The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(14)

Larison didn’t disagree, but he wasn’t going to give Dox the satisfaction of saying so. “Well?” he said, extending his left hand toward Dox’s right. “You ready to get into character?”

Dox took hold of his hand and smiled. “My whole life.”

They walked off, hand in hand. It had actually been Dox’s idea. There were a lot of patterns an operator might run to spot opposition—sniper hides, elevated positions generally, flanking maneuvers . . . the list was long and varied. But whatever this guy Manus might be alert to, two men walking openly hand-in-hand probably wasn’t part of it.

And this was another thing Larison was still struggling with. Decades in the closet. His sexuality a lifelong torment he had worked so hard to conceal—from the military, even from his estranged wife. But Dox, and Rain . . . they knew. And just didn’t care. It mattered to them about as much as whether he was left-handed or right. If it meant so little to them, why was he still so . . . private about it? Nobody could hurt him with it anymore. And nobody who mattered wanted to. So why couldn’t he let it go? Something that was once a vulnerability no longer was. Why was that anything but a wonder, a relief?

They strolled along, seeing no one but an occasional jogger or vagabond. Dox kept up a medley of cover-for-action small talk—blather about Brutalist architecture and urban renewal and whatever else he’d learned about the park while researching it online. Larison had never known a sniper who liked to talk even half as much as Dox did. Most of them were as quiet as Larison himself. It had taken a while to get used to. The weird thing was, he’d actually come to enjoy it.

Now and then Dox would pause to extend a cellphone in front of them from a selfie stick as though snapping a picture. Another of Kanezaki’s toys—the phone was a dummy, while the stick was a twenty-six-inch extensible steel baton. Then they would link hands again and continue walking. Dox was carrying his own small-of-the-back pistol—the Wilson Combat Tactical Supergrade he favored—but there had been no need to discuss whose right hand would be free. From behind a scope in low light at a half mile out, there was no one better than Dox. But for pistol work, everyone recognized Larison was in his own league.

Though as Dox had said, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

They walked. Dox talked and Larison periodically grunted responses, heart pounding steadily the way it always did in the moments before action, eyes sweeping the terrain.

They went around a corner. And there, fifty feet away, was Manus, coming straight toward them.





chapter

ten





DOX


The instant Dox saw Manus, he knew. Larison had been right: a reloader for sure.

Even under the rain parka the man was wearing, Dox could see he was thick-boned and heavily muscled. And while Larison had the build of someone who pumped a lot of iron and took supplements on top of it, and while Dox himself had once played tackle on his high school football team, Manus . . . It was like one of his parents had been an oak tree and the other a bank vault. For a second, Dox pictured the sumos and wondered what would have happened if they’d charged this guy. Whatever the outcome, it would have been the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object.

But none of those thoughts made it to the surface. If there was one thing he’d learned from John, and he’d learned more than a few, it was not just to act as if, but to feel it. And his feeling was, he was just a tourist taking a walk in the park, not a care in the world, enjoying the outdoors despite the steady drizzle. And if his heart was beginning to beat hard, well, that was only because he was excited to be here side by side with Larison, his special friend.

Forty feet. Manus didn’t seem to be watching them particularly closely. But Dox could feel his attention. Could feel the way Larison’s danger vibe was pinging his radar.

They kept moving. Dox disgorged all the facts he had learned about the park. Larison responded with uh-huhs and reallys and you don’t says.

At thirty feet out, there was a ripple in Manus’s energy. It was nearly invisible, and maybe it even was invisible, but Dox knew what it meant. It was like a Doppler shift, the change in frequency you could sense when a man went from asking himself a question, to being an instant away from answering it.

And not answering in a good way.

The original plan had been for Dox and Larison to get close—but not too close—and then to politely introduce themselves. Hello there, Mr. Manus, you don’t know us, but we’re here to tell you the thing with Alondra Diaz is a setup and the people who hired you want you dead. What can we tell you, you just can’t trust management these days, it’s unfortunate but that’s the state of our modern world. Would you care to join us for a cup of delicious Seattle coffee so we can put our heads together and maybe find a way to watch each other’s backs?

But he could tell now that ship had sailed. He should have known the effect Larison’s presence would have on a potentially delicate situation. Should have realized that in telling himself Larison could provide a useful distraction, he’d been rationalizing. He hadn’t wanted to bother John. But for all his lethality, there was a stillness to John that had a way of reassuring people. And as he watched Manus looming closer and closer, he would have happily paid good money for a way to keep the man calm, and mentally kicked himself for not having one.

Well, he could do the after-action report later. Hopefully.