Julia was watching Laughing Boy. She wouldn’t take her eyes off him. “Angel and I worked together on this. Rudy was a big part of it. You were too busy playing James Bond to get involved.”
Chapel’s smile died on his face. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Laughing Boy’s whole body shook with mirth. “Okay? Okay. Yeah, we’re all okay in here. Too bad it can’t last.”
Julia kicked him in the ribs. “It won’t last for you, that’s for sure,” she said.
Chapel put the scene together in his mind. Laughing Boy must have been following them this whole time, waiting for a time when Chapel and Julia weren’t in the same place. He’d moved in when he got his chance, but Julia, working with Angel and Rudy, had somehow lured Laughing Boy in here and gotten the better of him. His first thought was one of immense relief that it had worked out like that — that Julia was still alive.
His second thought was that they were all in deep shit.
“Go ahead, Chapel,” Julia said.
“Go ahead and do what?” Chapel asked.
“Interrogate him! Find out why he’s chasing us.”
“Julia—” he began.
It was Laughing Boy who answered that, though. “He knows that already. It’s because of the virus, of course. Why don’t you ask Captain Jimmy here about that? About the virus?”
Julia’s eyes flicked toward Chapel, but she was smart enough not to lower the gun or look away from Laughing Boy for long. “Chapel?” she said.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” he told her. “I don’t want to say anything in front of him.”
“Then — then ask him about the chimeras. He must know more than we do,” Julia pointed out.
“I’m sure of it. I’m also sure he’s not going to tell us what we need to know.”
“He will if you torture him,” Julia suggested. “I don’t like it, Lord knows I’m not comfortable with any Guantanamo Bay shit. But if anybody ever deserved it—”
“Won’t work,” Laughing Boy said, chuckling.
“He’s right,” Chapel told her.
“You don’t know how to waterboard somebody? They didn’t train you in that?” Julia demanded.
“They taught me all about interrogation techniques,” Chapel confirmed. “And why they’re no good.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “Anything you can do to him, he knows some way to resist it. Damn it!”
“No. The problem is, torture works too well. Ten minutes in he’d tell us everything we wanted to hear. He’d tell us anything at all, to make us stop. He’d tell us ten different stories. One of them might even be true, but we’d have no way to know which one. There’s also the fact that it’s illegal.”
“I don’t care! This isn’t just about your case, Chapel. This man is a murderer. He needs to pay!”
She was right — there was no question about that. She was also fooling herself. Chapel wondered if there had ever been a time in human history when the people who needed to pay actually ended up doing it. The sad fact was that men like Laughing Boy were above the law.
Chapel wasn’t in the business of righting wrongs. He was in the business of protecting people. Right then, that meant getting Julia away from that place.
“Just put the gun down,” he said. “We need to get out of here. Somebody might have seen you and him coming in here. They might have called the cops. If they come and find us like this—”
“No! No way! We are not going to just let him go!”
“We’ll leave him here, like this. He can explain to the cops how he wound up in this position. He won’t name us — he doesn’t dare.”
“This asshole kills people! He killed Portia, my receptionist! And who knows how many other people?”
Chapel walked over toward her and held out his hand so she could give him the silenced pistol. She didn’t move an inch.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Just give me the gun.”
“No,” she told him, and he saw in her eyes that she didn’t trust him. No more than she trusted Laughing Boy. “No. I don’t think so.”
“How does this end?” he asked her.
“You know what he’s capable of. He’s worse than the chimeras!”
“Tell me how it ends,” he asked her, quietly.
On the ground Laughing Boy started to guffaw.
“Does it end with you shooting him in the head? I don’t think it does. You’re not a killer, Julia.” He held out his hand again. “You’re better than him.”
“You could kill him,” Julia pointed out. “You have a gun, too.”
Laughing Boy crowed at the thought. “He doesn’t have the balls!”
Chapel shook his head. “I guess that’s the difference between you and me. You seem to think it’s an act of courage to shoot a defenseless man tied up on the ground. I don’t.”
“Nah,” Laughing Boy said. “Nah. The difference is that you’re one of those military types who takes the whole defense thing too seriously. The difference between you and me is that you think your job is to protect America.”
“That is my job,” Chapel said. “What’s yours?”
“I’m here to make sure America wins. No matter what it takes.”
“Shut up!” Julia shouted at him. “Shut up and stop laughing!”
Laughing Boy chuckled to himself.
Julia lifted the pistol and sighted down its barrel.
“Julia, if we kill him, it won’t even matter,” Chapel told her. “They’ll just send somebody else. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from this.”
“We have to do something,” she said.
“And we will. But not now. We’re done here,” Chapel said. “Julia, give me the—”
Julia squeezed the trigger of the pistol.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:29
She jumped as it went off, perhaps not expecting it to make so much noise. Silencers could cut down the decibels of a gunshot but only so much — the pistol still roared like a lion when it fired.
Blood spurted out of Laughing Boy’s shoe. She’d shot him in the foot.
“Jesus fuck!” Laughing Boy shouted, and his leg flopped around like a landed fish. For a second nobody moved. Finally Chapel recovered and moved closer to Julia.
She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“That,” Chapel said slowly, “will definitely slow him down.”
“I was aiming for his head,” she told him.
Chapel had no idea what to make of that.
He took the pistol from Julia — she didn’t fight him this time — and wiped the grip with the tail of his shirt. When he was sure it was clean, he slid it into the darkness at the back of the abandoned store. “Now we really have to go. Rudy — you too.”
The ex-marine nodded. He didn’t look particularly shocked by what he’d seen. Less so than Julia, for sure. He went to the door and held it open for Julia, who marched out with her head down. She looked like she was near tears.
Chapel took one last look at Laughing Boy. He was still bleeding, though not too badly. His face was screwed up with pain, but he was still chuckling.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” the CIA man said. “You don’t even need to torture me. She’s going nowhere. She might have the bug.”
“She might not,” Chapel said, and he turned to go.
“Maybe,” Laughing Boy said. “Maybe you’ve got it, too.”
Chapel’s blood froze.
He’d considered that before, of course. Anyone who came into contact with the chimeras was at risk of contracting the virus. And he had been in very close contact with the one in New York.
He hadn’t let himself think about it consciously, not before that. He’d put it away in the box of things he had to worry about later.