Jeff Abbott - Collision

Pilgrim ignored him. “Adam thought I was a terrorist. God only knows what he told Homeland.”

“I’ll derail that with a few phone calls.” Teach’s face was normally florid, a little plump, but now her skin was pale and her mouth a thin slash of worry. She was in her fifties, slightly built, bookish, with a polished Southern accent. “This sniper-”

Pilgrim said, “I recognized his face. Nicky Lynch. Rumor was he killed two CIA officers three years ago in Istanbul.”

“I remember,” Teach said. She stood next to him, inspected his head as a mother might a scrape. He shrugged her off. “Hon, give me info on his car.”

Pilgrim described the car, gave her the license number. “I’m sure it was a rental, paid for under a false name. Or stolen for the job.”

“Barker, track the plate when we get out of here.” She nodded at Barker, still standing in the corner. “Let’s get the bags in the car, hon. We’re heading back to New York.”

Barker nodded. He paused at the door. “I’m glad you’re okay, Pilgrim.”

“Thanks.”

Teach waited for Barker to step outside and closed the door behind him. “You nearly get shot and you don’t call me immediately?”

“I’m having a really unpleasant idea. Only you and me and Barker knew about the operation. And foreign gunmen don’t just show up in a place like Austin. Someone had advance word of our operation.”

“Barker’s clean.” Teach went to the window as if to regard Barker afresh as he loaded the car. “Did Reynolds give you any information before he died as to how he found us?”

“No.” He went into the bedroom he’d used, started packing a few essentials into his bag.

Teach rubbed her temples. “Whoever Adam Reynolds was working for has obliterated his tracks. Barker’s found nothing unusual in Reynolds’s life: no unexplained money, no accounts, no suspicious e-mails or phone calls, nothing. Which scares me. We’re talking very smart, very dangerous people.”

“Clearly. They killed their own boy genius for talking to me.”

“It narrows the suspects.” She shrugged. “Terrorist organizations. Organized crime. Drug cartels. Foreign intelligence services.” She offered a wan smile. “No shortage of people who hate us, hon.”

Pilgrim went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face. A ghostly heat tingled in his hair, left over from the bullet, as though its close path had singed his scalp. Just imagination, he told himself, and he stuck his fingers under the cool jet of water. He didn’t want Teach to see his hands shake. It was strange to think how close he had come to his brains painting the walls and the desk and the surprised face of Adam Reynolds. The poor dumb brainiac.

Pilgrim dried his face. “Reynolds. All he wanted to do was good.”

“Exposing us is not in the national interest,” she said. “It’s necessary for our work that we remain unknown.”

Pilgrim shook his head. “I’m tired of what’s necessary. Necessary sucks. I want to do what’s decent.”

She put her hands on his shoulders. “Pilgrim, you do. Every day. You’re tired and rattled. You’ll feel better when we’re back home. We’ll regroup, plan our next move.”

“Screw the next move. Suppose there’s evidence in his office about the Cellar. Something I didn’t find. What do we do? Hide? Take up new names and new lives, again?”

“You knew what our work was when you signed up. You knew it entailed sacrifice…”

“Don’t lecture me about sacrifice. Sacrifice implies a choice.”

“You had a choice today.” Teach crossed her arms. “You should have let Nicky Lynch believe he succeeded. Track him and see who the hell hired him. Instead you pull brainless macho crap. You probably liked him realizing he’d missed.”

“Yes. I’ll long treasure the surprise on his face before I blew him away.”

“Lose the sarcasm. You didn’t analyze the situation and I want to know why.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t think because-I don’t want to do this work anymore.” The realization was clear in his head, unexpected but sharp.

She came to him and touched his arm, and it made Pilgrim remember the old days, when she first found him, offered him a choice better than a lifetime in a dank hellhole of a prison that smelled of ancient stone, tears, and blood. “You’re just shaken-”

Pilgrim shrugged off her hand. “I’m done. Adam Reynolds found me, when no one else ever has. He knew the aliases I used on the jobs in India and Canada and Syria. He could have plastered the news channels about us. We can’t hide anymore.”

“Wrong. We simply find out how he found us.”

“I don’t want to work for the Cellar anymore. I want a normal life.”

Her frown deepened. “Stop this nonsense. You’re not resigning, Pilgrim.” Teach was like a mother who didn’t hear what she didn’t want to hear, he thought. “We’re dead if our aliases can be exposed. I know you well enough that you won’t walk away from us while we’re under attack.” She picked up her phone, started punching in a number.

He heard his own words again: I want a normal life. He touched his pocket; the notebook was there, where he always kept it. He wanted to go to the lake’s shore, sharpen a pencil, draw the face as he remembered it, as he dreamed about it. But not now.

Pilgrim clicked on the television, surfed to a news channel. CNN showed an aerial shot of a downtown Austin building, police securing the scene. The reporter said one man was confirmed dead in a sniper shooting and another death in a nearby parking garage might be related. No mention yet that the dead guy in the garage was a known assassin. No release of Reynolds’s name yet, it was too early. The talking heads droned on, the reporter on the scene parceling atoms of worthless data and trying to make her words meaty and relevant.

Teach got off the phone. “We’ve got seats on the evening flight to LaGuardia.”

Pilgrim made a walking-away gesture with his fingers. “Have a good trip.”

“You can’t resign…”

Barker stepped into the bedroom doorway. He straightened his glasses. “Good Lord. Are you quitting?”

“False alarm. It’s the shock of nearly getting shot,” Teach said.

“Your timing sucks.” A strange smile touched Barker’s face.

“That’s what I said, he can’t leave us now…” Teach started. She turned to Barker and she stopped. Her body blocked Pilgrim’s view of the young man and he stood.

Barker held a Glock 9-millimeter. Aimed at them.

Pilgrim felt disjointed, still blinking from the surprise of surviving a sniping, and the slight, bespectacled Barker reminded him of poor, foolish Adam Reynolds and he thought: nerds with guns. Then his survival instinct kicked in, an engine in his chest, and he calculated-eight feet to reach Barker, with Teach between them. He couldn’t get to Barker before Barker shot Teach.

“This is disappointing,” Teach said.

“I apologize,” Barker said. “Nothing personal.”

Pilgrim was silent. Barker was stupid, tipping his hand early. Therefore he would do something else stupid. Pilgrim put the worn, tired look back on his face, one that would make Barker smug.

Teach kept her voice calm, but Pilgrim, behind her, could see a shift in her stance, a balancing to shift her weight forward.

Pilgrim said, “You work for the same boss as Adam Reynolds.”

“Wow. Give me a moment to deal with the staggering awe I feel at your mental prowess.” The gun gave Barker a sense of power, shining in his cocky smile. “Retirement is definitely in your future.” Barker kept the gun locked on Pilgrim.

“Put the gun down. I’ll pay you better than whoever you’re working for,” Teach said.