Darren Lemke - Gemini Man

She turned to him and said, “Okay. Gemini.”

Henry’s eyes were hooded as they swiveled to look at her. “How much do you know about them?”

“Privatized paramilitary, owned by Clay Verris.” Danny watched his face carefully for a reaction to the name; there was none but Baron winced. “Agency does a ton of business with them. Is there more?”

The two men traded looks. “Baron and I served under Verris in the Marines—Panama, Kuwait, Somalia,” Henry told her. “He started Gemini after he left the Service. Tried to hire us. We both said no.”

“Except I was smart enough to move 1500 miles away,” Baron added, chuckling.

“Yeah, that was pretty smart,” Henry said, climbing into the Jeep’s front passenger seat. “I blew that one.”

Danny took a last look around at the beach and the gorgeous blue water where the Aztec was moored close to the shore. If the rest of Cartagena was this beautiful, she could understand how a person might decide to throw it all over for a place in the sun. She was far from ready to even think about that herself. But she wouldn’t have minded turning her phone off for a week or two of vacation time here.

Assuming, of course, that things worked out so well that the agency not only let her keep her job but gave her a replacement for the phone she had tossed into Buttermilk Sound.

Now she was getting too far ahead of herself, she thought as she got into the Jeep’s backseat. She had to take things one step at a time. Or in her case, one life-changing crisis at a time.

In spite of everything, Henry could feel himself untense as Baron drove them to his place. Baron had been trying to get him to visit for years—decades—and he had always managed to find reasons not to. Baron had accused Henry of dodging him and asked if it was because he was so completely out of the business. Henry had finally confessed that yes, he had been dodging him, but only because he didn’t think he’d last even half a day in a place where he couldn’t catch a Phillies game.

In truth, however, Henry had been afraid that Cartagena would seduce him the same way it had Baron and he would succumb to the pleasures of a life without stress or sniper rifles or targets, let alone the Phillies. He hadn’t been ready to give any of that up yet, not permanently, and still wasn’t. He had no idea when he would be ready; he only knew he wasn’t there yet.

Baron drove them along a river lined with fishermen; a few of them were pulling in catches as they passed. Henry could hear Danny in the seat behind him moving from one side to the other, trying to see everything all at once. It was nice traveling with kids, he thought wryly; they weren’t too jaded to appreciate the scenery. Ha ha.

Or was that less a joke than it was a message from his subconscious? He’d found himself thinking of Danny not as a daughter exactly, but someone similar, maybe a niece. Only he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so she would be kind of an adopted niece, like the daughter of a good friend. Except he couldn’t imagine Baron or Jack Willis as her father. Not Patterson, either, not any more. And certainly not Lassiter—her species probably ate their young.

After several miles, Baron turned away from the river onto a road that he said led to the Old Town. “For some of us, Old Town is the only town,” he said as they went through a fish market filled with people haggling or gossiping or whatever civilians did in the course of a typical day; Henry couldn’t really imagine. He’d never gotten a handle on this kind of life. And yet when Patterson mentioned their having saved lives, these were among the ones he was referring to.

The fish market gave way to a church courtyard with a collection of impossibly beautiful statues of saints Henry was pretty sure he’d never heard of and wouldn’t have believed in anyway. At one time, he’d have taken it for granted that Baron didn’t, either, but now he wasn’t so sure. Not that it mattered; saints or no saints, Baron was his brother. When Henry had called, Baron had dropped everything and come to help, no questions asked.

Baron slowed down and brought the Jeep to a stop in front of a large, two-story building painted bright canary yellow. Henry thought it was one of those boutique hotels that only the ultra-rich knew about. He turned to Baron, eyebrows raised.

“Here she is,” Baron told him, obviously pleased at his reaction. “Casa Baron.”

The house was even more impressive inside. Henry turned around and around in the entry hall, goggling at the staircase curving under a skylight, the polished tile floor, and the tropical plants in hanging baskets or in planters running along the walls. Baron pushed Henry gently toward the light and airy living room, still bright even though it was now late in the day. Danny made herself comfortable on the sofa opposite a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the ocean. The water seemed to stretch out forever.

“Damn, Baron, you’re the king of Cartagena,” said Henry, taking in the high vaulted ceiling and wood beams.

“I get by.” Baron chuckled with fake modesty as he went to the nearby drinks cart. “Plus, we got an awesome hardware store down the street. Henry loves hardware stores,” he added to Danny, looking over his shoulder at her.

Danny shifted restlessly on the sofa. “Yeah, great. Let’s make small talk. I want to know more about Clay Verris and Gemini.”

Henry hesitated and looked at Baron but he was rattling glasses to show he was too busy with their drinks to answer.

“Verris tried to hire you,” Danny prodded, “and you said no. So that’s why you hate him, because he offered you jobs you didn’t want? There’s got to be more to it than that.”

Henry shrugged.

“Come on, Henry,” she said, slightly impatient now. “What aren’t you telling me?”

The unadorned honesty of the question caught him off guard, although it shouldn’t have. It was the only kind of question Danny had ever asked him, at least since he’d showed her the photocopy of her DIA badge. He sighed.

“Clay Verris gets billions every year to clear targets any way he sees fit,” Henry said. “That’s Gemini—off-book kidnappings, torture. They’re who you call when you need twelve Saudi princes to quietly disappear. Or you want someone to train your death squads.”

Danny’s expression showed she knew that still wasn’t everything and she wasn’t going to settle for anything less than the whole story.

“When I was six weeks into sniper school,” he went on after a moment, “Clay Verris put me on a boat, and took me five miles out. He tied weights to my ankles, then threw me overboard and told me to tread water until I couldn’t any more.”

Danny’s jaw dropped. “He didn’t know about your fear of—”

“ Of course he knew.” Henry couldn’t help laughing a little. She may have had an exemplary record with the agency but she still had a lot to learn. “That was the point.”

“So, what did you do?” Her eyes were wide and serious.

“I treaded water for as long as I could,” Henry said. “Then I drowned. Dead. ”

Baron’s bright, beautiful living room was gone and he was back in the ocean, sinking down into a cold, dark death, unable to feel his fingers and toes, his arms and legs too heavy to move, his muscles completely used up, drained and done. By then, his head was the only place he had any sensation. How icy the water had been as it covered his face. He could remember that so clearly, so vividly, the same way he could remember his father’s enormous grin and the terrified little boy in those mirror shades. Dying in the ocean had seemed like the last bit of his father’s malice, a booby-trap set to go off at a time and place where there was no loving mother to come to his rescue Henry’s last breath had escaped him in a stream of bubbles as he died in the dark and the cold.