David Hagberg - End Game

“The Company has trained me well. I can take care of myself and you know it, so whatever reason you’re cutting me loose has nothing to do with protecting a helpless female. If I were a man, it would be different.”

“It’s not that,” McGarvey said, knowing damn well what was coming.

“What about Otto, then? He’s still on campus. Don’t you think it’s possible someone will come after him? Or what about Louise, at their safe house? How about her life?”

“They were never Alpha Seven.”

“Neither was I.”

McGarvey picked up his bag from where he had dropped it by the door. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” Pete said.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Do you think I need this, or want it?”

“I work alone.”

“Don’t make me beg, Kirk,” Pete cried. “I will, if I have to. I don’t have a shred of self-respect left when it comes to you. I’ll do anything you say. Just don’t tell me to turn my back and let you walk away.”

McGarvey dropped the bag. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said. “It’s as simple as that. People around me tend to become targets.”

“And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

McGarvey was at a loss for words. The situation was surreal, and yet he’d been here, done that before. Too many times before.

She laughed. It was strained. “How many interrogators do you know who’re also good shots?”

It had been wrong for him to come up here, knowing what she was probably going to say to him. And he felt bad for her that she was pleading this way. And yet he wanted to take her into his arms and make love to her. And that was the problem. Once that happened between them, he would never take her into the field with him. Out there, he watched his own back. If he got shot, it was his fault, his problem, no one else’s. And he wanted to keep it that way. Clean and simple.

On the other hand, if he did bring her with him, if he did allow her into his inner circle and they worked together on this thing, and something happened to her, he didn’t know how he would be able to live with himself.

He didn’t know if he could handle such a loss again, because he felt very deep down, in some secret compartment, that he, too, was beginning to fall in love with her. He felt guilty for betraying Katy and yet… and yet…

His cell phone chirped. It was Otto.

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Pete’s apartment. What’s happened?”

“Roy Schermerhorn made contact through the bulletin board. He wants to meet in the next twelve hours.”

“Where?” McGarvey asked. He switched the phone to speaker mode so Pete could hear.

“Anywhere except the campus.”

“How about the Farm?”

“No. Somewhere neutral. He wants an escape route, if from no one else than us.”

“Union Station,” Pete said. “Below the Attic block on the main floor.”

Otto heard her. “Good. Exactly where and when?”

“ Prometheus —the statue. Ten tonight.”

“Stand by, he’s online,” Otto said.

Pete looked at McGarvey. “It’s a break,” she said.

“Eight in the morning,” Otto said. “And there’s a potential problem. His live-in was murdered — and he’s the main suspect.”

“Where?” McGarvey asked.

“Milwaukee.”

“Can you confirm it?”

“An APB for Dana Peterson,” Otto said. “I’ve aged the one photo of him we have — I’ll send it. But he could have altered his appearance as well as his name.”

McGarvey and Pete showed up at the south entrance of Union Station by seven in the morning, and they had a clear sight line on the huge statue of fire above the main floor. The place was chockablock with commuters, mostly those coming into the city, and just about everyone was in a hurry.

Otto had sent them an old file photo of Schermerhorn that was useless except in a very general sort of way — mostly the man’s build and the shape of his head and face. But Otto had sent back decent photos of Mac and Pete.

“Makes us sitting ducks,” she’d said last night.

They’d agreed that once they’d made initial contact with the former Alpha Seven operator, they would move the meeting to her apartment. She’d not lived there very long, so it had only taken them a couple of hours to sanitize the place and move her things over to McGarvey’s apartment in Georgetown, a few blocks from the Renckes’.

He’d taken the couch and had pretended to be asleep the two times she’d gone to the bedroom door to look at him. She been wearing only a sleep shirt that didn’t reach her knees, and she had looked wonderful to him.

But he wasn’t ready. Especially not now in the middle of an op.

In the morning he was up first, and after she got dressed, she came out and had coffee with him.

“If the killer reads the same bulletin boards, he could show up at Union Station,” she’d suggested, and he’d agreed.

“As long as we can get to Schermerhorn first, he should be able to ID Alex or their control officer.”

Security was loose on the main concourse, only a few uniformed cops patrolling on foot, looking for needles in a very large haystack. They’d been trained to look for signs, even small signs, of developing trouble. Spot the face of the nervous man, or a woman wearing too many clothes for the weather. But someone reasonably well dressed walking up behind a person and firing one silenced shot into the small of their back and walking away, this would not be noticed until it was too late.

“There,” Pete said. She was looking across the concourse at a man standing directly below the statue of Prometheus.

“No,” Schermerhorn said behind them.

Pete turned and reached into her shoulder bag for her pistol, but McGarvey stayed her hand.

Schermerhorn appeared much older than in the photograph Otto had come up with, though his general build was the same, as was the shape of his face. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, untucked, the sleeves rolled up above his elbows. It was impossible to tell if he was armed.

“I understand you’re wanted in Milwaukee for murder,” McGarvey said. “Might be a good idea if we got out of here and went somewhere more secure.”

“It was my girlfriend, and I think whoever murdered her murdered the others — and in just about the same fashion,” Schermerhorn said. His voice held the very slight British accent of a Londoner, and he could have been discussing the weather. It was an act.

“Whoever did it wanted you and has probably read the same bulletin board message and even hacked your contact with us. It’s possible they’re here.”

“Rencke’s better than that,” Schermerhorn said. “But they managed to penetrate the campus. Not so hard — all of us did it at one time or another as an exercise. A lot of NOCs have. Where do you have in mind?”

“I have an apartment not far from here,” Pete said.

“And who the hell might you be?”

“Could be one of your newest best friends.”

They drove over to Pete’s apartment in McGarvey’s Porsche Cayenne. He circled the block a couple of times before parking around the corner. The morning was starting to cloud over, and already it was sticky.

“You’ll be safe here,” Pete said.

“Yeah, right,” Schermerhorn said, laughing.

“Just until we can figure out what the hell to do with you,” McGarvey said.

“You wanted to talk to one of us — well, here I am. And when we’re done — which won’t take long, I guarantee it — I’m gone. So don’t be handing me any crap about protective custody or safe houses.”