When you were off the clock, it wasn’t like you could just reset yourself to start connecting with other people the way a civilian would. And if you were connecting and enjoying the kind of social life regular people had, you couldn’t just flip a switch and turn it off when your handler called to say you were going to Savannah to keep a legendary agent under surveillance because he wanted to quit killing people. So you lived a separate life, kept yourself apart from everyone else. It was like being an air-gapped computer in a world where everyone else was online.
But once in a while—not often, almost never—you met someone and despite your best intentions, you couldn’t help connecting with them. You would get a glimpse of what it was like to have a relationship with another human being—a personal relationship of any kind, romantic or not. It happened to civilians all the time. They had the luxury of taking that stuff for granted; agents had to shake it off like a hangover.
And that was why this evening with Henry had definitely not been a date.
“Hey, Jack, you ever think about history?” Kitty asked from where she was standing outside at the rail.
Behind the bar, Jack Willis glanced up from the drinks he was mixing and laughed a little, not unkindly. He was a lifelong admirer of beautiful women; his wife was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. In recent years, however, he had discovered that a woman who wanted to talk to him more than she wanted to go shopping had an extra special loveliness that went beyond big bright eyes, exquisite bone structure, or a killer body, all of which Kitty was also blessed with.
“That’s what I think about when I look up at the stars,” Kitty went on. “I think, cavemen looked up at those stars. Cleopatra looked up at them. Shakespeare. And they were the same stars. I mean, a couple hundred years is nothing to a star. That comforts me. I don’t know why.”
Jack didn’t know why, either. It was hard for him to imagine why a beautiful woman would need comforting unless she was in an accident or a war zone. He glanced out at her again and started slicing up a lime.
“The people in the past, they were looking up at the sky just like I am,” Kitty was saying. “And they felt just what I’m feeling—wonder. Which is the same thing people a hundred years from now are going to feel. It—”
Jack waited; the silence stretched and he knew even before he looked that Kitty was no longer at the rail feeling wonder about the stars. He drew his gun from the back of his waistband and moved out onto the deck, careful not to make a sound. Still no Kitty. He remembered what Henry Brogan had said once about how disappearing without a trace was a super-power all beautiful women shared. It’s how they ditch us for the cool rich guys.
If only that were true this time, Jack thought, his heart sinking. He had not reckoned anyone would dare take a run at him while he was still in US waters. There should have been enough time for him to offload Kitty at some safe haven, dammit—
He spotted the scuba tanks and swim fins on the deck just as a shadow in his peripheral vision moved toward him, becoming a figure with a gun. Jack lunged forward to meet him and the two of them struggled together, each trying to get the upper hand. It had been some years since Jack had gone hand-to-hand with anyone and he could feel the other man was stronger and probably younger. He had to finish this quickly or be overpowered.
Jack was still trying to force the barrel of his gun against his opponent’s chest when a shot rang out right beside his ear. Deafened, he fought harder, not knowing if he was hit, relying on adrenaline to keep him going. He almost had the gun against the other guy’s belly when an arm reached around from behind and put him in a headlock.
Damn, he’d have heard a second attacker sneaking up on him if that damned gun hadn’t gone off, he thought, and then everything went black.
The team of two worked quickly, moving in a deadly choreography that ended with the bodies of the primary target and his female companion trussed up, weighted down, and dumped off the stern. Neither of them had expected the job to be so easy; the woman was nobody but Willis was supposed to be a black ops badass. Obviously retirement hadn’t done him any favors because he’d gone down so fast, it was anticlimactic—disappointing, even.
They really hoped the rest of the jobs weren’t as easy. How were they supposed to maintain the high level of skill expected of them if the targets barely put up a fight?
CHAPTER 6
Henry Brogan was in a municipal outdoor pool in Philadelphia and he was drowning.
All around him, kids were kicking their legs, stirring the water into a bubbling froth, laughing like this was actually fun. And it was—for them. They weren’t drowning. Why? Why was he the only one drowning and everyone else who jumped into the water had fun?
Just when he was sure he was going to die, two strong hands grabbed him under the arms and pulled him out of the water into the bright, chlorine-scented air. Henry blinked the water out of his eyes, choking and gasping while his father grinned at him. His face was so enormous that it blocked out the whole world, even the sky. It was all Henry could see, that big grinning face and the mirrored sunglasses his father always wore; the lenses showed him twin reflections of his terrified five-year-old self, skinny in a pair of oversized trunks that needed extra ties to keep them from slipping off, gasping and squirming, desperate to get away because he knew what was coming next, what always came next.
We have to work on your kick! his father laughed, his voice bigger than the sound of kids shrieking and splashing. Concentrate, Henry! You’re five now—this isn’t hard! Now try again!
The two Henrys in the mirrored lenses flailed helplessly, then shrank as his father tossed him back, like a fish that was too small. His father’s shimmering shadow loomed over the water while Henry sank and kept on sinking down, down, down. The sound of that big booming laugh became muffled.
Panic hit Henry like an electric shock. He tried to scream and managed only a muted, high-pitched burble he could barely hear. Above him, the bright rectangle of the surface receded. No matter how hard he tried to kick and wave his arms, he couldn’t push his way upward; the water wouldn’t let him. His legs had become so heavy, too heavy, like there were enormous weights attached to them. He could feel them on his ankles, pulling him farther down, deeper than he had ever been, so deep he would never, never, never be able to reach the surface. Darkness was closing in now. The sound of his father’s laughter, of kids yelling and splashing and playing had died away, and soon he would, too.
Please, he begged, raising his eyes to the distant, dimming surface. Please.