Double Play (2 page)

3 - Nadia

No call from Jack, and as much as I knew it almost certainly meant nothing, I couldn’t help fearing the worst. I always did. But now I had Diaz standing there, telling me Quinn was missing and that
was
a big deal.

As a federal agent, Quinn cannot just “take off.” When he does a job for Contrapasso out of driving distance, he has to take vacation time and use Felix’s gadgets to reroute his calls. Hellishly complicated, which is one reason why, like me, he doesn’t pull more than a couple of hits a year.

“Where’s he supposed to be?” I asked Diaz.

“On Thursday he was teaching in DC. After that, he’d booked a long weekend.”

“He was on a job, then. For you guys?”

Diaz shook his head. “I know he was working something—he has to run all moonlighting past us. He was supposed to call in and talk to us yesterday on a separate matter. He didn’t, and we couldn’t get in touch. That’s when we checked out his tracker. We aren’t getting a signal.”

Contrapasso implanted trackers in their operatives . . . usually without them knowing it. Luckily, Quinn discovered that before signing on, so he’d refused the implant. Instead, he’d agreed to an external one, attached with waterproof tape. At the time, I’d wholeheartedly agreed with that. Now, though? Now I was realizing the advantage to the implant. If Quinn had it, Diaz and I wouldn’t need this conversation.

“Let me go warn my housekeeper I’m busy,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the gazebo. Head for the lake. Big body of water—you can’t miss it.”

When I reached the gazebo, I turned the heater on low and served coffee and cinnamon buns.

“So what are you doing on my doorstep?” I asked. “If Quinn’s missing, I want in on the search, obviously. But telephones work, even up here.”

“Your name was on his calendar for Friday morning, along with a flight confirmation number. We thought maybe that’s why he’d taken a long weekend, and that he’d just forgotten our call Saturday.”

“And the tracker?”

“Either it coincidentally died or he removed it temporarily, not wanting anyone to know where he’d gone, which considering . . .” He cleared his throat. “I know you two had a romantic attachment and that Quinn is convinced your relationship with Jack is . . . temporary.”

“So you thought he snuck up here because we’re screwing around behind Jack’s back?”

“I had to consider that. Or simply that he was attempting to change your mind.”

Quinn and I were still friends. Would he come out here unannounced? He
can
be impulsive, and if he got it into his head that he could fix this “Jack nonsense” by talking to me face to face, he might very well hop on a plane. I highly doubted it, though. Not while Jack was here.

Except Jack wasn’t here.

To say Jack and Quinn don’t get along is an understatement. The problem is ninety percent Quinn’s. Jack’s uncomfortable with Quinn’s hard-core vigilantism, but his real issue is Quinn’s complete disinterest in hiding the fact that he thinks vigilantism grants him the moral high ground. To Quinn, I get to share that ground with him because I mix vigilante jobs with “victimless” mobsters-killing-mobsters gigs. To Quinn, Jack’s the worst kind of criminal—one who kills for money he doesn’t even need.

When it comes to the job, ideologically, I prefer the vigilante work. But I’m still killing people for money. There is no justification that clears that particular moral slate.

I’ve come to a better understanding of my motives—the deep-seated need for the justice my cousin, Amy, was denied when she was raped and murdered twenty years ago. She wasn’t the only one raped that night, and I’m sure there’s some of my own rage there. I survived. Amy did not. And now with both her killer and my rapist dead, little has changed. I haven’t taken a job since, but I will at some point. I don’t kid myself on that. It has become part of me.

That’s no excuse. In this, I’m closer to Jack. As a teen he’d been recruited by an organization that made the IRA look like Boy Scouts. He joined because his brothers had, and once the group saw his crack marksmanship skills, they made him a killer. When he tried to get out, they murdered his family. No surprise, then, that the kid who felt he was only really good at one thing—killing people—turned his rage into a career doing exactly that. Yet he never uses that as an excuse. He made a choice, like I did. There is no justification.

Given Quinn’s opinion of Jack, it’s not surprising he’s convinced our relationship is just temporary bad judgment on my part. Really bad judgment. Quinn believes Jack took advantage of a low point in my life, smarting from our breakup and dealing with the truth behind my rape and my cousin’s murder. That means Quinn just has to wait for me to come to my senses. And this, not surprisingly, was why we were struggling to keep our friendship from imploding.

“Jack isn’t here, as you may have noticed,” I said. “But I hadn’t told Quinn that and Jack left after Quinn would have arrived. Quinn didn’t disable his tracker or ‘forget’ his appointment. He wouldn’t. Ever. If he’s vanished . . .” I inhaled sharply. “We need to find him.”

