Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“What about the others?” he heard himself say. Christ, it sounded so weak. So pleading.

“Dox expects people to act honorably,” Rain said. “If you let him down in that regard, he also believes the honorable thing is to track you down and shoot you. But he does like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“I can’t figure him out.”

“He grows on you. Anyway, you think Dox or Treven cares about you as anything other than a friend or a foe? Each of us just pocketed more money than we can ever spend. The trick now is to live to enjoy it. And we have a better chance of doing that watching each other’s backs than we do trying to preemptively kill each other. Isn’t that what you told me in Vienna you wished you had? Someone who really had your back? Well, how are you going to get that if you reflexively kill people because you’re terrified of trusting them?”

Larison blew out a long breath. Then another. He felt like he was going to jump out of his skin and told himself to Calm. The Fuck. Down.

Rain looked at him. “You mind if I take my gun out of the dresser?”

Larison shook his head. A minute ago, he would have killed Rain to stop him. Now…it didn’t matter.

Rain took out the Wilson Combat, checked the load, and eased it into his waistband.

“What’s the plan?” Larison said, unable to let go of his own gun, though he had no intention of using it.

“Well, it might be selfish,” Rain said, “but I’m pretty sure the three of us are going to Nebraska to try to stop a massacre.”

“Why is that selfish?”

“Because you could argue we’re not doing it to save the lives of others. You could argue we’re doing it so we can live with ourselves.”

Larison didn’t answer. He knew Rain was deliberately echoing what Larison had told him in Vienna, about the nightmares. It had been weak of him to tell Rain that, and he wasn’t sure why he had. But…the idea that there was something he could do, that there was a way to beat back those awful dreams…he wanted to believe it.

“I didn’t know it when I agreed to this op,” Rain said. “At least, I didn’t know it consciously. But I need to take all the shit I’ve done and the horror I’ve inflicted and do something good with it. And yes, Horton used that notion to manipulate me, and even though it turns out I was wrong about what the op was really about, it also turns out that maybe I’m going to get my chance anyway. And I don’t want to blow it.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because if we make the wrong choice here, I don’t think there’s a way back. I’ve come close before, very close, right up to the edge of the abyss. I don’t want to fall into it. And right now, I’m teetering.”

Larison swallowed. He thought he’d never been so confused. Or so suddenly exhausted.

“I need…a little time,” he said.

Rain nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I remember the shock of trusting someone. It fucked me up, too. You get used to it, after a while.”

Larison shoved the Glock in his waistband. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “What the hell did you just talk me into?”

“I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. You were just trying not to hear it.”

Rain held out his hand. After a moment, warily, Larison shook it.

Dox drove the Honda Treven had stolen east, toward Union Station. From there, Kei could catch a Red Line train and be home in no time.

He’d hated having to zip her back into the cargo bag to get her to the car, but Treven was right, no sense taking chances about her figuring out where they’d held her. The truth was, he was less worried about her being able to run to the police than he was that she’d feel bad if she didn’t. Better to just deny her the ability, and therefore save her the guilt.

The worst part of it was how willingly she’d let him do it. He’d taken the headphones off her and said, “Darlin’, I’m not comfortable waiting around for the bogeyman to get back here. He’s just too unpredictable for my tastes. So, with your permission, I’d like to take you home now.”

She’d looked into his eyes, smart enough to search for a lie, trusting enough to want to believe none was there, insightful enough to see that none was. Then she’d nodded and said, “Okay.” And that was that. He carried her out in the bag, unzipped it inside the trunk, closed her inside, and drove off, taking care to use an indirect route with plenty of bridges and underground parking garages along the way.

He’d been driving for nearly an hour when his mobile phone rang. He picked up. “Yeah.”

Treven’s voice: “All right, they’re back. The stones are real.”

“Well, that’s good news. What’s going on with our friend?”

“I don’t know. Your friend is alone with him right now. Trying to talk him down, I think.”

Dox didn’t like the sound of that. “Talk him down?”

“I don’t know what to tell you. He asked me to step out and call you from a payphone. And to tell you we’d meet as planned as soon as the three of us can get there.”

Dox hoped there would be three left. If whatever talk Rain was trying didn’t work out, there would likely be only two. Or one.

“All right, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you in a little while.”

He clicked off and finished the route on Ducommun Street, an empty cul-de-sac a few blocks from Union Station, where he parked in front of the busted chain-link fence in front of an abandoned warehouse. He got out with Kei’s mailbag and looked around, squinting against the sun and the heat. Someone had spray-painted No Parking, Tow-Away in now-faded red on the boarded-up doors of the building, but amid the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement and the garbage collecting at the bottom of the teetering loading dock, he didn’t think he was likely to encounter any objections.

He walked around to the trunk and opened it. Kei shut her eyes and lifted a hand to shield her sweaty face from the sudden invasion of light.

She squinted up at him fearfully. “You’re really going to let me go?”

He wondered if he could feel more low. He was never doing something like this again, no matter what the stakes. Never.

He held out his hand. “I promise you, I am. And I’m sorry, that was a long drive. I can see where you might have started to doubt me. Plus, it must have been god-awful hot in there.”

She paused for a moment, then took his hand and sat up. She looked around.

“We’re a few blocks from Union Station,” he said, “but, as you can see, not in the most upstanding of neighborhoods. If you don’t mind, I’ll just follow you in the car while you walk the few blocks to make sure you make it all right.”

She put some weight on his hand and stepped out of the trunk. She looked around again. “Okay.”

She was still holding his hand. He squeezed hers briefly and then let go.

“I know it’s pretty lame under the circumstances,” he said, “but I apologize for what we did to you. I shouldn’t have let myself get caught up in it. It was wrong, and I’m truly sorry.”

She said, “Thank you.”

He shook his head, ashamed. “You don’t have one single thing to thank me for. I did a terrible thing to you.”

She looked at him. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. You were the reason I wasn’t scared.”

That only made it worse. “I don’t think that’s worth very much, actually.”

“It was to me.”

“Darlin’,” he said gently, “are you familiar with a thing called the Stockholm Syndrome?”

“I know what it is. And I don’t have it. If the police had kicked in the door to that room, I wouldn’t have shielded you with my body, I can tell you that.”