"What now?" Shannon said. "You gonna turn me in? Send me to prison?"
Foster waved him off. "Nah. I don't want to have to explain this mess to anyone. Better for all of us you just disappear. Do your thing, man. Into the wind with you, there's a good lad. Unlikely you'll get out of town alive anyway. And if you do, well, after today, Henry Conor's gone. Your license, your papers-they'll all vanish from the computers. They'll all be about as useful to you as a teenager's drinking ID. We'll be setting your fingerprint and DNA records straight, too, so the first time you're busted, you'll go down for good. The arc of the moral universe is long, boy, but it bends toward you getting screwed."
Something occurred to Shannon now. He turned his face from the floor, raised an eyebrow at Foster. "You keep calling me a thief."
"You are a thief."
"But not a killer. You don't pin the Hernandez killings on me?"
"Ha! Listen, you add together the IQ of everyone who works for the United States government, you'd get enough intelligence to make one retard with his hat on sideways-but we're not that stupid. Benny Torrance looking for payback ain't even my idea of a good lead. We never would've used you if we thought you were a mad dog."
"But on the TV they keep saying it, telling people I'm a suspect. I've heard them."
"They'll keep saying it, too. We're not the police. You're a suspect till they bring you in and beat the truth out of you."
"So meanwhile, that's it. I just walk out of here."
"Like I said. Unless…"
"Yeah? What?"
"Well, this is gonna unravel fast. Our target is smart-a cop-Ramsey, his name is-he's smart and he'll unravel this jig-time once he starts looking for you, digging into your life. He'll go everywhere you've gone, talk to everyone you've met, and sooner or later, he'll figure out there's nothing there and it'll dawn on him he's been played. On the other hand, if we act fast, if we let him find you-let him find you-maybe he'll come after you. He's out of allies, so he might well do it himself. Then we'd have him."
"You mean come after me like Gutterson did?"
"Right. Find out what you know, work you over, maybe give himself away."
"Or he might just pop a cap in me."
"Or that. Probably that."
"And if he doesn't-and if you get him-what's in it for me?"
"Uh… shit."
"Nothing?"
"Not a thing."
"You still gonna make Conor disappear, put my records back, and all that?"
"Got to. Like I said, we're flying way off the radar here. After today, you're Shannon again, whatever happens."
"You won't even offer me-you know…"
"Immunity? Son, I'm gonna be lucky if I don't end up in jail my own damn self. There's some small chance, if everything goes just right, we might be able to work something out for you higher up the line. But no guarantees, and as things stand, I wouldn't pin your hopes on it. A bullet to the head's a lot more likely."
"So if I help you, either I get killed or I get busted for life."
"Pretty much."
"I guess I'm missing something. I want to do that because… why?"
Foster's whole hairless head seemed to quirk upward as he broke into a self-mocking grin. "Civic duty? Stop the bad guys? Save your mother country from political disaster?"
Thumbs hooked in his belt, head hung, Shannon stood looking at the man a moment.
"Have a nice day," he said then-and walked out.
He made his way back to the abandoned house, his hideaway. He tossed his gun in his tool bag and zipped the bag up and grabbed the handles and lifted it, ready to go, ready to leave town, hit the wind. But he didn't go. He set the bag down again and stood there, staring at it.
He didn't know what it was, what stopped him, but he couldn't move from the spot, even though the tension and urgency of his danger twisted his gut inside him. Then, after a few moments of standing there, staring, he did know. It was Teresa. He couldn't leave because of her.
Slowly, he sat down on the floor. His gut went on twisting, the tension terrible. He knew he had to go, had to run, had to get out of this city any way he could or the police would kill him. So he loved Teresa-so what? It wasn't as if she was going to run away with him. Hell, if she did, it would only ruin her life. And he didn't have to worry anymore that she would think he was a killer after he was gone either. Now that he knew the truth, he could write her a letter and explain it all. Why should he stay because of her?
But the answer was already in his mind, beneath the tension, beneath his conscious thoughts. Foster's words were there:
Our target is smart-a cop-Ramsey, his name is-he's smart and he'll unravel this jig-time once he starts looking for you, digging into your life. He'll go everywhere you've gone, talk to everyone you've met, and sooner or later, he'll figure out there's nothing there and it'll dawn on him he's been played.
Ramsey. He was the one who had murdered this Peter Patterson. He was the one who had sent Gutterson to his apartment, the one who was looking for him now and who would go to his worksite and would find out about the Applebees, and who would go to the house on H Street and look for him there.
Shannon lay down, his bag under his head. He stared up at the ceiling. He didn't think Ramsey would hurt the Applebees-why would he? He didn't think so, and yet his sense of their danger was even more urgent to him than his own.
He lay there a long time, thinking about it. The sunlight shifted to slanted afternoon beams in which motes of dust were dancing. He stared up through the yellow beams, through the dancing dust, his mind drifting, his stomach in knots.
What could he do anyway? What could he do about Ramsey? How could he protect them-Teresa, Michael, the old man? It wasn't as if he was really Henry Conor, an honest guy free to play the hero without fear. All that-his new life-had just been a lie, not even a lie, an illusion, a federal setup, a lawdog scam, gone not even like mist in the morning, more like a dream of mist in the morning, because it had never been real to begin with. So? What? Was he just trying to keep that fantasy alive? Was he just looking for an excuse to see her again? Wouldn't Ramsey be waiting for that? Wouldn't he be waiting for him to turn up at the house on H Street? Maybe he'd kill Shannon there, and then the Applebees would be witnesses and he'd have to kill them, too. Wouldn't he just be bringing more trouble to Teresa's door if he stayed, if he tried to protect her?
He lay there with the sun above him slanting and the light of the sunbeams growing mellow. He thought and thought about it. He had to go. If he didn't get out, they'd kill him. There was nothing he could do if he stayed. But to just run like that, to just leave her behind with this Ramsey bastard coming after her…
His mind drifted. He saw himself in the future. Maybe on the run, maybe in prison. It was bound to be one or the other. He thought he would be able to bear the fact that he would never see Teresa again. Hell, he knew he could bear it. He would be sad, but so what? He would not have the life he wanted, the good life he thought he had been meant to have, but so what? A broken heart wouldn't kill you. The sadness would get better over time. He would forget that other life. He was a hard guy-he had always been a hard guy. He could deal with all that if he had to, all that and a side of fries if he had to.
What he couldn't bear, what he couldn't bear even to consider-even just now, even just lying there on the floor-was the idea that some harm might come to Teresa because of him, the idea he might be in his cell one day or hiding in some backwoods town one day, and news would reach him. A murder in the city…
Teresa's face came to him. The boy's face. The angel's face. Their eyes.
He lay there. He thought about it. He thought about… well, he thought about a lot of things. He thought about sticking his Beretta in his mouth and blowing his brains out-anything just to end this tension and indecision and helplessness. He thought about walking out in the open and letting some trigger-crazy cop do the job for him. And he daydreamed about going to see Teresa one last time, not to try anything with her, he told himself, not to convince her to come with him or even to touch her, so help him, he wouldn't even touch her-but just to warn her, to explain himself, justify himself to her, face to face, and see the forgiveness in her eyes and warn her to get out, to run, to save herself and her family…