“Shut up and grab the floor.”

Kidder looks like he’s going to comply, and then his eyes roll up and his body convulses and he grabs at his chest. It’s a convincing move, he sells it, and for just that one moment I almost believe he’s going into cardiac arrest. Until, a millisecond later, his right hand emerges from a fold in his orange overalls, holding a shiny pistol. Which swings not toward me, but toward Shane and Kathy and the unconscious boy.

“Screw it,” Kidder announces. “The little brat is coming with me.”

Several things happen all at once. I pull the trigger. The gun jumps in my hand like something alive, and a red splat emerges from the side of Kidder’s neck.

He grimaces, as if shrugging it off. He extends his arm and fires at Shane and the boy.

In the exploding confusion that follows, one thing remains clear in my mind: a vision of Kathy Mancero throwing herself at Kidder, cutting off his angle and taking a bullet in the center of her chest.

So fast I can’t react, can’t stop it, can’t change what happens.

Next thing, a flat, metallic snap coming from behind me. Another shooter heard from. And then Kidder is down with a round red hole in the center of his forehead and a death grin imprinted on his collapsing face, and Jack Delancey is racing up to say, “Sorry I’m late,” and taking the gun from my shaking hand and making me sit on my butt because he thinks I’m going to faint, which is ridiculous.

I do faint, but only for a moment. And when my vision clears Shane and Jack are crouching over Kathy. Two tough guys looking as tender as angels. Shane with the little boy in his arms, assuring her that Joey is okay, he’ll be fine as soon as he wakes up, and his mother is on the way, and she did it, she did a great good thing.

“You took the bullet, love,” he says, “so that he might live.”

The other thing I’m absolutely positive about: as the light faded from her eyes Kathy Mancero looked up at the cooing doves and smiled.

Chapter Sixty

Best Done Alone

Whatever moral complexities may have been exposed by recent unfortunate events, Taylor Gatling, Jr., remains a man of principle. He still empties his own spittoon, and that’s exactly what he’s doing one fine evening in August, a couple of months after that mess at the hangar, the one he was adroit enough to avoid. He tips the brass spittoon over the railing, hears the fine, satisfying flush of it galumphing into the river below and thinks not for the first time that he’s the luckiest man in the world. Not that he hasn’t made his own luck, not that he doesn’t deserve to enjoy all the wealth, all the toys, but still. One must make time to smell the roses. Or in this case a salty whiff of the white-capped sea. Best done alone, which is why he’s closed the boathouse to his little circle of handpicked members. Much as he enjoys the company of his card-playing cronies, he’s decided that for the rest of the month he’ll have the place to himself. Getting his thoughts in order, recharging his batteries, planning his next move. Because for sure he hasn’t given up on the business of keeping the country safe for right-thinking patriots like, well, himself and a few select others, worthy and vetted.

He’s smiling, content with his situation, his mission, as he returns to the relative darkness of the boathouse. The thing about being here alone, he doesn’t have to turn on any lights, he can enjoy the passing evening by looking out at the harbor with eyes unpolluted by unnatural light.

He puts his spittoon in the appropriate place by the card table and is about to help himself to a little something at the bar when he jumps about a foot in the air.

“Where the hell did you come from!”

“Oh, sorry, our bad.”

Bart and Bert, better known as the B brothers, the fraternal twins who work on the domestic drone program. Couple of local woodchucks, like to put on their countrified Down East accents. Ayuh, bubba, flannel shirts and logger boots, the whole bit. Normally Gatling finds the brothers amusing company, but this is beyond the pale, walking into the boss’s private club, his personal refuge, it just isn’t done. He’s about to say so, striking the right tone of executive aggrievement, when he recalls locking and bolting the door to the boathouse. Of course he did, so his pals, his posse, wouldn’t be tempted to drop by, despite his admonition not to. Which means the brothers must have jimmied the lock somehow, and that means—

Gatling feels the tip of a blade against his sternum and looks down to see the glint of a deer-gutting knife. “Bart? What’s going on?”

“Nothing to worry about, boss. By the way, it’s Bert.”

“Fine. Bert. What’s that your brother’s got?”

The other brother has a bulky black velvet sack slung from his shoulder. It’s not so dark that he can’t see they’re both smiling at his predicament, the damned ignorant woodchucks. Gatling has a small but distinct sense of what might have brought them here, and he’s confident he can work things to his advantage, given his powers of persuasion and his unlimited checkbook.

“Sorry about the interruption,” Bert says. “Me and Bart, we’re here to give you notice.”

“Give me notice?”

“We got signed by another club, just like ballplayers,” Bart says proudly, speaking up for the first time. He shifts the sack on his shoulder, at ease with himself and whatever it is he’s doing.

“Supposed to be a secret,” Bert confides. “But it can’t hurt to tell a guy like you, with all your connections. The DIA, and they gave us a signing bonus, too.”

“Defense Intelligence? What unit?”

“One you never heard of, because it’s like ultra-ultra secret and brand-new.”

“Oh, I seriously doubt that. Not that you’ve been offered jobs, no, no, that makes sense, a couple of talented boys like you, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts I know the unit.”

“He’s betting us donuts, Bert.”

“Ayuh. We like donuts.”

The lightness of the exchange convinces Gatling that he can turn them, and he’s deciding what, exactly, to offer the brothers when Bert bumps a chair into the back of his knees, forcing him to sit down.

“Sorry, Mr. Gatling, you’re a cool guy and everything, but you messed up wicked, that’s what they told us.”

Gatling’s spit has dried up but he manages to ask, “How so?”

“We don’t know exactly. Above our pay grade. But something Kidder did. Some files he sent to this certain web address at the Pentagon? Got a lot of very powerful folks all agitated. Decisions got made. And the result is, we got signed by the new unit.”

“Boys, I’ve got more money than God. You can have it all. Most of it.”

Bert grins. “Keep back just a tiny little for yourself, huh?”

His brother Bart unslings the sack from his shoulder, loosens the drawstring and removes a shotgun. Even in the dark Gatling recognizes the weapon and knows what it means. A little squirt of urine wets his underpants and he clenches, telling himself he’s better than this, he won’t soil himself.

“This is the exact same Purdey your dad used,” Bart says. “Kind of sad.”

“You really expect me to shoot myself?”

“No,” says Bart. “But we can make it look that way.”

They do.

Chapter Sixty-One

Almost Perfect