The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(10)

“I don’t know yet. I’ll read the file. But that was a great idea you had, a backdoored hidden log file to monitor which Guardian Angel searches were being deleted.”

“What goes into the shredder is what’s most revealing.”

“Exactly.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, exactly. You’re the one who told me that.”

Had he? Maybe, though not in those words. “Well, it’s true.”

“What I’m saying is, the back door was your idea.”

He wasn’t sure where she was going. “I was just thinking out loud. You’re the one who told me it could be done. And who found a way to do it. Credit where it’s due, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, if you give me too much credit, I might think you’re trying to snow me. And you don’t need to, Tom. I believe in you.”

He nodded, thinking touché. Here he’d been teasing her about the importance of paying attention to the news and not just to matters stamped secret. While himself forgetting something more important—not to underestimate people.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I believe in you, too.”

She smiled. “Obviously. Now, are you taking off? One of us should, and I was hoping to watch the movie.”





chapter

eight





DOX


Dox stood under a gray drizzle at the apex of Freeway Park, observing the weird concrete labyrinth below. It was hard to know what to make of it. He’d been to most of the great city parks of the world—Lumpini in Bangkok, Güell in Barcelona, Beihai in Beijing. Not to mention your more local candidates like Central in New York and Golden Gate in San Francisco. But this one . . . Well, it was sui generis, as the lawyers liked to say, you’d have to give it that. He wondered what was behind the design—a crazy architect, thinking what the world needed most was a Brutalist version of Angkor Wat or the stepwells of India? Maybe. The problem was, two great tastes didn’t always taste great together. He liked sriracha plenty and he loved durian, too, but he wouldn’t pour the one on the other.

But he’d told Kanezaki that, based on the intel, he had a feeling the park would be the place to look for this hombre Manus, and so here he was.

It was a strange job for a sniper. Hell, it was a strange job for any respectable killer for hire. More a humanitarian mission than the kind of reach-out-and-touch-someone engagement Kanezaki ordinarily had in mind.

Of course, that didn’t mean the job was free of Kanezaki’s signature manipulations. The man just couldn’t help himself. Though somehow, the fact that Dox knew what he was up to, and that Kanezaki knew Dox knew, tended to make the habit tolerable.

The way Kanezaki had initially pitched it, for example, when he’d reached Dox on the satellite phone in Bali two days earlier. He’d said, “I have something that needs looking into in Seattle. Livia would be right for it, but I thought you’d want to know first.”

Thought you’d want to know. True enough, of course, but it obscured the larger story, which was that there was no way Dox would allow Labee to face danger if he could face it himself. Labee, Livia’s real name, which she’d told him when he told her his was Carl. He loved the sound of it. Loved saying it, even to himself. And he loved that only he got to call her that.

“That’s very courteous of you,” Dox had told him, half-annoyed, half-grateful.

“In fairness,” Kanezaki said, “I was instructed to retain you for the job.”

“Instructed? By who?”

“DCI Rispel.”

That threw him. When the hell had he become a plaything for people as high up as Rispel? And why would Kanezaki even consider Labee for something like this?

“Should I be honored?”

Kanezaki chuckled. “I doubt it. It’s clear to me Rispel’s primary concern, with effectiveness as a given, is disposability.”

“At least my effectiveness is a given. For a minute there, you had me worried.”

“She pitched the job as retaliation. But that’s bullshit. Someone brought in a contractor to make a run at a government official. They want to use you to cut the thread.”

“Assassinate the assassin?”

“That’s how it looks to me.”

“Classic. But I wouldn’t even consider it.”

“I’ve always admired your ethics.”

“It’s not ethics, son. It’s professional courtesy. With maybe a little concern for karma thrown in. Who’s this official, anyway?”

“An assistant US Attorney named Alondra Diaz.”

“Pretty name.”

“Livia knows her.”

The thought of Kanezaki monitoring Labee put him on edge. “What? How? And how do you know?”

“Just incidental collection. Diaz’s cellphone history shows a periodic nexus with Livia. I didn’t look into it more deeply, but I think Livia trains her. Martial arts or women’s self-defense or whatever.”

He sensed the didn’t look into it more deeply was an attempt to mollify him, but he was still irritated. “Son, if you want to call it ‘incidental’ for public consumption, I can’t stop you. But please, don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.”