Rapture

by J. R. Ward

  Oh, shit.

  --ran right into the back of one of the hotel's restaurants.

  The good news was it appeared to be the facility used to serve breakfast and lunch out of; the place was a ghost town, the cook tops and stainless steel counters all cleaned up and battened for the off shift. Unfortunately, the B and E had set off the security alarm, and red lights were flashing in all the corners.

  "This way," Matthias said, pointing to a set of double doors with round window cutouts in them. "And put my ass down."

  Jim unloaded the guy and they took off again, passing by a stove as long as a football field and then a sink big enough to wash an elephant in. As they pounded across the red-tiled floor, Jim looked around for a control panel for the alarm system, some kind of motherboard, but of course they wouldn't put it in the middle of all this Emeril Lagasse. Besides, even if he could disarm the thing, the signal had already been sent.

  Busting through the pair of swingers, they went into an open layout of square tables set for hungry people who wouldn't show up for toast and eggs for another seven hours--

  On the far side, the tinted-glass walls that separated the eatery from the lobby were showing a trio of running people who had to be hotel security.

  He and Matthias both looked to the left, where floor-to-ceiling drapes were drawn back to frame old-fashioned, double-hung windows.

  No discussion. They gunned for the only exit they had a chance at. And to Matthias's credit, he didn't try to play hero when they got there; he pulled up short and let Jim unlock the switch and grab the brass handle on the base of the sill.

  He put more than just his back into the lift. Tacking on a little mental juice as well, the window slid up with a crack! as if it were breaking free of having been painted in.

  Twelve-foot drop onto pavement.

  "Fuck," Matthias said. "You're going to have to catch me."

  "Roger that."

  With a coordinated surge, Jim was up and over and into the loose hands of gravity. He landed solid on his combat boots and held out his arms. Matthias's exit was rougher, his legs hard to bend by the look of it, but the guy wasn't stupid. He gripped the window and dragged it back into place behind him, even though his ass barely fit on the ledge.

  As he let himself go and went into a free fall, his black windbreaker flapped out behind him uselessly, like a parachute with a bullet hole in it.

  Jim caught his old boss with a grunt, keeping him from hitting the pavement.

  "They found our friend," Matthias said as he shoved free.

  Sure enough, far down the side of the building, the cops had opened those double doors and entered the corridor, their flashlights shining out into the alley from time to time as if they were doing sweeps around the leaking assassin.

  Time to get ghost.

  Moving quietly and as quickly as they could, the two of them headed in the opposite direction. Unlike in XOps, backup was the name of the game when it came to the Caldwell Police Department, and sure enough, more sirens started to echo throughout the night.

  A good fifty yards later, he and Matthias stopped at the other corner of the hotel, did a look-around, and then stepped out of the alley, calm as frozen water.

  "Lose the sunglasses," Jim said as he focused on the sidewalk ahead.

  "Already did."

  Jim glanced over at his old boss. The man had his chin up and his eyes straight ahead. His lips were slightly parted and he was breathing like a freight train, but you wouldn't know it if you weren't looking for signs of hypoxia.

  As far as anyone could tell, they were just two Joes out for a stroll, unconnected to any weirdness.

  Jim had an absurd urge to tell his old boss that the bastard had done a good job. But that was ridiculous. They'd both been trained by the same drill sergeant, had spent years running exercises on evasive techniques side by side, had been through variations of this precise scenario.

  By the time they entered the lobby, Matthias was breathing easy.

  It went without saying that the guy would continue to stay at the Marriott. Now that an attempt had been made, and not just dead-ended, but with the involvement of gold badges, it made second tries trickier and riskier, at least for the next couple of days.

  Besides, they'd been on a tour of the kitchen. Very professional.

  Be a shame not to try the grub.

  Mels's tenacity paid off...in a sad way.

  The news crews left after midnight, and then the cops started paring down. Even Monty left before she did. Finally, it was just the crime scene investigators, two detectives, and her good self.

