-bargain situation. Well, he was going to get a lawyer before he said anything.

“That’s OK.” Hunter tapped his watch, trying to seem a little irritated. “But it’s getting late.”

“Cigarette?” the man asked, reaching into his suit coat and pulling out a pack.

“Nah.”

“Well, look, I know you’re wondering why you’re here.”

“To tell you the truth, that had crossed my—”

“Why did Jack Jensen quit his job at Tri-State this afternoon?” the man demanded. His friendly demeanor soured as he leaned forward.

“What?” Hunter asked, taken completely by surprise. “I, I have no idea,” he stammered. “How the hell do I know why he—”

“Tell me!”

“All I know is that Jack quit. He didn’t even tell me he was going to quit before he did. It was a shock.”

“Bullshit, Hunter. You’re his best friend. You know more than that.”

“No, I don’t.” Hunter felt himself really starting to panic. There was something so terrifying about this man’s eyes. “I swear.”

“Is he going somewhere?”

Hunter just hoped to God the man wasn’t a mind reader and hadn’t seen the word Florida flash through his brain. It probably didn’t matter if he had, Hunter realized, because the word was probably tattooed on his forehead by now. “I…I don’t know. I’m serious.”

The man glanced at something over Hunter’s shoulder, but before Hunter could turn around, a clear plastic bag slid roughly down over his head, a rope cinched tightly around his neck, and his hands were clamped together behind his back. Through the bag shrouding his face, Hunter saw the man puffing on his cigarette, calmly watching.

Hunter struggled violently, but it was useless. There were too many of them and they were too strong. He couldn’t move — or breathe. The bag was going halfway down his throat every time he tried to suck in air, and he could feel himself quickly losing consciousness.

As his eyes closed all he could think about was that conversation he’d had with Jack about being interrogated as a terrorist.

After grudgingly agreeing to pay twice the advertised rate up front in cash, along with a forty-dollar tip, the old man doing the graveyard shift behind the cheap motel’s front desk hadn’t required a credit card imprint or a name. However, the anonymity was providing Jack little peace of mind.

With one final heave, the heavy chest of drawers stood directly in front of the door to his room. Jack backed off slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed beside the envelope full of cash Cheryl had given him earlier. Maybe all of this was overkill and he didn’t need to be so worried. Maybe that warning voice whispering to him from the back of his brain was wrong.

He shook his head as he reached for the loaded pistol lying on the mattress beside him. No way. Better safe than sorry, especially if being sorry meant being dead. Better to go the extra mile — an extra thousand miles if that was necessary — than get run over by a van.

Better safe than sorry. That was going to be his mantra until this thing was finished — one way or the other.