“Okay.”
“Honor.”
She shifted her gaze from the pistol to him.
“You’ll be dead,” he repeated, emphasizing it.
She nodded.
“Don’t let your guard down for a second, for a nanosecond. Remember me telling you this. When you feel the safest, you’ll be the most vulnerable.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Good.” He took a deep breath, let it out in a gust, then said the words that Honor had dreaded to hear. “Time to go.”
“It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”
“If there are snipers in place—”
“Snipers?”
“—I need to know where they are.”
“You made it clear to Hamilton that VanAllen must come alone.”
“I wish VanAllen was the only one I had to worry about.”
He’d put his left foot on the garage floor and was about to step out of the car when he stopped. For several seconds he stayed like that, then he turned his head and looked over his shoulder at her.
“As kids go, yours is okay.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but found she couldn’t, and wound up merely nodding.
“And the football? It was a rotten thing to do. I’m sorry.”
Then he was gone, his shadow moving swiftly across the littered garage floor and slipping through a narrow opening in the corrugated tin door. The wheels squeaked on the rusty track as he rolled the door shut behind himself. She’d been left alone in the darkness.
And here she had remained for more than an hour now, sitting in a stolen car in an abandoned cavern of a building, her only company the mice she occasionally heard scratching through trash, her thoughts in turmoil.
She was worried about Emily and Tori. Coburn had allowed her to call the house. After she let the phone ring once and dialed again, Tori had answered, assured her that they had safely arrived and that all was well. But that had been hours ago. Something could have happened since then and she wouldn’t know about it.
She thought of Stan, and how worried for them he must be, and how bad she felt about turning his home inside out. For all his sternness, his affection for her and Emily was genuine. She didn’t doubt that for an instant.
Would he ever understand that what she had done, she’d done strictly in order to preserve Eddie’s reputation? In the final analysis, wasn’t that much more important than saving a box of track-and-field medals from his school days?
But she feared Stan wouldn’t see it that way and would never forgive her for invading the sanctity of Eddie’s room. He would look upon her actions as a betrayal not only of him, but of Eddie and their marriage. The relationship with Stan would suffer irreparably.
And her thoughts frequently returned to Coburn and the last things he’d said to her. For him, what he’d said about Emily had been very sweet. His apologies for involving her in the first place, for ruining the football, were significant because he rarely explained or excused anything he did. When he’d apologized to Emily for making her cry, he’d done so clumsily.
It was a rotten thing to do. It might not have been the most eloquent of apologies, but Honor didn’t question its sincerity. His eyes, their startling qualities emphasized even more by the makeshift camouflage on his face, had conveyed his regret as well as his words. I’m sorry. She believed he was.
His harsh childhood had made him cynical, and the things he’d seen and done while in service to his country had hardened his heart even more. He was often cruel, possibly because he’d witnessed how effective cruelty could be toward getting results. Whatever he said or did was unfiltered and straightforward because he knew that hesitation could be fatal. He didn’t worry about future regret because he didn’t expect to live to a ripe old age when one typically reexamined the pivotal decisions and actions of his life.
Everything he did, he did as though his life depended on it.
The way he did everything—ate, apologized… kissed—was like it was for the last time.
That thought brought Honor’s mental meandering to a complete standstill, and she experienced a jarring realization.
“Oh, God.” It was a whimper, spoken in the quietness, spoken from the heart.
Suddenly flying into motion, she pushed open the car door and scrambled out. She stumbled over debris in her path as she made her way toward the door of the garage. It took all her strength to push the heavy door along its unoiled track far enough to create a space that she could squeeze through, which she did, not even considering what dangers might be lurking beyond that door.
She paused for only a second to get her bearings, then struck out in a dead run in the direction of the railroad tracks.
Why hadn’t she realized it before now? Coburn’s instructions to her had been a farewell. He didn’t expect to return from this meeting with VanAllen, and in his own untutored and unsentimental way, he had been telling her goodbye.
He’d said all along that he didn’t expect to survive, and tonight he’d gone in her place, probably sacrificing himself to save her.
But his thinking was flawed. No one was going to shoot her. If The Bookkeeper believed she had something that would incriminate him, she wouldn’t be killed until he had discovered what that something was and had taken possession of it.
She was indispensable to the criminals the same way she was to Coburn, and Hamilton, and to the Department of Justice. What The Bookkeeper perceived her to know or to have was as good as a bulletproof vest.
But Coburn had no such protection.
She was his protection.
Chapter 35
Coburn?”
Coburn pressed the pistol more firmly against VanAllen’s neck. “Pleased to meet you.”
“I was expecting Mrs. Gillette.”
“She couldn’t make it.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. Just tied up at the moment.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be. I’m just letting you and the sharpshooters who’ve got me in their night vision sights know that if they kill me, Mrs. Gillette and the kid will stay perpetually lost.”
VanAllen gave a small shake of his head. “You made yourself clear to Hamilton, who made himself clear to me. There aren’t any sharpshooters.”
“Tell me another one.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Wireless mike? Are you talking for the benefit of everybody out there listening in?”
“No. You can search me if you don’t believe me.”
Coburn deftly stepped around VanAllen, but kept his pistol aimed at his head. When he came face-to-face with the man, he sized him up. Desk jockey. Unsure. Out of his league.
Threat to him, next to nil.
Dirty or clean? Coburn would guess he was honest, because he appeared not to have either the guts or the cunning to be on the take.
Which is why Coburn believed the man truly didn’t know about the sniper on the water tower over Coburn’s left shoulder at seven o’clock. Or the one in the caboose window at four o’clock. Or the one he’d spotted on the roof of the apartment complex three blocks away.
That shooter would have to be extremely good, and the angle was lousy, but it could be done, and after blowing Coburn’s head off, the bastard would have all the time in the world to get away.
Either VanAllen was really good at playing dumb, or he truly was in the dark, which was even more alarming.
“Where are Mrs. Gillette and the child?” he asked. “They’re my chief concern.”
“Mine, too. Which is why I’m here and she’s not.” Coburn lowered the pistol to his side.