Jeff Abbott - Collision

“Are you okay? Does he have you?”

“I’m fine and no he doesn’t.”

He knew Ben wouldn’t betray him, even if Hector was holding a gun to his head right now. He knew it with a clarity that cut through a momentary doubt. “I’m at the Plano Palisades shopping center, across from the Plano Air Ranch Park. Do you have money in your wallet?”

“Yes.”

“Get a cab.”

“In Dallas? They don’t exactly wander the streets looking for fares.”

“Ben. Give me your address, I’ll call a cab for you, I’ll cover the fare. I’m north of the Nordstrom’s, edge of the lot.”

“Okay.” Ben sounded like he might faint.

“You all right?”

“I am beyond sorry.” Dread colored Ben’s voice. “You were entirely right.”

“About what?”

“I have to go, my time’s-”

And the phone went dead.

Well. If he was wrong about Ben, and Hector had just found his location, let Hector come. He’d just wait, shoot Hector and Jackie in the knees, drag them to Vochek’s safe house like a cat bringing torn, dead birds as trophies.

An hour later, the cab pulled up. Pilgrim got out of the Volvo and unfolded bills for the cabbie. Ben got in the passenger side, eased his shoe off. Not looking at Pilgrim.

“Tell me what happened.” Pilgrim leaned down, inspecting the foot.

“I have bad news,” Ben said. Pilgrim leaned back. “Teach is dead.”

Pilgrim said, “Tell me.” His expression stayed like stone as Ben explained.

“She died trying to help me.”

Pilgrim’s mouth contorted. He got out of the car, stood by the door, leaned his head against his arm on the car’s roof. Ben got out on the opposite side of the car, faced him over the car’s roof.

“Pilgrim… man, I’m sorry.”

The traffic hummed by and kept them in companionable silence for a few moments. Pilgrim lifted his head. “He killed her because he doesn’t need her anymore. He has complete control of the Cellar. He’s won.”

“No. We’re still alive, we can fight him. We have to. He killed Emily. He had photos of her. Photos taken of her right before and after she was killed.”

Pilgrim’s face paled; he shook his head. He seemed to wait a few moments for his voice to return. “Ah, God, Ben.”

“I was an idiot-I defended him-I made him a goddamned fortune.. and he killed my wife.”

“Where are the pictures?”

“I don’t know. They were on the floor… I doubt Hector headed back to the apartment to collect them.”

Pilgrim ran a hand along his mouth. “So the photos are still there. With Teach’s body.”

“What the hell does that matter?”

“It may mislead the police.” Pilgrim took a deep breath. “We got to keep moving forward. Let me see your foot.”

“I’m okay.”

“Give me a job to freaking do, all right?”

He used the first aid kit in the car to doctor Ben’s foot-the bullet had slowed considerably in moving through the fake leather and the dense mesh, leaving a wicked track, parting a chunk of flesh from the foot’s top. The bullet was stuck in the bloody sock, between foot and shoe. Pilgrim thumbed the bullet onto the floorboards.

“Here’s another one.” Ben handed him the damaged sketchbook. “I put it in my pocket, I didn’t want you to lose it.”

Pilgrim plucked the bullet from the pages, put the book in his pocket without a word, without inspecting the damage to the pictures. “I don’t have anything for the pain, Ben.”

“I don’t need anything. Now what?”

“We talk with Vochek.” He nodded toward the house. “Only one car there now; her sidekicks are gone. Let’s go.”

The safe house featured a porch camera, and after the doorbell rang, Vochek frowned at the face on the screen. She held a gun in her hand as she opened the door.

Ben raised his hands and said, “I’m unarmed.”

Vochek gestured him inside and said, “Where’s Randall Choate?”

Ben shrugged and stepped inside. They heard a stifled cry and the sound of weight hitting the floor. “We mean you no harm but he wants to talk to you alone.”

She hurried to the kitchen. The Homeland pilot who had been assigned to the safe house lay unconscious on the floor. Pilgrim craned his neck into the refrigerator. He found a Coke and popped the tab. On the stove tomato soup bubbled; ham sandwiches lay half-assembled on a cutting block. Pilgrim killed the heat under the soup.

“Messy boil-over,” he said.

She aimed her gun. “On the floor. You just assaulted a federal officer.” “You all think a great deal of yourselves,” Pilgrim said. “If he’s such a federal bad-ass I shouldn’t be able to take him down with two love taps. Kindly point your firepower elsewhere. You wanted to talk, well, here I am. We’re even on your turf.”

“Get your ass on the ground!” she yelled.

“By the end of tonight either your career will be in the toilet or you’ll be running Strategic Initiatives. Your call.”

She kept the gun aimed on him.

“Please listen to him,” Ben said. “We’re on your side. We have the information you need to do your job and we’re willing to share it. But you have to help us in return. You already know Pilgrim is good at vanishing. Don’t test him.”

“He told me you were innocent.” She didn’t move her focus from Pilgrim. “But I’m not sure I should believe someone who’s been lying about being dead for ten years.”

“Sam Hector is the reason Pilgrim had to vanish. Interested yet?” Ben said.

After several more seconds, she lowered the gun. She knelt by the unconscious pilot, checked his pulse, ran a hand over his head.

“He’ll have a headache, nothing more, he’s out for another hour or so,” Pilgrim said. “Here, we’ll put him on the couch.” He and Ben carried the pilot into the den, set him on the cushions, propped a pillow under his head. Ben waited for Vochek to go back to the kitchen; he dug in the pilot’s pocket, removed the man’s cell phone, stuck it in his own pocket as he returned to the kitchen.

“Talk.” She stood again.

Pilgrim poked a spoon in the tomato soup, made a face. “I’ll tell you every dirty job I’ve done in the past ten years. Every job I know the Cellar’s done.”

“The Cellar.”

“That’s the code name of the group of CIA misfits and outcasts you’ve been chasing.”

“The Cellar.” She sounded slightly dazed, as though she’d just woken from a dream. Ben guessed she hadn’t even known the name of the group she’d been hunting. “Okay. I spoke with my boss and I’m authorized to deal with you if you’re willing to surrender.”

Pilgrim frowned at the word surrender, as though it carried an unpleasant odor. “Fine. First, Ben gets granted total immunity. He’s innocent.”

“Okay, I’ll do my best.”

“Your best will be outstanding, Agent Vochek, or I will shut up tighter than a miser’s fist.” Pilgrim gave her a condensed version of the past days, with special details about their escape from the Homeland office in Austin. Ben noticed Pilgrim left out one critical bit of information-the name of the hotel in New Orleans that Barker had phoned. He figured that Pilgrim thought it best to have a card to play in future negotiations, so he said nothing.

Vochek did not interrupt or ask questions-she frowned, shook her head a few times.

Finally she said: “You can confirm Sam Hector was a CIA assassin known as the Dragon?”

“It will be my word against his, unless the CIA opens up about him.”

“The CIA will face enormous political pressure to keep their mouths shut about Hector. He’s made a lot of powerful friends,” Ben said. “But that’s not our first worry. Our first worry is New Orleans.”