John Gilstrap - No mercy

Then Mama Alexander called from the mansion, and everything changed.

All things considered, the flight to Dulles passed quickly. For good or ill, Jonathan and Boxers both ended up on the same flight out of Chicago, direct into Washington Dulles International Airport. They both sat in coach, hesitated. It wasn’t until he saw Dom there with her that his blood turned to ice. Never in all the years that he’d been running missions-whether for Uncle or for himself-had Dom D’Angelo shown up to greet him at the airport. There was no waving, no smiles. Venice looked as if she might have been crying. Dom looked as if he were about to. The priest stepped ahead to get to Jonathan first.

“What is it?” Jonathan asked, knowing the answer already.

Behind Dom, Venice started to cry in earnest. “Let’s sit down,” Dom said quietly.

“Nope, right here,” Jonathan said.

Dom reached out for Jonathan’s elbow, urging him toward the chairs. “Sitting is better,” he said.

“Is it Ellen?” Jonathan asked. It was written all over their faces, but he had to hear it. Even better, he had to hear that he was wrong.

Dom cast a look to Venice, and then locked his gaze with Jonathan. “She died at 9:30 this evening, Dig. She never regained consciousness. I’m so sorry.”

Jonathan stared, unblinking, as the words moved in slow motion. It was exactly as he had feared, but expecting and realizing were nowhere near the same shade on the emotional color chart. One did not prepare you for the other. As the frigid fist clutched more tightly at his guts, he locked his jaw and forced his emotions back into the depths where they belonged.

Dom cocked his head. “Dig?”

Venice moved closer, her arms outstretched to offer a hug. “Digger, I’m so, so sorry.”

Jonathan stopped her with a raised palm. “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s not exactly a surprise.” Something caught in his voice, but he was able to speak past it. He turned and started walking toward the exit. “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

“Dig?” Dom called.

He kept walking. He didn’t want to talk to people right now. He didn’t want to be anywhere near people right now. Well, maybe one person. Come to think of it, he couldn’t wait to be very close to Ivan Patrick.

“Jon!” When Jonathan didn’t slow, the priest trotted to catch up. “Look, Dig, I really think we need to talk.”

Jonathan forced a smile. “Is that your priest hat or your shrink hat talking?”

“It’s my friend hat. And I’m tired of you walking away from me when I’m trying to help.”

Jonathan turned on the priest. “Gonna analyze me, Father? Gonna take my confession? Gonna hold my hand, kiss my boo-boo, and make it all better?”

Dom’s eyes reflected the anger projected toward them. “Yeah,” he said. “A little of all of the above.”

“Well don’t bother. I’ve seen death before. Hell, I’ve wallowed in it.”

“A superhero,” Dom mocked.

“A realist. Ellen’s dead. I got it. And she’ll still be dead tomorrow and a year from now. If I need a psychiatric couch along the way, I’ll look you up.” In his peripheral vision, he could see Boxers arriving and pulling up short next to Venice.

“Jon, for God’s sake-” All around them, other passengers swerved to avoid them, a human current flexing to avoid rocks in the stream. Those who were observant enough responded to the obvious tension with a concerned second look.

“Do you want me to walk you through all the stages of grief, Dom? I know about the anger and the guilt and the denial. I’ve lived ’em all before, and I’m sure I’ll live them all again. would just be stuck with the awkwardness of it all.

“You okay, Boss?” the big man asked.

Jonathan pivoted his head to look at him, but he said nothing.

Boxers sighed. “I’m sorry you’re hurting like this.”

“You didn’t even like her,” Jonathan said. He could hear the whininess in his own voice and it embarrassed him.

“No, I never did,” Boxers confessed. “I never came close to liking her. And the way she treated you when she left, well, that didn’t help. But that don’t mean I don’t hurt when you hurt.”

This time, when Jonathan turned to face the big man, he allowed himself a gentle smile.

“You’re my friend, Dig. That makes you a rare friggin’ breed. I hate seein’ you in pain.”

A feeling of warmth washed over Jonathan. He didn’t think he’d ever heard a more heartfelt expression of empathy.

“There’s somethin’ else you should know,” Boxers continued. “Time comes you want to get revenge on the asshole who killed her, you know I’m there.”

Glow Bird beat them home, and when Jonathan and his chauffeur entered the firehouse, Venice, Dom, and JoeDog were already in the living room, waiting for them. Jonathan paused in the entryway and sighed as the dog scrabbled off the sofa and charged to meet him. He knew they were there to see him through his emotional crisis, but he was not in the mood.

“Not tonight, guys. I really want to be alone.”

“I don’t think you do,” Venice said.

Jonathan scowled.

Dom elaborated, “Before we got the news about Ellen, we did some brainstorming.”

“We?”

“Dom and I,” Venice said. “We were trying to make the pieces fit. And I think we did.”

Jonathan waited for it.

“We know that Stephenson Hughes needed the GVX as ransom,” Dom began.

Venice quickly interrupted, “And that Ivan Patrick worked for Carlyle in a special capacity for something called Special Projects.”

Dom leaned back in his seat, and let her have the floor.

“So, working from the assumption that there are no coincidences in the world, since Angela Caldwell worked for Carlyle, too-”

“She was the one who knew how to get their hands on it,” Jonathan said, connecting the dots for himself.

“So, the Hugheses did kill her,” Boxers said. “They tortured her to get the information.”

Venice shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. She had a family. She was a mother. I think all they had to do was tell her what they were up against, and she gave them the information. Somehow, Ivan Patrick must have found out about it, and then he was the one who tortured and killed them to find out what she’d told the Hugheses.” Her eyes bored into Jonathan, seeking assurance that her logic was sound.

“It certainly explains the brutality-Ivan’s MO,” Jonathan agreed. “If that’s the way it went down.”

“Tell him about the other shootings,” Dom prompted.

Venice leaned forward, her eyes wide. “No coincidences, right? Well, using this hunch, I did a little more poking around the ICIS network and I found even more activity around the“ No, but a shooting-sort of. A half of a shooting.” Jonathan’s face showed his waning patience, so Venice picked up the pace. “A 9-1-1 call reported a shooting at a place called Apocalypse Boulevard in a town I don’t remember. Then, while units were still responding, the call got canceled. The caller called back and said that they were mistaken, and that everything was okay. The dispatcher turned the ambulance around, but the cop car went on in anyway just to check things out. According to their report, the people they met there at the gate-employees of a security firm-seemed agitated, but they swore that everything was fine, and the cops had no grounds to press their suspicions any further.”

“But you don’t believe that things were fine,” Jonathan concluded for her.

Venice nodded. “Exactly. Because there are no coincidences. I did a Zillow search on the address.” Jonathan recognized the name of the real estate search engine. “Care to guess what that address used to be?”