“Do you know what he was working on recently? As a Marshal?”

I nodded. “He doesn’t give me details but he shares enough that I know what sort of cases he has. Nothing on his current roster is the type where someone would want to . . . to stop him.”
Kill him
is what I meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

I continued. “First thing we need to know is whether he got on that flight. Can you check—?”

“We have. He didn’t check in or cancel it.”

“Yet you followed his trail up here anyway?”

“I had to be sure he hadn’t bought a new ticket under an alias on a different flight in to keep under Jack’s radar. And if that wasn’t the case, then showing up here is the best way to get your help. You know him better than we do. You know how his mind works.”

And it’d be much harder for me to refuse in person. Which only proved Diaz didn’t know how
my
mind worked either. A phone call would have put me on this trail. Whatever problems Quinn and I had, I wouldn’t have considered sitting on my ass and letting Contrapasso investigate on their own.

“When will the Marshals’ office realize he’s missing?” I asked.

“He’s supposed to be back at work Tuesday. We can extend his absence with a falsified call, but I’d rather not.”

“So we have about sixty hours before they realize something’s wrong. The problem is that it’s Sunday and I have commitments here. I can conduct research today, but I can’t get away until tonight.”

“Understood. I’ll get started and meet you in Virginia tomorrow morning.”

4 - Jack

First thing Monday morning, Jack was back on the roof. Smoking this time. Not just a cigarette to settle his nerves. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d needed that. Work didn’t cause him stress. Life did. Work was simple. Life was not.

But today? Today the two melded, and he was already on his third cigarette. Which was a fucking bad sign. He wasn’t overly concerned about his aborted call to Nadia. If anything really bothered him about that, it was the fact he’d spent far too much time yesterday coming up with ways to guarantee daily contact, like a second phone or a backup time to call. That was pure selfishness. He had to stick to the plan because a plan is safe. It wasn’t a concept he’d ever struggled with before.

He tapped his cigarette on the ventilation shaft and looked down at the cafe. Ten minutes to go. Two hours until he could call Nadia again. It wasn’t just about talking to her, however much he liked that. It was about stilling his anxiety better than nicotine could.

It’d been nearly thirty years since he’d spoken to Cillian. Cillian had been a mentor in those days. He’d helped Jack get out of Ireland and set him up with his first jobs. Which meant Jack owed him. Half a lifetime later, Cillian was coming to collect.

As for what he’d ask Jack to do? That was the real reason for the chain smoking.

Cillian knew Jack from the time when he’d pull a hit for any reason—when he didn’t even
need
a reason. As long as it wasn’t a family or a kid or an innocent bystander, he didn’t give a shit why someone wanted his mark dead. He’d worked fueled by the rage of a twenty-year-old kid who’d gotten his family killed and blamed everyone else, hated the world, but deep down only blamed himself, only hated himself. All the bullets in the world couldn’t fix that shit, not unless the barrel was aimed at his own head.

That blind rage had passed. He’d grown up. Calmed down. Within a few years, he’d started needing a reason. But that was a matter of self-protection. He wasn’t going to off witnesses for a cartel—that shit comes back on you. Kill a guy’s business partner to give him control of the company? No problem. Then he met Nadia, and began scrubbing his client list until, while it might not be up to her standards, he wasn’t worried about her scrubbing
him
from
her
contact list.

And now . . .

Fuck.

He stubbed out the cigarette and pocketed the butt. This was stupid—worrying about possibilities before he even talked to Cillian. Part of being a pro meant mapping out every contingency and planning a response. Great for the job; bullshit for real life.

While he didn’t tell Nadia about his job—she was always safer not knowing—she’d be okay with it. He refused to pull any hit he wouldn’t want her finding out about. That vow stood. Even for Cillian.

Fuck, Cillian. Know I owe you. And I do. But I’m getting out. Retiring. Can’t do that kinda shit. Too dangerous. Still owe you. But not that.

Then he’d walk away. Because he could—that was the reward for being at the top of the food chain. He’d owe Cillian an explanation for his refusal, which was more than any other client would get. But if Jack said no, Jack meant no. End of discussion. That was the rep he’d earned.

At five minutes to eleven, Cillian strolled around the corner, and all Jack could think was, “Fuck, he’s gotten old.” Which was, sadly, what he thought about most of his former colleagues these days. Cillian couldn’t be more than seventy but fuck if he didn’t look eighty-seven. A long and hard life.

He was about to do one last perimeter check when he saw Cillian nod, as if to someone passing on the street. Except there was no one on that particular stretch of road.

Fuck.

Jack strode to the roof edge and adjusted his position so neither he nor his shadow would be spotted. Then he peered into the dark alley below and . . .

