Jeff Abbott - Collision

Except Teach, who was the only person who knew every detail of every job.

Her brain was the prize. Her brain could break the Cellar, put every operative in the group in prison or in crosshairs.

It was an unusual opponent, he thought, who could hire an ex-IRA assassin and a group of Arab gunmen to come to Texas to do dirty work. And Barker had claimed to find nothing unusual in Adam Reynolds’s bank accounts or e-mail records-but since Barker had been in the enemy’s pocket, then he would have lied and destroyed any evidence linking Adam Reynolds and himself back to the enemy.

Pilgrim thumbed through the call log on Barker’s cell phone. If Barker’s day was to end with Teach kidnapped and Pilgrim dead, then the traitorous young man didn’t have to be overly careful in erasing his tracks. The call log held what was to be expected as they’d worked their job on Reynolds over the three days: calls to Teach, calls to Pilgrim’s phone. But there was a call to an Austin local number Pilgrim didn’t recognize.

Pilgrim drove toward central Austin. On Koenig Lane he saw what he wanted: a small coffee house with a sign in its window offering free Internet access. He went inside; early evening, the shop wasn’t busy. A row of three sleek computers sat on a far counter and he sat at one and launched a browser. It opened onto a news page and he saw a scattering of headlines: Senate committee demands CIA develop more human intelligence resources in the Mideast for the War on Terror; a football star enters rehab; a sniper shooting in Austin, Texas.

He scanned the news report. No naming of the dead men, yet. No mention of a man seen leaving the scene.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

He glanced at the barista behind the counter and then realized he must look like he’d crawled out of a train wreck. She was a pretty woman of college age and she pointed at his cut forehead. “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh, am I?” He went to the coffee stand and grabbed napkins, dabbed at his forehead. Blood flecked the paper. “I took a fall. I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m fine. A medium latte, please, that’s what’ll fix me up.” He tested a smile.

The barista nodded to him and returned to the machine. He sat, Googled the Austin phone number he’d found on Barker’s cell.

No listing.

He waited for the barista to call that his latte was ready, but she brought it to him. “On the house,” she said as he stood to reach for his wallet.

“No, really…”

“Sir,” the barista said, “I’m guessing you’ve had a crappy day. It’s on the house.”

Kindness was a stranger and for a moment he didn’t know what to do. “Thank you,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

She smiled and went back to the coffee bar. He sipped the latte-it was energy and stimulant and calories, all of which he needed. The door jingled, a man and his teenage daughter coming inside, the girl smoothing her auburn hair against a gust of damp wind. He watched them laugh and debate what to order, a heaviness filling his gut and his chest.

That should be you, he thought. Maybe it can be. When this mess is done. He turned back to the computer.

He used the browser to access an online database for the government, where the phone companies, both cell and landline, were required to list every issued number. He logged in, using a password Teach had stolen from a CIA officer and given to him, and searched for the number.

The database did not give him the phone’s location, but it told him that the phone belonged to McKeen Property Company and the billing address was on Second Street in downtown Austin. He jumped back to Google Maps and searched for the address.

He finished the latte and hurried to his stolen car, not looking at the father and the daughter laughing over their coffees.

Jackie Lynch sat hunched at the bar, the granite cool under his palms. He had stumbled along the downtown streets when he realized he was going to have to call the boss, explain the job was an unmitigated disaster, Nicky dead.

He’d seen a neon harp advertising Guinness in a bar window and he’d lurched inside, ordered a pint in a hoarse whisper. Drank it down fast, took a long breath, told himself not to cry. Ordered a second pint because, as his father often said, no bird flies home on one wing.

Home. He had lost his brother and his mentor. Nicky was the brains of the business; Jackie barely knew how to deal with dangerous clients, assessing contracts and their risks, devising escape routes, managing money in numbered accounts. Now they’d failed a job for a very powerful man. He stared down at the counter.

He still clutched the sealed envelope. He was supposed to have dumped it on Adam Reynolds’s desk after Nicky killed the targets, but in the shock of only one corpse in the office instead of two, he had simply turned and run out the door.

He left his half-finished pint of Guinness and edged over to the bar’s window. A few blocks away, the streets around the parking garage and Reynolds’s office building were closed in a police cordon. If they hadn’t already, he knew, the cops would discover Nicky’s modified Heckler amp; Koch PSG1 rifle in the trunk. Someone would see the bullet-holed window in the building or find Reynolds’s body, put the evidence together.

No way he could plant the envelope now. Impossible. The client would just have to understand.

A band in the corner began to tune up on a small stage, a guitarist and a piano player, playing riffs of one of his favorite Johnny Cash songs, “The Tennessee Stud.” He loved music nearly as much as he loved his brother, and for a moment he was tempted to not call the client, to vanish. Go back to Belfast, listen to his records and curl up in bed.

But no. That was selfish, running away meant Nicky’s killer walked. Jackie was the family business now; he had to be a man. Nicky had always been the grown-up, but those days were nothing but mist. Music was nothing compared to blood.

He moved to a corner table, far from potential listeners, and punched the number he and Nicky were supposed to call to confirm the job was done. The phone had been left for them in their hotel room and they were supposed to call only once. The number had a 972 area code and Jackie knew it was Dallas; he’d looked it up, out of curiosity, in the Yellow Pages at the hotel the night before.

It rang three times, then a man answered. “Yes?”

At first he couldn’t speak. Then he said: “It went bad. Nicky’s dead.” He explained.

He could sense a simmering anger building on the other side of the phone. “If you had called earlier, I would have been able to warn my other team.”

Jackie bit his lip. “Other team?”

“The first man you all were supposed to kill is called Pilgrim. The job had a second component, the kidnapping of a woman who is Pilgrim’s boss. Missing Pilgrim meant he killed four more of my men after he killed your brother.”

You’re going to whine and my brother’s dead, Jackie thought. No, sir, not today. “Not my problem,” he snapped. “You don’t tell me the big picture, then don’t hold me accountable for it. That’s your mistake, not mine.” He tried to put the iron in his voice he’d heard Nicky use with a troublesome client. It was never a good idea to piss off an assassin, no matter who you were.

A painful stretch of silence. Jackie thought, First hand you play alone and you screw up.

“Did you deliver the package to Reynolds’s office?” The client’s voice was ice.

“No, sir.”

“Deliver the package.” Now the rage was clear.

“Absolutely not,” Jackie said. “Cops are crawling over that office like goddamned fleas.” Best to simply assert what was undoubtedly true. “I can see them from here.”