Steven James - The Rook

Maybe two, three minutes? Plenty of time, even while we were there trying to break you out of the tank. So tell me, did you buy the warehouse, or was that Terry?”

“You’re insane.”

Cassandra looked past me toward the door. I thought maybe she was going to rush me. On crutches I knew I couldn’t either run or defend myself.

Where are those two agents?

Before she could try anything, I went on, “I’m guessing the security at the base was too tight for you to get into Building B-14.

That’s why you and Terry couldn’t steal the device yourselves. So, who found Austin? Did Terry? Or did you? Either way, you seduced Austin, gained his trust, his love, and the rest is history.”

“Why would I let myself get kidnapped?” She began edging toward the staircase beside the acclimation pool.

I took two feeble steps toward her on my crutches.

“Answer me that,” she said. “Why would I stand in that tank for twelve hours?”

I watched her carefully. “To get the one thing that matters most to you.”

“And that is?”

“I have no idea, I’m not too into motives.” And then, she bolted toward the stairwell beside the pool, but Ralph emerged from the mouth of the stairs where I’d whispered for him to have Warren Leant lead him. The two agents followed closely behind.

Cassandra made the mistake of trying to shove Ralph back down the stairs but he grabbed both of her arms, whipped her around, and had her on the floor and cuffed before she knew what hit her.

Project Ralph.

She struggled uselessly against him for a moment, then as he helped her to her feet, she leered at me, an unholy darkness descending across her face. “You still don’t understand.” Her voice, which had been relaxed and normal just a few moments earlier, now seared the air between us. “You have no idea what we have planned, Agent Bowers. No idea.”

“You’re right,” I said, “I don’t. I’m just an investigator not a mind reader. Take her away, Ralph.” I began to hobble toward the door. “My leg is really starting to hurt and I could use another cup of coffee.”

Twilight

Tessa and I would be flying back to Denver tomorrow morning, so after the funeral we decided to visit the beach one last time to watch the sun set over the ocean.

With my crutches, I couldn’t walk on the sand, so we found a paved path that led to a park bench beside the beach at Mission Bay.

It seemed like there was so much to talk about, but that it was OK, too, if we didn’t say anything at all.

Knowing how much Tessa hated dead bodies, I was surprised she’d decided to attend the funeral earlier in the afternoon. “You didn’t have to go today, you know,” I told her as we sat down.

“I was right there when it happened. I wanted to go.” She toed at the sand. “So did you ever meet a living person named John Doe?”

“Not yet. Only dead ones.”

A moment passed. “Jose Lopez,” she said. “It’s good to know his name.”

I thought back to the funeral. I was glad the ME had been wrong; Jose did have a family. Fifteen transient men and seven women lined up with us to walk past the closed coffin. Some were crying.

Some were quiet and reflective. Some were drunk. Some high. But all of them thanked us for coming and then either hugged us or shook our hands. I thought maybe they would ask us for money, especially since Ralph was wearing the new suit Tessa had helped him pick out, but none of them did.

I slipped my hand into my windbreaker and felt the tooth I still carried with me. “Yes.” I couldn’t keep the sadness out of my voice, the thoughts of the case out of my head. “It is good to know his name.”

She must have noticed that my thoughts were beginning to distract me again. “You OK?”

“Yeah. And I’m being a dad right now, really I am. But it’s just that there’s another part of me, the FBI part, that’s still-”

“That’s OK. I know you can’t turn it off.”

“I’m trying to, Tessa-”

“No-no-no-no,” she said. “Not that part. Not the FBI part. The dad part. That’s the part you can’t turn off. I didn’t understand before. But I do now. I think I finally get it.”

Tessa doesn’t always say the right thing, but when she does, she really nails it. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for saying that, Raven.”

“I meant it.”

“I know.”

Silence then, as we gazed at the ocean stretching before us and watched the sun wander toward the horizon. Finally I said, “Tessa, remember when we were talking about me and Agent Jiang?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“And I said I’d let you know if we decided to move to anything that’s a little more than nothing?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Well, I think we decided.”

“It’s about time.”

I stared at her. “But I wasn’t sure you liked her?”

“She’s growing on me,” she said. “And besides, she’s good for you. A stabilizing influence.” The sky began to turn grayish pink above us. “Sometimes,” she added, “she even reminds me of Mom.”

We watched the waves rush in and then ease back into the ocean.

The steady, rippling heartbeat of the world, with all of its deadly currents and its soft ripples. The gentleness is as much a part of the ocean as the ferocity is.

The ocean is both terrible and calm.

Both at peace with itself and at war.

Eerie and beautiful.

And so is our world.

So are we all.

“Patrick?” Tessa said, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yes?”

“It’s been almost exactly one year since Mom died.”

“I know.”

The sun rested hesitantly on the horizon, straddling the moment between day and night. “Sometimes it hurts when I think of her,”

Tessa whispered. “And sometimes it feels just right.”

“It’s the same for me.”

A pause, as she turned to look at me. “Does it ever get easier?”

I watched a gull circle and dive, circle and dive toward the inky water. “I’m not sure,” I said. “But it gets different.”

A couple of soft moments passed, then Tessa looked away from me, toward the sky and the sea and the thin line between them.

“Can I lean on you?” she asked quietly.

“Always.” I put my arm around her shoulder, and she rested her head against my chest, and together we watched the sun disappear into the ocean.

So that it could rise again a moment later, on the far side of the sea.

Nineteen minutes later

The true Shade, the mastermind of everything, snapped another instant photo of Patrick Bowers sitting beside his stepdaughter and then smiled.

Yes, Terry was in a coma.

Yes, Cassandra was in custody.

Yes, the device had been destroyed, but still Shade smiled. After all, no one except the daughter from his first rather ill-fated marriage knew about him, so no one would come after him. And his daughter would never give him up; after all, she knew he would pay her bail and help her escape, just like he’d done with Melice.

His camera spit out the photograph. He snapped another.

Then Shade, the one who’d shot the bottle out of Melice’s hand… the one who’d identified Agent Bowers’s voice on the phone… the one who’d stood still and invisible as his daughter stepped out of the shadows beside him to make Melice think she was Shade… the one who’d first introduced her to the compromised NSA agent, Terry Manoji… the one who’d told Terry to shoot Bowers at the base of the neck… the one who’d planned everything from the beginning, and so carefully coordinated the work of his two proteges, now he claimed a new enemy, set his sites on a new target: Special Agent Patrick Bowers.