Jay rushed into Thorn’s office, breathing hard. “You hear the news?”
Thorn raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“Cox. He’s dead! His car blew up!”
“Really?”
“According to CNN. A guy I know at CopNet confirmed it. Out on Long Island this afternoon.”
“Huh. How about that.”
“Maybe God decided to take a hand.”
“Maybe.”
“I gotta go tell Julio, and I need to call Toni and Alex.”
After Jay was gone, Thorn leaned back in his chair and sighed. He had been feeling pretty good after the sword match with his troll stalker, but this news sobered him a bit.
Captain Julio Fernandez would act surprised when Jay found him, but he wouldn’t really be surprised. They hadn’t been able to nail Cox, for reasons beyond their control, but there was more than one way to see the scales balanced. Cox was guilty of much, and it was right that he should be punished. Like Marissa had said in her story about the snow runners: Maybe they couldn’t come at him directly, but there were other, less orthodox paths. Back and twisty roads that arrived, eventually, at the same place. Not the first choice, but better than not getting there at all.
His private line cheeped. He looked down at the ID. Marissa.
He picked up the handset. “Hi.”
“You heard about Cox?” she said.
“Yes, just now.”
There was a short silence.
“We didn’t actually do it,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”
“Good to know.” She paused. “I’d like to drop by in the morning, sort of go over things and everything.”
“I’d like that, Marissa,” he said.
She was silent again and he smiled.
“Fine,” she said after a moment. “Well, I’ll see you then.”
He agreed and they hung up.
But like Marissa had told him, there were other ways to approach a problem. Net Force hadn’t killed Cox. There was no way that Thorn could have given those orders, and if any of his people would have carried orders like that, well, they wouldn’t be his people for long. But somebody had blown up the hit man Natadze’s house and his prized guitars, instruments for which he held great passion, even love. What would a man who was a killer do to somebody who did that to him?
Or somebody he thought had done it?
You run with killers, sometimes you paid for it.
Thorn thought his grandfather would be pleased.
Justice had been served.