Lethal(92)

“How?”

“These aren’t imbeciles we’re dealing with. Tori pegged it this morning. They’re gonna get suspicious when they discover she’s split. They’ll try to pick up her trail in the hope of it leading to you.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because that’s what I would do.”

She smiled faintly, but her mind was busy trying to assimilate everything he was telling her. “How do you think VanAllen will react when you show up in my place?”

“I have no idea. But I’ll find out soon enough. Remember, if I don’t come back within a reasonable period of time, that means things went to shit. Get away from here.”

When he’d said all he had to say, he got out of the car, rubbed his fingers over a spot in the garage floor where dirt had collected in a pool of motor oil, and then spread the gritty residue over his face and arms.

Then he’d gotten back into the car, checked the clip of his pistol to make certain there was a bullet in the chamber, and tucked it back into his waistband. He passed her Fred’s revolver. It was huge and heavy and sinister.

Coburn must have sensed her repugnance. “It sounds like a cannon and spits flames when it fires. You may not hit your target, but you’ll scare him. Don’t talk yourself out of pulling the trigger, or you’ll be dead. Okay?”

“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.