The Hit (34 page)

He opened his knapsack and pulled out his night optics. He put them on and fired them up. They worked fine, turning the invisible to visible.

Robie’s plan was simple.

He was going to visit Cabin 17.

The darkness would be both a benefit and danger to him.

If it wasn’t occupied, Robie would find what he could. If the cabin yielded no clues he would have wasted a lot of time and come away with nothing.

He wondered what his next step would be if that turned out to
be the case. Go back to D.C.? Go back on the grid? After what he suspected? That his agency was compromised and corrupted?

His last text exchange with Reel had without doubt been picked up by others. They would want to know what Robie had deduced. They would want to know where he had gone. They might want him dead, depending on his answers.

Well, then I just won’t give them any answers until I know which side folks are really on.

He had relied on a moral compass that by some miracle he still had inside him, despite what he did for a living. That meant he couldn’t walk away from this one. That meant he had to confront it at some point.

He waited until after two in the morning before setting out. He opened the door of Cabin 14 and stepped out into the pitch black.

Next stop, Cabin 17.

I
T LOOKED JUST LIKE
C
ABIN
14, except there was a flowerpot out front on the porch with a single drooping flower. The first frost would kill it off. The flowerpot also had a cat painted on it.

Robie was standing back at the tree line. His gaze went to the door of the cabin, to the flower, and then to the surrounding darkness.

Through his night optics, the world was presented in sharp relief. But it couldn’t show him everything. There could be something else out there that he didn’t see.

So he studied that flowerpot for a long time, wondering why it was there. Just one droopy flower. And it was one that needed sun, as many flowers did. Yet there was no sun here. Which meant there was no reason to plant it in a pot and put it on the steps.

It made no sense. And thus it made perfect sense. Everything Reel did had a purpose.

He went back over the Eastern Shore fiasco frame by frame in his head. He had fired at the door and the porch, trying to set off booby traps from a safe distance.

He twirled a suppressor onto the muzzle of his Glock, aimed, and fired twice. The pot cracked, and dirt and flower parts flew up into the air.

There was no explosion.

But through his night optics Robie did see the remains of some device whirling off into the darkness.

He moved closer and examined some of this debris: the shattered parts of a surveillance camera. He picked up a piece of the clay pot.
A hole had been bored into it and then hidden by the picture of the cat.

The pot had been Reel’s eyes.

And Robie had just blinded her.

It felt good.

And he also now had confirmation that the renter of Cabin 17 was indeed Jessica Reel. She had given him the clues to get here.

But that didn’t make him trust her.

He slipped his thermal imager out of his knapsack, fired it up, and pointed it at the cabin. Nothing living inside registered on its screen.

But that had happened last time and still Robie had almost fried.

Ultimately, he decided he just had to get it done. He moved stealthily toward the cabin, knelt, and fired at the door and the porch floor.

Nothing happened other than metal ripping through old wood.

He waited, listening for sounds.

A scampering in the trees was a squirrel or deer. Humans couldn’t move like that.

He crab-walked forward some more, squatted, and studied the structure.

There wasn’t much remaining to deduce from the outside. He hoped the inside would be a lot more informative.

He moved toward the porch and hurried up the steps to the door. One kick and the wooden door flew back. Robie was in the room in the next second and had cleared it five seconds after that. He shut the door behind him, pulled his flashlight, and shined it around.

What he saw was not what he had been expecting. There was no
SORRY
stenciled on the wall.

There could be a firebomb in here somewhere, but he didn’t focus on that. There was a woodstove, a table, chairs, and a bed. And a small toilet and sink. Just like his cabin. On the table was a battery-powered lantern. He examined it for booby traps, found none, turned it on, and the room became dimly illuminated.

Also on the table were two pictures set in frames.

One was of Doug Jacobs.

The other was of Jim Gelder.

Black slashes had been drawn across the pictures of the dead men.

There were three other frames lined up next to them. There were no pictures in them. In front of the frames was a single white rose.

He picked up the pictures of Jacobs and Gelder and checked to see if anything was hidden behind them. There was nothing. He did the same with the three other frames.

Robie wondered whose pictures Reel intended to insert in these when and if the time came. And he still didn’t know why, other than that for some reason she thought these men were traitors to their country.

Robie still had no proof of that.

But what had happened to Janet DiCarlo made him realize that something was off. He touched the white rose. It felt moist. Perhaps it had recently been placed here.

He whipped around so fast, he heard her gasp at the speed of his reflexes.

His gun was pointed right at her head, his finger past the trigger guard and near the trigger itself. One twitch of his finger and she was dead from a third eye between her other two.

But it wasn’t Jessica Reel.

It was Gwen from behind the counter at the Bull’s-Eye Inn who stared back at him.

“
W
HAT ARE YOU DOING HERE
?” demanded Robie.

He did not lower his pistol. She was old but she could still be a threat.

She said calmly, “I could ask you the same question, young man. This is not Cabin 14. This is Cabin 17. As I told you, it’s already rented.”

