Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(57)

Mama bear. Now I knew where Sherri got it.

“You need to leave right now,” she said.

“No.” I approached her. “Your daughter and I need to finish this conversation.”

Krystal stepped back a pace, and Sherri’s expression shifted from fury to astonishment. Quite possibly no one had ever stood up to her mother.

Krystal tried to look over my shoulder. “Sherri?”

We both looked at her daughter. Sherri’s face played like a flip-book, racing from one expression to another. Finally, her eyes showed the realization that what I offered was a thread she could pull. A thread that might provide answers her husband no longer could.

Her face settled into a look half of grief, half of resolve.

“It’s all right, Mother. She’s right. We have to talk.” She gently pushed her mother toward the stairs and watched while Krystal disappeared down the upstairs hall. She turned to me. “You really think Jeremy’s death wasn’t just . . . just bad luck?”

“I do.”

“Oh, fuck.” The words sounded all wrong coming from her refined lips.

But grief breaks down all barriers. Death is the great equalizer.

“Fuck,” she said again. “Tell me how I can help.”



An hour later, I walked out to my truck carrying a large manila envelope. I let Clyde into the front, then got in with him and slid the key into the ignition.

I hadn’t learned a lot from Sherri. I’d hoped to find information on Kane’s laptop, but it turned out Gorman had taken that as well as Kane’s phone.

And I’d failed to learn anything about the people Kane might have been looking at on the platform just before he died. Sherri didn’t recognize any of the names.

But what I had learned felt important.

First—Kane had lost touch with Sarge, who’d disappeared. Gone underground was how Kane put it to his wife. He’d worried that his old friend might be up to no good. Since this was the same Sarge who claimed his orders to kill me came from a man with the CIA, I was inclined to agree. Kane had the key to Sarge’s apartment in a desk drawer. When I asked, Sherri gave it to me. This was a coup—the chance to go through Sarge’s apartment might turn up all kinds of interesting information. Maybe even the cell phone Malik had given him. The one with the video Malik had taken of men unloading weapons in Iraq.

Second—although Kane loved his job with the RTD, he’d been looking for something with better benefits. Two weeks ago he’d scored an interview at a private, family-owned intelligence firm called Vigilant Resources. When Sherri mentioned that Vigilant was a subsidiary of a precision-weapons manufacturer named Valor, I recalled the business card Gorman had so elegantly used on his teeth. Valor Industries. And the number 100K.

Presumably, Gorman had gone to talk to Valor as part of the investigation. Maybe the 100K was the salary Kane had been offered by their subsidiary, Vigilant. But when I asked Sherri if Kane’s job hunt had come up in her conversation with the detective, she said no. When I asked if any of Kane’s friends knew about it, she again said no, not to her knowledge.

The news about Gorman wasn’t a five-alarm fire. He could have learned about Vigilant any number of ways. Maybe the business card in his pocket had nothing to do with Kane’s job hopes. Gorman was probably thinking of retirement. Could be he had job hopes of his own.

Weapons companies hired former cops for security. I could be poking my stick at a nest of twigs, not vipers.

Maybe.

Sherri said her husband was especially excited about the job because the president and CEO of Vigilant, a man named James Osborne, had served in Iraq. He and Kane had been in-country at the same time. Osborne was with the State Department, not the military. But military and intelligence intermingled all the time in a war zone. We were all on the same team.

Prior to the interview, Kane had collected information about Valor and Vigilant, mostly in the form of a couple of glossy brochures and some printouts of internet searches. That was what Sherri had given to me in an envelope. Jeremy, she said, had wanted to be fully prepared for his interview. What was strange was that he’d hidden the envelope, taped it inside a dresser drawer. She’d only found it when she was emptying everything into boxes.

A magpie scolded from a nearby tree, popping me out of my reverie. I reached into the glove box for a cigarette, then stopped myself. Self-control begins at home.

I thought about Sherri and Kane, and the end of their dream. We always say live for today and don’t waste time worrying about tomorrow. But what keeps us up at night is knowing that tomorrow is roaring down on us like a tsunami, and a lot of us don’t know how to swim.

For a moment I let my mind wander into forbidden territory. How would I feel if something happened to Cohen? Or if, now that he knew what I was, he walked out of my life? Would I have the strength to pick up and go on again, the way I had after Dougie died?

Of course you would, the Sir said in my mind. That’s what we do. We go on, no matter what.

I looked out the window and saw him standing by the curb. He nodded.

Of course we go on.

Maybe even after we’re dead.

I pulled away from the curb and headed north.





CHAPTER 15

Most of us—maybe all of us—are broken in some way. Depending on who we are, those cracks can either let in the darkness or the light.