Fuck.

A guy stood in the shadows. Youngish—early thirties, Nadia’s age. Young compared to him, a fact of which he was not unaware.

The guy leaned casually against the brick wall. Just a guy enjoying a smoke. Nothing to see here. His sight line, however, lined up perfectly with Cillian’s table.

Fuck.

Don’t pull this shit, Cillian. Tell me you just got nervous. Asked one of your boys to keep an eye on this meeting because, hell, it’s been thirty years. You don’t know me anymore, so I’ll allow the backup, even if I’m kinda insulted.

The problem? The really big problem? If that guy in the shadows wasn’t just there to protect his boss.

Fuck.

Jack crossed to the other side. He hopped from the roof to the fire escape balcony. Okay, yeah, “hop” was pushing it. He was in fucking good shape for fifty-one, but still not at the age where one “hops” off roofs. Still, he managed the descent easily enough and took no small amount of satisfaction in that.

Off the roof. Down the fire escape. Hop onto a Dumpster. And that
was
a hop, being only a two-foot drop. A little more than a hop in the descent to ground level. Then through the back alley, heading toward the one hiding Cillian’s thug. When he reached the corner, he peeked around. The guy was still there, still looking toward the road.

Jack sized up the distance between them. Thirty feet. There was another trash bin, maybe ten feet this side of the guy. He flexed his ankle, the one he’d broken last spring. Just a little sore from jumping to reach the fire escape. A necessary reminder he wasn’t twenty anymore and couldn’t pull stupid twenty-year-old shit.

He took three careful steps across the alley, then three quick ones to get into the shadow of that trash bin. He climbed onto it with surprising ease—
Don’t get cocky, Jack
—and held his breath for two seconds, making sure his target hadn’t caught the movement.

The guy checked his watch.

Yeah, I’m late. Give me a minute . . .

Jack eased along the trash bin, each step taken with extreme care so the metal didn’t creak underfoot. Now the tricky part. Step up to the edge, crouch and . . .

He leapt and hit the guy in the shoulder, knocking him down. Then he grabbed the guy’s leg and hauled him behind the bin, which might have been the toughest part—the guy was not small. He wasn’t too fucking smart, either. Instead of going for his weapon, he just flailed, as if he could throw Jack off.

Jack tossed him behind the bin and the guy finally remembered he had a gun. He didn’t even get it out before a barrel pressed against the back of his neck.

“You got anything to say?” Jack asked.

“What?”

He spoke slower. “Got anything to say?”

“You fucking—”

Jack slammed his foot between the guy’s shoulder blades. “That’s a no.” He patted the guy down, taking a gun, two knives and brass knuckles. People still used brass knuckles?

He shook his head and pocketed the weapons along with two cell phones. The guy squawked, saying, “Private property, you—”

Another slam sent him face-first into the dirt.

“Last chance. Anything to say?”

“Just that you’re a—”

Jack didn’t wait to find out what he was. He already knew. Just like he knew this guy wasn’t giving him answers and he didn’t have time to beat them out of him. He hit the guy again. No anger behind it. Just shutting him up so he could speak, because he really hated to repeat himself.

“You’ve been put down,” he said. “By a guy old enough to be your father. That’s humiliating. But you know what’s worse? Telling your boss about it. You can cross that road with me and do it. Or . . .”

Jack stepped back. The guy pushed to his feet and looked Jack up and down in hopes of saving his ego by seeing that Jack was younger than he’d heard, bigger than he’d thought. The result of that onceover said Jack didn’t look
that
old and he wasn’t small. But nor was he twenty-five and six-foot-four. The guy grunted and crossed his arms.

“Take off down the back alley,” Jack said.

The guy said nothing, but when Jack stood his ground, he stalked in that direction. Jack watched him go, then turned toward the street.

As Jack walked away, he kept his ears attuned for any sign the thug decided to circle back behind him. His attention, though, was on the guy’s burner phone. On the text message the guy had received from Cillian.

Make sure you’re ready.

Jack exhaled. He’d still been giving Cillian the benefit of the doubt. Presuming he’d only told his boy to protect his back. But Jack was not an optimist. His gut had said the Cillian he remembered would never admit he was concerned about a meeting with an old friend.

Jack knew his own reputation, too. It came partly from prowess. He was damned good at his job. But more than that, he was fair and he was trustworthy. Cillian would know that much. Which meant he knew Jack would never double-cross him.

And
that
meant Jack was the one being double-crossed.

Fuck.

The thug’s phone buzzed with another text.

Where are you?

Jack sent the reply.
Pissing
.

Get the fuck back to your post.