  The yellow line of police tape had gotten smaller and smaller as the staffing had been reduced and she had gotten closer and closer to the open door of the hotel room. So when it came time to remove the victim, she had a clear visual shot at the process. Two men went in with a black body bag, and because of the cramped nature of the bathroom the woman had been killed in, they had to put the thing flat on the carpet and carry her out to lay her in it.

  That poor girl.

  "Yeah, it's terrible."

  Mels wheeled around, unaware she'd spoken out loud. A tall, scary-looking guy was behind her, your typical hard-ass with piercings in his face and a leather biker jacket. Except his expression carried a heartbreak on it that immediately changed her prejudicial opinion of him. He wasn't focused on her; he was staring at the dead girl whose lifeless limbs were being arranged by her sides before a zipper disappeared her into black folds of thick plastic.

  Mels turned back to the scene. "I feel so sorry for her father."

  "You know him?"

  "No. I can just imagine, though." Then again, maybe the guy hadn't given a crap about her and that was part of the reason she got hooked in the life? "It's just...she was a baby once. There had to have been some innocence at some point."

  "You'd hope."

  Curiosity had her sizing him up again. "Are you a guest at the motel?"

  "Just a bystander." The man exhaled with a curious kind of defeat. "Man, I hate death."

  In that moment, Mels thought of her father for some reason. He'd been removed from the scene of that car crash in a bag, too--after he'd been cut out of the driver's seat by the Jaws of Life.

  Was he in Heaven? Looking down on them? Or was dying really just a lights-out kind of thing, like a car being turned off or a vacuum getting unplugged?

  There was no afterlife for inanimate objects. So why did humans think that their fate was any different?

  "Because it is different."

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled awkwardly. "I didn't mean to think out loud."

  "It's okay." The guy smiled a little. "And there's nothing wrong with hoping that your dead are at peace or with having faith. It's a good thing, actually."

  Mels refocused on the motel room, thinking it was weird to be having this candid conversation with a total stranger. "I just wish I knew for sure."

  "Ah, but you're a reporter. You'd spill the secret."

  She laughed. "Like Heaven and Hell are privileged information?"

  "You got it. Humans require two things to properly bond: scarcity and the unknown. If loved ones were around forever, you'd take them for granted, and if you knew for sure that you'd be reunited, you'd never miss them. It's all part of the divine plan."

  So he was a religious nut. "Well, there you go."

  They moved back as the officers grasped the nylon handles of the bag and started walking the victim out. As the grim processional went by, Mels had a feeling why Dick had given her this assignment. Dead girl, grisly scene, mean streets of Caldwell, yada, yada, yada. He was just the kind of asshole to pay her back for shutting him down again.

  And the truth was, she was rattled, as anyone with a conscience would be. But she was still going to do her job.

  Leaning into the doorway, she addressed the man in charge. "Detective de la Cruz? Would you care to make a statement?"

  The detective glanced up from his old-fas
hioned Columbo pad. "You still here, Carmichael?"

  "Of course."

  "You'd make your pops proud, you know that."

  "Thanks, Detective."

  As de la Cruz came over, he didn't spare a glance for the big man standing next to her, but he was like that. Unfazed by almost anything. "I got nothing to say yet. I'm sorry."

  "No suspects?"

  "No comment." He gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Say 'hi' to your mom, okay?"

  "What about the hair color?"

  He just waved over his shoulder and kept going, getting into a dark gray Crown Vic and pulling out of the parking lot.

  As the last officer closed the room door, locked it, and put the CPD seal in place, she turned to the man behind her--

  He was gone, as if he'd never been there.

  Weird.

  Heading over to Tony's car, she could have sworn she was still being followed, but there was no one anywhere near her. The feeling persisted as she drove off, though, to the point where she wondered if paranoia wasn't a virus you could catch.

  Matthias was certainly worked up, but he might well have reason to be.

  She certainly didn't.

  Mels took the shortest way home, which was on the surface roads, and as she went by the cemetery again, she decided to take a little detour.

