Andrew Britton - The American

There was an edge to his voice. She turned to stare out the window, but he wasn’t done. His left hand dug down between his back and the warm leather seat. She didn’t see what he was doing until the knife was extended at arm’s length, handle first. “You wanted to know, right? You asked the question… This is how, Naomi. This is how I got him to talk.”

She recoiled at first from the proffered weapon, but a strange curiosity took over as she watched her own hand reach out to accept it. She could see that Ryan had dismantled the wooden grip, presumably because the rivets would have set off the metal detectors inside the building. To make it a usable weapon, he had wrapped electrical tape around the exposed handle. The slick black surface was still shiny and damp with sweat.

Turning it over in her hand, the light from the streetlamps caught and illuminated the blade.

She saw a streak of red on her palm.

The knife fell out of her hand and away from her body, the light weapon bouncing once before coming to rest on the floorboard at her feet.

“I had to convince him, Naomi. I had to show him I was serious. It was the only way. Naomi?”

“Take me home, Ryan.” The words were small and pitiful. She felt small and pitiful. The blood was sticky and wet on her hand, and she was looking around desperately, but there was nothing in reach with which to remove it.

He couldn’t see her hand, or her face in the shadows. He hesitated, unsure of her reaction. “I need you to follow up on this. I’ll probably be out of the loop when Harper-”

“I know.” The words were almost inaudible. She was kicking at the weapon with her heel, pushing it back under the seat and out of her sight. “Just take me home.”

She lived on a crowded row of town houses on M Street, uninspiring structures with crumbling brick facades and weathered Georgian detail. When the heavy sedan glided up to the curb, she pushed the door open quickly without saying a word. Ryan watched her run through the gentle mist of rain and disappear into the house as a number of emotions fought for room on his face.

Ryan believed that he had shown her something new, and he was not proud of it. It might make her stronger, smarter in the end, but there was a price to be paid for the experience: despite what she knew of his past, she would never again look at him in the same way. Knowing that he was now less in her eyes irritated him, rubbed at his emotions like sandpaper on sunburnt skin, and he wondered why that should be when they had known each other for less than a month.

The anger was a slow burn as he turned the BMW back into the heart of the city. He picked up the cell phone lying on the passenger seat and tapped out a number from memory. Katie answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” For some reason, they did not often use their cell phones to keep in touch. He was not surprised that she didn’t recognize his number.

“Katie, it’s Ryan.”

“Hey! God, I’ve been so worried! When are you coming back? I’m starving, so I thought we might-”

“Listen, I need you to get your stuff together and check out of the hotel right now.” The urgency in his voice was hard to miss, but she asked it anyway.

“Why? I have to-”

“Don’t ask questions, Katie! I’ll tell you later. Just get your stuff and go, okay? It’s important.”

There was a long silence. When she finally spoke again, the words carried a toneless resignation. “Where will you meet me?”

“I can’t stop in front of the hotel. Turn left out of the front doors and walk three blocks. Only take what you can carry. I’ll replace whatever you leave behind.”

“I don’t want you to replace my things, Ryan. I want you to tell me what’s going on. I’ve been waiting here all day, and now you just-”

“I’ll explain it to you later, I promise. Fifteen minutes, okay?”

He absently snapped the phone shut without waiting for her response, and then cursed under his breath when he realized that he had hung up on her.

Ryan didn’t know how bad it would get. The room at the Hay-Adams was reserved under his name, and he knew that once the story got out, reporters would be cold-calling the local hotels to get a sound bite and video for the morning news. He didn’t want his name in print or his face on television, and he didn’t want Katie to suffer those indignities either. Refuge might still be found at Langley, but he wasn’t yet ready to face Harper or the man’s recriminations. Kealey needed time to frame his words, time to shape an adequate explanation as to why he had nearly killed a prisoner in Federal custody.

The prize was a name, but it was not a guarantee. In this case, he didn’t think the prize would be enough to salvage his short-lived career at the Central Intelligence Agency.

That was fine by Ryan; he had made a promise to Katie, and he intended to keep it.

Through the thin veil of rain, the glittering facade of the Hay-Adams appeared in the distance. He hoped that she had managed to find a raincoat in the small store in the lobby, but knew that it wouldn’t do him any good either way. Whether she reached the car dry or drenched with rain, he was almost certainly in for another argument.

Without thinking about it, he took the knife out from under the passenger seat and slid it under the floormat beneath his own feet. Naomi Kharmai, as prepared for it as anyone could be, had been exposed to violent death twice in the last month. In the case of Stephen Gray, the death had been one of necessity. Some might have said, and he thought a case could be made, that it was actually one step behind outright murder. If it was murder, though, then it was understandable, even justifiable. What could not be rationalized was the random, senseless death she had been forced to confront in the broken remains of the Kennedy-Warren.

Ryan could do nothing for her now; she had touched the cold, sharp edge of reality and would sink or swim in her own time. He thought he recognized in her the strength to set it aside, to push it away and carry on with the task at hand.

If he could have kept it away from her altogether, he would have done so gladly.

It was his strongest desire that Katie should never have to endure the same. It was the reason he wanted her out of the hotel, and it was the reason he pushed the knife under the mat. If he was hard on her, if he told when he should ask, it was done out of fear that she might one day be forced to carry the same burden, year in, year out, until it crushed her spirit and her life with its weight.

Just as he would give anything to have her close, he would give anything to protect her innocence.

He would never have expressed these thoughts to her; it wasn’t in his nature and the words would have come out awkward, clumsy, and wrong.

He hoped she knew it, though. He hoped she felt it. To Ryan, only one thing took precedence, and soon, Katie would be everything, the only thing. When that day came, he knew that he would finally be able to put the past to rest.

WASHINGTON, D.C., LANGLEY

A day trip to Washington, to look at the route and consider the options.

It was a fine day for the journey. Away from the clouds that hung over central Virginia, away from the monotonous calculations and mind-numbing work with the soldering iron. He took his most recent acquisition, a four-year-old Honda motorcycle, a VT1100 Shadow, all chrome and glistening metallic paint. He preferred not to use the van until it was absolutely necessary. Had he driven it into the heart of the city and been stopped for a traffic violation, the vehicle would have become useless to him.

He pushed the bike north on I-95, turning onto Exit 170 before racing through the western edge of Alexandria. As he crossed the Potomac, reflections from the river below scattered shards of sunlight over the polished curves of the motorcycle.