Alex looked at him. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Was Ben… was he crying?

“Why didn't you just tell me?” Alex asked. “Why didn't you ever… say something?”

“Because you blame me. You always have.”

Alex couldn't deny the truth of that. And suddenly, he felt like the world's biggest jerk. He hadn't wanted Ben to be sorry. Or not just that, anyway. No, he'd wanted… he'd wanted to extract something from him. Punish him. Seeing Ben's tears, seeing the undeniable evidence of his brother's sorrow, made him realize that this was at least as much about himself as it was about Ben.

“Mom and Dad… they told me it wasn't your fault.”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, they told me the same thing. But that's not how they felt. And they were right. And so were you.”

“I don't think I was right,” Alex said, surprised at the words. “I think… I don't know.”

He'd almost said, I think I needed to blame someone. Was that it? He needed to think.

“And Dad,” Ben said. “I wish I'd done that differently. It felt like my whole life was going to get wasted, like if I didn't enlist, the window would close or something. I look back and realize that was bullshit. I could have waited. I should have waited.”

Alex didn't know what to say. He'd never felt so confused. “It… might not have made any difference,” he stammered after a moment. “I think Dad… what he did, maybe he was going to do it no matter what.”

Ben rubbed his temples. “Christ, I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

Alex smiled. “How's your head?”

“It hurts. I wasn't really expecting you to throw the gun at me. Shoot me, maybe, but not throw it.”

“It seemed like a good compromise at the time.”

“I guess it was.”

They were quiet for a moment. Alex said, “Osborne's really involved in this?”

“He is. Let's sit down and I'll brief you.”

Alex sat at the kitchen table. Ben walked over to a cabinet, took out a glass, and filled it at the faucet. “You want one?” he asked. Alex shook his head, amazed at the familiarity of it. A simple thing like getting a glass of water.

Ben joined him and gave him an earful. They'd blackmailed Os-borne. Ben's unit was involved. His commander was one of the people behind the whole thing.

“You're going to meet him?” Alex asked. “How can you trust him? I mean, he's been trying to kill me.”

“He might not have known you're my brother.”

“You believe that?”

“I'm trying to find out.”

“If he had known, would it have made a difference?”

Ben sighed. “I don't know. That's one of the things I want to find out. I'm not going to meet where he wants, I'll tell you that.”

“Where, then?”

“I'll figure something out. Do me a favor, go somewhere else for a few hours while I'm gone.”

“Ben, I can't live this way.”

“We ‘re trying to fix that, that's the point. So you can go back to your life and not have to worry about someone coming after you.”

“I don't know why you think you can trust this guy. I think meeting him is a mistake.”

“I'm not trusting him. I'm being very careful, believe me. But I'll tell you what. You still have Obsidian and Hilzoy's notes on your laptop, right?”

“Right.”

“Go someplace and take the laptop with you. That'll be a kind of insurance for me if things go sideways.”

“Ben, seriously, I don't think this is a good idea. You're as exhausted as I am, maybe you're not thinking clearly.”

“Trust me, okay?”

“What about Sarah?”

For an instant, Ben's expression was genuinely sorry. “You mean…”

“No, not that. Forget about that. Is she in danger?”

“No more than you, and probably less. But I doubt she's going to listen to me right now.”

Alex sighed. “She's probably not going to listen to me, either.”

There was a pause. Ben said, “I'm sorry, Alex.”

Alex shook his head. He'd acted like a jerk at the hotel. It wasn't as though Sarah was his girlfriend. He'd never even had the courage to make a move on her, and he knew he never would. He'd just been jealous, that's all. But he didn't feel that way now.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he said.

Ben cracked his knuckles. “No. I just don't see a better one. Go somewhere. Relax. I'll call you in just a little while.”

Ben left and Alex started to get dressed. He wondered where he should go. Another hotel? He was sick of hotels. And hell, he was so tired he could probably just put his head down at the library for a few hours.

He wanted to believe Ben could make everything right, but he couldn't. They'd killed two people for Obsidian. His own boss was part of it. They'd gotten into the patent office database, the law firm's filing system. These weren't the kind of people who could be talked out of what they were doing. Why did Ben think the fact that Alex was his brother was going to make any difference? It seemed more likely the connection would doom Ben than it would save Alex. Why couldn't Ben see that? And why couldn't Alex persuade him?

He pulled on a shirt and started pacing. Damn it, Ben was making a mistake. He thought about calling him and decided it would be useless. When Ben got an idea in his head, nobody could get it out.

He realized he was thinking only about what might happen to Ben. And then he realized something else: that's all Ben wanted him to think about. He didn't want Alex to be afraid for himself. He thought of the way Ben had led him gently from Katie's hospital room so many years before and wondered how they'd gone so wrong.

He kept pacing. What was he going to do, just sit around, hoping he was wrong, hoping Ben would somehow save the day?

This was crazy. He had to do something. He had to take a chance. He grabbed his cell phone and called Sarah.

He got her voice mail. “Sarah,” he said, “it's Alex. I'm sorry about this morning. Listen, I just saw Ben and he told me a bunch of things about what's going on that you need to know. And he's about to do something really stupid and I need… I need to figure out how to help him. Call me.”

He grabbed the laptop and headed out.

31 SQUEEZED

Ben drove into Palo Alto to reconnoiter. He hadn't been here in damn near a decade, and even if the layout hadn't changed, which assuredly it had, he couldn't trust his recollections. He had looked at the world differently when he was living here, and absorbed different things. Before he'd seen neighborhoods. Now he needed to see terrain.

He walked the grid of streets downtown, observing without any sentimentality the things that had changed and the things that hadn't. He paid particular attention to alleys and where they led, to which streets were one-way, to the positions of banks and jewelry stores and other places with security cameras. When he felt satisfied with his new familiarity with the tactical layout of the town, he started looking for a suitable place for a meeting. He found it in a restaurant called Coupa Café. It had a patio in front, set back from the sidewalk, sheltered under a portico supported by thick pillars. He stood in front of one of the patio tables and noted that he had a good view of the entrance to the Citibank across the street and two stores down, and that positioning himself behind one of the pillars would offer some cover and concealment from the street. The tables were all taken, but something would open up. If he had to, he'd make the opening himself.

He went inside. The restaurant was a long rectangle, with the window facing the street on one of the short ends, the coffee counter along one long end, and a painted wall opposite. The tables were crammed close together, and even though it was getting into late afternoon, the place was packed. There was a room at the rear, accessible through a large open doorway, only partially visible from the front. He walked back and found what he was looking for: a fire exit, not alarmed, locked from the inside. It led to an alley that connected with other alleys branching out in three directions. If things went south at the front of the restaurant, he could haul ass back here and vanish in the alleys.