End Game (Will Robie #5)(129)
Reel stopped walking. “Jesus.”
She looked at the dirt.
He drew closer to her but kept a bit of space between them.
“It can end any minute. We know that better than most.”
She glanced up at him, her brow furrowed. “I think I know that better than you.”
“Come again?”
“It will end for us, Robie. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next day. But it will. With a bullet to the head. Or a knife to the gut.”
“So that’s that, then?”
“What else? We have occupations where the survival rate is pretty damn low. Do you really want to commit to a person doing that? I’m not sure I do. Do you understand how badly it will hurt?”
“I understand how badly it hurts now,” replied Robie.
“We’re not cut out for each other, Robie. We’re just not. We’ve made our beds. We have to sleep in them. Separately,” she added with firmness. “I almost died in Iraq. I should have died there. I didn’t care about the men I lost over there nearly as much as I care about you, and that loss is still eating me up inside.”
“And anybody can get hit by a bus or die in a terrorist attack or get cancer. And people all over the world still choose to be together.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Because you say it isn’t.”
“Because it’s true.”
“So you’re saying that you won’t feel bad if I die, because we’re no longer together?”
She looked confused by this. “No, of course not. I would feel bad.”
“So what’s the issue here? If you’re going to feel bad anyway, why not be together while we can?”
She snapped, “I’m not going to your funeral, and I don’t want you coming to mine.”
“You’re way overthinking this, Jess.”
“I’m not going to debate this with you.” She paused. “And you have Malloy. She would obviously say yes to whatever you asked her.”
“She probably would. But it does take two, Jess.”
“I know that.”
“We could leave the service.”
She said, “And do what? What else do we know how to do other than this?”
“So where does that leave us, Jess?”
Without another word, Reel turned and walked back to the SUV.
They sat silently in the truck until Blue Man came out.
He opened and closed the door to the house himself. They didn’t see Claire at all this time.
When he climbed back into the truck he told the driver, “Back to the plane, please.”
As they pulled off Robie said, “How did it go, sir?”
Blue Man kept his gaze directly out the window. “Much as I expected it would.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?” asked Reel.
“Much as I expected it would and yet hoped that it wouldn’t. She just lost both her children. One by my hand.”
“So you really told her about that?” said Reel.
“When I said the truth, I meant it,” replied Blue Man. “She deserved to know, no matter how much I didn’t want to tell her.”
“That must have been hard,” said Robie.
“The truth is hard, Will. Far harder than a lie.”
“How did you leave it with her?” asked Robie, his choice of words drawing a quick stare from Reel.
“I have no clue, Robie. And for someone in the intelligence field, that is never a good thing.”
Don’t I know it, thought Robie as he looked out the window at the gathering dusk.
“I asked her to marry me,” said Blue Man abruptly.
“What?” exclaimed Reel. “Isn’t that sort of sudden?”
“It’s actually many decades overdue.”
“But after everything that’s happened,” said Reel. “What you told her about Patti.”
“I had to try. I had to.”
“Why was that?” asked Reel.
“Because I love her. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. And if someone can’t act on love, then what does anything else really matter?”
Robie hadn’t really reacted to any of this. He just stared out the window, his mood growing fouler by the moment.
Until he felt it.
He looked down.
Reel’s steely fingers had closed around his.
When he looked up, she was gazing straight ahead.
Yet he thought he saw the barest glimmer of a smile on her face.
And a solitary tear clutching at her right eye.
Robie gripped her hand back.
The truck drove as the night enveloped them.
Yet perhaps for Will Robie and Jessica Reel there was now a seam of light somewhere inside the darkness.