When she turned the rental back in the attendant didn’t even look at the vehicle. He noted her gas and mileage and printed out her receipt.

“Fast trip,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Hope you enjoyed your time here. We’re known for our slower pace and peace and quiet.”

“Better rethink that,” said Reel as she walked toward the bus that would take her to the terminal.

She changed back into her old woman’s disguise in the restroom and boarded the next flight east.

When they were wheels up and the sun was burning down into the horizon, Reel put her seat back, closed her eyes, and thought about what she had learned.

Someone with top-top-secret clearance, at least three levels above Roy West, had read that white paper.

That was two years ago. The level and clearances could have changed. In fact, they most certainly had changed. The person would be higher-placed now. That was both instructive and problematic.

Had it been Gelder? Two years ago he would have been easily at least three levels above someone like Roy West, if not more.

But that was assuming West had told her the truth. She had no way to verify that there even was someone with the code name Roger the Dodger.

But she knew the white paper existed. She knew the plan set forth in that paper was being executed. She knew some of the people who were trying to execute it.

She had killed two of them and tried to kill a third.

But I don’t know all of them.

And if she didn’t know all of them there was no way she could truly stop it.

She looked out the window.

An hour later, as they flew east, it was dark. And in that vast blackness all Reel could see was hopelessness.

She had gone all that way, nearly been killed, and really had nothing to show for it. But she did, actually. She turned her mind to what was really important about this trip.

It was the man.

She still couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened out there. The killing that had taken place was, for her, routine. Dead bodies, explosions, devastation. That was her world. But this was something different.

She closed her eyes and the image of Will Robie instantly appeared. He was pointing his gun at her head. He was telling her to close her eyes so he wouldn’t have to face her for the kill shot.

But he hadn’t fired. He had let her live.

He had let her escape.

She had been surprised by this. No, she had been stunned by this.

Exactly what she had been surprised by was an emotion she had never encountered in her work.

Mercy.

Will Robie, the most accomplished assassin of his generation, had shown her mercy.

When she had seen Robie killing her enemy for her, Reel had thought it just possible that he would become her ally. That they would finish this together. That had been a ludicrous thought. This was her fight. Not his.

And yet he had let her live. And escape.

His mission would have been complete. The agency would have lauded his performance. Maybe he would have been promoted out of fieldwork, or been given extensive time off. He would have bagged their number one problem, in record time.

And he had just let her walk away.

She had always admired Will Robie. He was the calm, cool professional who did his work and never talked about a single triumph. And yet she saw an infinite sadness in the man, which she could never quite get her arms around. She saw that very same emotional state in herself.

They were a lot alike, she and Robie.

And he had let her live.

Killers didn’t do that. Killers never did that. Reel wasn’t sure, if the positions were reversed, that she would have let Robie walk away.

I probably would have shot him.

And maybe she had lied to Robie. About not wanting his help. She actually did want his assistance, because it had finally struck her that she couldn’t possibly accomplish this alone. So she had failed.

And now something happened that had not happened to Jessica Reel since she was a young girl.

Tears slid from her eyes and down her cheeks.

She closed her eyes again. And didn’t open them until the plane touched down.

When she did open them, she still couldn’t see anything very clearly.

CHAPTER

44

TWO HUNDRED MILES. Robie drove this distance without stopping. He headed directly east, which was the direction he needed to go. But finally, even his iron will broke down and he had to stop because he could no longer see the road.

He checked into a motel right off the highway, paid for his room in cash, and slept for eighteen straight hours to make up for a week of barely being able to sleep at all.

It was the heaviest sleep he’d had in years.

When he woke it was fully dark again. He had lost nearly a day of his life.

But he could have easily lost his life a day earlier.

He found a diner and ravenously ate two meals in one. He couldn’t seem to get enough to eat or drink. When he set his coffee cup down for the last time and rose from the table he felt his energy returning.

He sat in his truck in the parking lot, staring at the dashboard.

He’d had Reel lined up in his gunsight. One trigger pull and it would have been over. Reel dead. His mission accomplished. All worries gone.

His finger had actually slipped to the trigger. Every other time in his entire professional life when his finger had gone to that point he had fired.

Every single time.

Except that time.

Jessica Reel.

He had ordered her to close her eyes. When he had done so Robie was fully committed to making the kill shot.

And walking away.

To let someone else figure this whole thing out. He was just the triggerman. All he had to do was pull the damn trigger.

And I didn’t.

Once before in his life he had failed to make the shot. It had turned out to be the right decision.

Robie didn’t know if that would be so in this case.

Reel looked different. Not totally, just subtly. But that was enough. Most people were terrible observers. And even those good at observing were not very adept at it. Reel had done just enough to beat the odds that someone would spot her. Not too much. Not too little. Just enough.

Robie would have done the same thing in her position.

And by not pulling the trigger maybe Iam in her position now.

He drove back to the motel, went to his room, stripped down, and stood in the shower, letting the water wash off the grit he felt over every part of his body.

But the water couldn’t get to his brain, where it felt like muck a foot deep had gathered, dulling his senses, obstructing his ability to think clearly.

He dried off and dressed. He leaned against the wall and slammed both hands into it so hard he felt the drywall crack. He dropped fifty bucks on the bed to repair the wall and grabbed his bag.

He had a long drive ahead of him. He had better get to it.

He switched on the radio when he reached the interstate highway. The news was full of it. A massacre on a lonely ridge in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. No one was talking, but apparently rival militias had had a go at each other. A cabin had been blown up. Trucks too. Men lay dead.

One of them was identified as Roy West, a former intelligence analyst in D.C. When and why he had headed to Arkansas and taken up his new life of guns and bombs was as yet unknown. There were intimations that folks from D.C. were heading to the site now to begin an investigation.