Jack picked up his pace to a jog. He headed back the way he’d come. Down two alleys. Circled another building. Exited far enough from the thug’s post that it wouldn’t look suspicious. When he reached the sidewalk, he slowed to a purposeful stride.

As Jack approached the cafe, Cillian looked up, his head tilting as he squinted. Then he went back to his newspaper. He hadn’t recognized Jack. Not surprising after thirty years, but even less surprising given that Jack wore a disguise as he always did for a client meeting.

Jack pulled out the chair across from Cillian.

“That’s—” Cillian began. Then another squint over his reading glasses. “Jack?”

Jack sat without a word. He endured the obligatory appraisal, that onceover from an old friend that wasn’t so much seeing how he’d changed as seeing how much he’d aged, while hoping the answer was “more than I have.” A tightening of Cillian’s lips said he couldn’t have that satisfaction.

Jack wondered if all people did this. Go to a high-school reunion and size up your classmates, hoping they showed their age more than you. Or was it just guys like them? Guys who needed to reassure themselves they were still men to be reckoned with.

“You look good,” Cillian said with obvious reluctance.

“Not here for a date.”

Cillian snorted a laugh and reached for his cigarette, burning on the side of a small plate.

“You know they don’t allow smoking here?” Cillian said. “Even on the patio? Fucking world, huh?”

Jack set one generic, unmarked allergy capsule in front of Cillian.

“What the fuck’s that?” Cillian said.

“A choice.”

“What?”

“Cyanide pill. Gun. You pick.”

“Gun?” Cillian’s gaze followed Jack’s arm and registered the gun was under the table, pointed between his legs. He shoved back his chair.

“You move,” Jack said, “I fire. Pull that chair in.”

Cillian did, sweat breaking out on his upper lip as he said, with a hint of a whine, “What the fuck, Jack? This better be some kinda dementia—you getting paranoid in your old age. Because threatening me—”

Jack tossed the thug’s burner phone on the table. “He’s not taking a piss.”

Cillian went still. That beading sweat formed droplets, sliding down the side of his ruddy face. He reached for his coffee, and then stopped as he noticed his hand trembling.

Fuck. You haven’t just gotten old, Cillian. You’ve gotten soft. Lost your nerve. No excuse for that. There just isn’t.

“Third option,” Jack said. “You talk. Tell me what’s going on. Might still shoot you. Might make you take the pill. Not going to let you walk away. But . . .” He shrugged. “Options. I’m flexible. Convince me not to shoot.”

“It isn’t what it seems, Jack. I’d never—”

“Skip the bullshit.”

“But you gotta understand. It isn’t—”

“Don’t care. You wanna make me happy? Talk. Fast.”

“I got into some trouble, Jack. Things have changed. It’s not just about knowing the other guys in town. Everyone’s global these days, and I’m just an old boss trying to run—”

“Give me facts. Not excuses. You owe money. Favor. Yes?”

Cillian swallowed and nodded.

“They found out you know me,” Jack said. “Can call in a favor. You’ve bragged. Fucking disrespectful. But you did it. No changing that now.”

“I needed credibility, Jack. It’s all about who you know, and you’re somebody. Being able to say I helped you get your start? That’s gold.”

“Someone told you to get me here. Why?” He peered up at the surrounding buildings. “There a rifle pointed at my head?”

“No, nothing like that. You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead.”

Which Jack knew. People wanted him for his skills.

If you want revenge for a hit, you go after the son of a bitch who called it. Jack was just the faceless guy behind the gun. Still, there was always a chance. He’d known that when he walked over. Also known that the sun’s position would make it a tough shot. Not impossible—Nadia could do it—and maybe knowing that, he should have walked away. But if someone wants you dead, you’ll be dead. He knew that better than anyone. You want to stay alive? Tackle the problem that’s going to get you killed.

“Talk,” Jack said.

“They want to hire you.” Cillian rambled after that, appealing to Jack’s ego, as if that might nudge aside the bullet currently aimed at a place he didn’t really want to get shot. He said Jack was the best. The absolute best goddamned hitman alive. Which was bullshit. Jack figured he rated about third. That’s what Evelyn told him, which was supposed to incite him to do better. First, third, tenth, what did it matter? Who the hell figured out the rankings anyway? Market research survey? On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate your satisfaction with the services of the following hitmen . . .

Cillian kept nattering on. Jack was
such
a big name, and if someone wanted his services, well, it wasn’t easy to do, was it? Cillian himself had to jump through hoops, and he was an old friend. But he understood. Yes, he did. A man like Jack had to protect himself. But Jack also had to understand how that could lead people to take desperate measures to get his attention.