“Doesn’t seem to be anyone here. Doesn’t look lived in at all. Just photos and a white rose on the table.”

Gwen looked past him to the photos and flower then drew her gaze back to him. “Doesn’t matter. They paid, and it’s theirs to do with what they want.”

“Who exactly are ‘they’?”

“Like I said before, confidential.”

“I think we’re well past confidences, Gwen. I think you need to tell me right now.”

“She won’t but I will.”

Robie swung his pistol around to take aim at the newcomer.

Jessica Reel was standing in front of him.

What surprised him was that she had no gun. Her arms were down by her sides. Robie ran his gaze quickly over her.

Reel said, “No weapons, Will. No throwing knife. No tricks.”

Robie remained silent as she took another deliberate step into the room. He kept swiveling his gaze between both women.

Reel had said she was unarmed, something he didn’t believe. But she hadn’t said the old woman wasn’t packing. And at this short distance even an eighty-year-old could shoot and kill him.

“You two know each other?” he asked at last.

“You could say that,” replied Reel. “She was my security blanket.”

Robie cocked his head questioningly at her.

“I thought if she was here you wouldn’t put a bullet in my head.”

“I didn’t in Arkansas.”

“I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know. But circumstances change.”

“Yes, they do. But why would you think her being here would stop me from killing you now?”

“Because if you kill me, you’d have to kill her. And you don’t kill innocent people. It’s not how you’re wired.”

Robie shook his head. “How do I know she’s innocent? She doesn’t seem surprised by any of this.”

Gwen said, “But I was. Didn’t think you could move that fast. Scared me.”

“He always did move fast,” said Reel. “But no unnecessary movement. Everything calculated for maximum efficiency. I saw that in Arkansas vividly. A one-man army.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With you pointing a gun at me. Like back in Arkansas.”

“Doesn’t really answer the question.”

“What do you want the answer to be?”

“You killed two members of the agency in cold blood. Under normal circumstances that would be enough of an answer for me. That’s what I told you in Arkansas, and that’s what I’m telling you now. Back there I asked for an explanation. I’m asking again.”

She took another step forward. “Under normal circumstances?” she said.

Robie let his finger slide past the trigger guard and close in on the trigger. Reel noted this and stopped moving. They both knew he was close to the point of no return.

Gwen hovered in the background looking tense, her gaze focused on Reel.

Robie said, “DiCarlo? She made it clear to me that the situation was not normal.” Robie gestured over his shoulder to the table.
“White Rose? Resistance group in World War II. Fought against what they considered the traitorous Nazis.”

“I was afraid they’d police the roses I left.”

“They did, only they missed a couple of petals. Probably the only reason they left the book in your locker for me to look at. They didn’t think I’d have any evidence of the flower.”

“Good to know they make mistakes.”

“My problem, though, is that maybe you’re the traitor and all this is a smokescreen.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Jess!” snapped Gwen. “You know that’s not true.”

Robie let his gaze flicker over the old woman. He had already noted she was fully dressed, though the hour was very late.

This was all planned
.

Robie asked Gwen, “Who exactly are you?”

Gwen looked at Reel but said nothing. Reel slowly turned to look at her. Robie thought he saw her smile, though it was hard to tell in the poor light.

Reel said, “An old friend of mine. A very old friend. Family, actually.”

“I didn’t think you had any. Your mom’s dead. You old man’s in prison for life.”

“Gwen was the only decent foster parent I had.”

“When they took you away…” Gwen began, but her voice faltered.

“If you were a good foster parent, why was she taken away?”

Reel answered, “There is no logic in foster care. What happens happens.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why she’s here.”

Reel said, “I bought this place four years ago. Under an alias, of course. I brought Gwen up to run it.”

“You own the motor court?” said Robie in surprise.

“I had to put my money somewhere. And while I wasn’t that concerned about turning a profit, I did want a place where I could get away.”

“Literally get away?” said Robie.

She glanced past him to the photos on the table. “Aren’t you going to ask me about them?”

“I thought I already did. I don’t remember hearing an answer other than they were traitors but you had no proof.”

“I walked in here with no weapon. What does that tell you?”

“That you want to talk, so talk. I especially want to hear about the apocalypse.”

“It’s a very long story.”

“My calendar is clear for the rest of the year.”

“Can you lower your weapon?”

“I don’t think so.”

She held out her hands. “You can cuff me if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Tell me what you need to tell me. Explain to me why you put a bullet in Doug Jacobs when you were supposed to be planting a round between the eyes of a man who has sworn to destroy our country. Tell me why Jim Gelder had to die. And tell me why you killed an analyst turned militia freak. I’m really looking forward to the answers. It might save your life.
Might
,” he added.

“I told you, I didn’t kill Roy West. He tried to kill me and I defended myself. He died from shrapnel wounds when his house blew up.”

“Why go out there at all?”

“He had something I needed.”

“Yeah, you told me that in Arkansas. But what? You told me you’d already read the paper he’d written.”