  The house she eventually stopped in front of was on a street where every other garage, except its own, had cheery twin lanterns glowing on either side of its door.

  This particular ranch was lights-out inside and on the exterior, a black hole amid all the other occupied-by-owners.

  Reaching for the car door, she wanted to poke around a little, look in some windows, maybe find an unlocked way into the garage. But as soon as she made contact with the handle, a wave of dread came over her, sure as if all the ambient someone's-watching had coalesced into an actual bogeyman who was coming up from behind her with a knife.

  Mels gave the eerieness a second to pass, in case it was heartburn from that burger and fries at the Marriott, but when it just sat on her chest, she put the car back in drive and turned around in the middle of the street.

  Probably the mist that was still hanging in the air.

  Yeah, it was the serial killer--movie fog that made the night seem darker and more dangerous than it really was.

  Driving off, she hit the door lock and held on to the wheel hard.

  She didn't loosen up until she pulled into the familiar driveway of her parents' house, the headlights of Tony's car washing up and over the front of the Cape Cod she'd grown up in.

  For some reason, she focused on the shutters on the second floor. The ones outside of the dormer of her bedroom.

  Her father had fixed them when she'd been ten years old: After a Nor'easter had come in and blown both of them off, he'd gotten a shiny aluminum ladder and lugged the heavy old wooden things up, balancing them on the eaves, rescrewing the pinnings, making it all right.

  She'd held the base of the ladder, just because she'd wanted to be a part of it. She hadn't been worried that he'd fall. He'd been Superman that day.

  Every day, actually.

  She thought of that stranger by the motel, the one with the proselytizations and the piercings. Maybe he did have a point about that scarcity and surety stuff when it came to some people. But for her, if she knew for certain her father was okay, she would actually find a measure of peace herself.

  Funny, she hadn't realized until tonight that she might need that.

  Then again, since his passing...she'd made a point not to look closely into things.

  It was just too painful.

  At just before five a.m., Jim was in Matthias's room at the Marriott, staring at the muted television from a chair in the corner. About two hours previously, he'd gotten a text from Ad saying that the reporter was home safe at her mother's and the angel was going to check on Eddie and let Dog out. The next report had been forty-five minutes later--Ad was going to try to catch a few.

  Over on the king-sized bed, Matthias was sleeping like a corpse: on top of the covers on his back, head on the pillow, hands linked across his sternum. All he needed was a white rose between his fingers and a canned organ and Jim could have been paying his respects.

  Why the hell had Devina helped them?

  Christ, the only thing worse than her going against him was her rescuing him. And he hadn't needed her lifesaver. He had tricks up his sleeve, damn it. He had been just about to bust out a light show.

  Maybe she was trying to suck up to the Maker.

  How fucking galling was that--

  The five a.m. Wake Up, Caldwell! newscast led with a reporter covering a murder scene downtown, the woman standing in front of a motel, turning back and nodding to an open room where police were going in and out. Then there was a cut to a box of hair color and the mug shot of a hard-used woman with stringy red hair.

  So much sin in the world, Jim thought.

  And on that note, he needed more ammo.

  When a commercial for Jimmy Dean sausage came on, his stomach would have ordered room service if it could have picked up the phone and dialed.

  "Can you at least tell me my own name?"

  Jim glanced over to the bed. Matthias's eyes were open, but he hadn't moved, like a snake coiled in the sun.

  "I've only ever known you as Matthias."

  "We were trained together, weren't we. Last night we had the exact same moves at the same time."

  "Yeah."

  Sensing where this line of questioning was going to take them, Jim outted his cigarettes, put one between his teeth, and then remembered they were in a public place. And wouldn't it be ironic to get booted out of the hotel for lighting up when they'd broken in the back entrance, traded open fire, left a body, and broken out again?

  Har-har-hardy-har-har.

  Jim refocused on the TV, which was playing a deodorant commercial. For a split second, he envied the dudes portrayed in the scene: all they had to worry about were their armpits, and as long as they used Speed Stick products, they were good to go.

