The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(27)

“Who are you talking about?”

“Everyone. Everyone in the videos.”





chapter

twenty-one





MANUS


Manus, Dox, and Larison had parked the van in the lot of a Puyallup Costco, forty-five minutes south of Seattle. Dox and Larison were in the back seats facing forward; Manus sat on his backpack facing them on top of the folded-down middle seats. Manus was fine with the arrangement. He needed to see their faces to understand them. And tactically, it was better to have them both in sight.

While they’d waited for Larison to get the van, Dox had made a call. He stayed facing Manus while he spoke. Manus wasn’t sure, but he sensed it was out of courtesy, so Manus could read his lips. Most hearing people forgot to do that. Manus wondered if this guy had spent time with deaf people. If not, he had good instincts.

“I’ll make it quick,” Dox had said. “On the one hand, things went well. We made contact and established rapport.” At this, he smiled at Manus. “On the other hand, while we were there, six operators showed up and tried to gun us down. They’re all dead now. You’ll be seeing it on the news soon enough.”

A pause, then, “No, we’re all fine. Together. Getting the hell out of Dodge, and when we’re safe we’ll debrief. I’m going to destroy this burner now. I’ll call you on one of the backups later on. I sure hope you’ll have some insights about what the hell just happened.”

At that, he’d stomped the phone to bits and tossed the fragments into the Dumpster. He looked at Manus and said, “We’re good? Not going to try to kill each other, at least for now?”

It was a strange question. Why would the man trust any such assurance from Manus? Manus wouldn’t trust it from him. But the straightforwardness didn’t feel devious. It felt . . . straightforward. He couldn’t think of any other way to answer, so he simply said, “We’re good.”

“Great. Then pardon me while I get the shakes. ’Cause that was a very near thing back there.”

At which point, as promised, he started trembling. After a minute of breathing deeply in and out, he held up his hands. When he seemed satisfied they were steady enough, he said, “That doesn’t happen to you?”

“It depends.”

Dox smiled. “Okay, good. We’ve only just met, and I wouldn’t want you thinking less of me.”

Manus couldn’t tell if he was joking. Why would Manus think less of him? The man was obviously competent. Shaking was just what your body did after you’d been scared. There had been times Manus was so scared he’d pissed himself. That was just something your body did, too.

Dox nodded toward Manus’s pack and said, “You got any extra clothes in there? There’s enough blood on you for me to smell it.”

It was true—Manus could smell it, too. He changed into his spare shirt and pants, returning Dox’s courtesies by moving slowly and emptying out the pack rather than letting his hands disappear inside it. He hadn’t liked getting undressed in front of Dox. It wasn’t that he was modest. It was the temporary helplessness of having his boots off, the Espada momentarily out of reach.

The feeling was more reflex than anything else, though. He didn’t sense that Dox was a threat anymore. In fact, Manus thought the man might be . . . okay. Like a dog that could be dangerous but that was more inclined to be friendly. As long as you didn’t give it a reason not to be.

When he was dressed again, he stuffed the bloody clothes into a contractor’s bag he had brought in case of a contingency like this one. He’d get rid of them somewhere far away.

While they’d waited, Dox had asked about his hearing. “If you don’t mind my saying,” he said, “you don’t sound like you were born deaf. What happened?”

Somehow, the frankness of the question didn’t seem rude or presumptuous. In fact, it reminded Manus of Dash, and how unaffected he was about not being able to hear.

“An accident,” Manus had responded, to which Dox once again showed courtesy by simply nodding and asking no further questions.

The other one, though. Larison. He reminded Manus of some of the boys at the juvenile prison. The mean ones. The ones who the only way to get them to leave you alone was to hurt them so badly they would never forget it.

And sometimes, even that wasn’t enough. Sometimes Manus had needed to do more than just hurt them. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that with this Larison. But if it did, it did.

They wolfed down sandwiches Larison had brought in from the Costco. Manus was glad for the food. Dox had been right. A fight always made you hungry.

Dox briefed him on what he and Larison knew, leaving out the name of their CIA contact. The omission was fine. Manus would have been surprised if Dox had shared the name, and in fact would have distrusted that level of openness.

The problem was, they didn’t know much. Or at least claimed not to. CIA Director Lisa Rispel had coordinated the attempted hit on Manus. The reasonable inference was that Rispel was also behind the planned hit on Diaz.

“But on whose orders?” Manus asked. “What’s Rispel’s interest?”

“We’re not sure,” Dox said. “We’re speculating that it’s related to the arrest of this guy Andrew Schrader. Diaz is the prosecutor behind it.”