  If only the solution for Devina came in both aerosol and stick.

  "Tell me how I killed myself." When Jim didn't answer, the other man said, "Why are you so afraid to talk about it? You don't strike me as a pussy."

  Jim scrubbed his face. "You know what? You should sleep less. You're a pain in the ass well rested."

  "I guess you're just a pussy, then."

  As Jim exhaled hard, he wished it were smoke. "Fine, you know what I'm worried about? That when you find out who you were, you're going to become that man again and I'll lose you. No offense, but this clean slate you've got going on is a blessing."

  "You make it sound like I was evil--"

  "You were." Jim locked eyes with his old boss. "You were infected to the core, to the point where I'd come to the conclusion that you were born that way. But seeing you like this..." He motioned with his hand. "It's a surprise to find out that you weren't."

  "What the hell happened to me?" Matthias whispered.

  "I don't know anything about your past before you came to XOps."

  "Is that what the organization was called?"

  "'Is' called. Not 'was.' And yeah, you and I did train together. Prior to that, I don't know shit. There were rumors about you, but they were probably the result of hyperbole based on your reputation."

  "Which was..."

  "You were a sociopath." The man cursed softly and Jim shrugged. "Listen, I wasn't a saint, either. Not before I joined, certainly not when I was in. But you--you set a new standard. You were...something else."

  There was a period of silence. Then, "You're still not telling me anything specific."

  Jim rubbed his hair and thought, Well, hell, there were so many anythings to choose from. "Okay, how about this one. There was a man, Colonel Alistair Childe--name ring any bells?" When Matthias shook his head, Jim really wished they were outside so he could light up. "He was a good guy, had a daughter who was a lawyer. A son who
had some problems. Wife died of cancer. He lived up in Boston, but had a lot of dealings in D.C. He got too close."

  "To what."

  "The firm, so to speak. You had him kidnapped and taken to his son's crack house, where your operatives pumped the kid full of an overdose of heroin and filmed Alistair screaming as the son foamed at the mouth and died. And you thought you'd done the guy a solid, because, in your own words, you took the kid who was broken. The threat, of course, was that if Childe didn't clam it, you'd off the daughter, too."

  Matthias didn't move, barely breathed, just blinked. But his voice was the tell. Rough and full of gravel, it barely got the words out: "I don't remember that."

  "You will. At some point. You're going to remember a whole lot of shit like that--and some stuff that I probably can't even guess at."

  "And how do you know so much?"

  "About the Childe thing? I was there when you went after the daughter."

  Matthias's eyes closed, and his chest went up and down slowly, as if there were a horrible weight on it.

  Kind of gave Jim some hope. Maybe the reveal would yank him further out of the sin.

  "If that's true, I can see why you're concerned about my moral compass."

  "It's the God's honest. And like I said, there's so much more."

  Matthias cleared his throat. "So how exactly did this happen?"

  As he gestured around his eye, Jim found himself sucked back into their shared past. "I wanted out, but XOps don't have no retirement option, and you were the only one who could grant me a discharge. We argued about it, and then you showed up where I was on assignment in the desert. You told me to meet you alone at night far the hell away from camp, and I figured this was it, game over. Instead, you were by yourself. You looked me in the eye as you lifted your foot and put it down in the sand. The explosion...it went upward, not out. You never meant it for me, and it wasn't a mistake." Memories of that hut, of the gritty sand in his eyes and the blast smoke in his nose, came back hard and fast. "Afterward, I carried you out of there, took you where you could get help."

  "Why didn't you leave me to die?"

  "I was done playing by your rules. It was time that the all-powerful Oz didn't get what he was after."

  "But if you wanted out, and you'd killed me--who would have fucked with you? Assuming you're telling the truth about all this, you would have been free."

  Jim shrugged, "I had you over a barrel. You didn't want that little suicide secret getting out, so I had the best of both worlds. I was free and you were going to spend the rest of your life looking like shit and being in pain."