End Game

by David Baldacci

  “The problem is…I love you, Will Robie. More than I’ve loved anyone. And that’s why you’ll never be able to help me through this.”

  Chapter

  51

  ROBIE SAT ON his bed in the hotel in Grand.

  His face was pointed directly at the floor.

  And though his feet were firmly planted on the carpet, his thoughts were in another galaxy.

  The drizzle had opened up into a hail of rain that pounded the single window in his room. Streaks of lightning popped and faded, as thunder rumbled consistently after each slash of light.

  It was good to be indoors on such a night. And yet Robie was oblivious to the unruly elements.

  The problem is…I love you, Will Robie. More than I’ve loved anyone. And that’s why you’ll never be able to help me through this.

  It made no sense. It was a complete contradiction. But Reel had said it with total conviction, and Robie understood that there was nothing he could do to change her mind.

  They had driven back in silence, as the weather and their moods had worsened.

  She had gone to her room and he to his.

  When he felt his hands shaking, Robie stood, went into the bathroom, and ran cold water over his face. When he looked up from the sink he caught his reflection staring back at him in the mirror.

  He looked ten years older, he thought, than when he had started the day.

  He gripped both sides of the sink and willed himself not to throw up, or pull his gun and go looking for something, someone to kill. Right now, it would have been too easy.

  He looked to his left toward Reel’s room.

  Is she as miserable as I am? But then again, she did say she loved me. More than anyone else.

  Robie’s momentary flicker of hope was extinguished just as quickly.

  He well knew that there was a steely resolve in the woman that even Robie could not match. If she had truly made up her mind, then that was that, whether she loved him or not.

  So why am I still screwing around? Forget it. Forget her. I need to move on.

  And Robie was going to start that journey right now.

  He went downstairs and then outside. He glanced down the street.

  Malloy’s police cruiser wasn’t there. She had probably gone to her house, wherever that was.

  He pulled out his phone and called her. She answered on the second ring.

  “You want some company?” he asked.

  She gave him her address. It was about twenty minutes outside of town, tucked away off some little back road.

  That’s all there seemed to be out here, he thought.

  Back roads.

  To nowhere.

  Houses tucked away.

  In nowhere.

  The rain had slackened to a steady drizzle. He had just about reached his truck when Patti Bender appeared out of the darkness. She was dressed in the same odd assortment of work clothes she was wearing when they first met her. And a pistol was in a holster on her hip.

  “What are you doing out this late?” he said, stopping with his hand on the truck door.

  “I’m too old for curfews, Will,” she said with a smile. “You look troubled.”

  “Story of my life, I guess.”

  “Any word on Mr. Walton?”

  “Nothing. But we have some leads.”

  “Well, that’s better than nothing.”

  “We went back to the cabin where Walton was staying. Malloy thought she recognized a boot print there. She’s going to follow it up.”

  “She’s a good cop, and that’s not an easy thing to be out here.”

  “How about your brother? Is he a good cop?”

  “I was surprised, to tell the truth, when he put on the badge. He was a hellion as a teenager. More likely to be arrested than arrest somebody else.”

  “Maybe he just grew up,” said Robie.

  She looked at him strangely. “Do boys ever really grow up, Will?”

  “I’m not sure I can answer that.”

  “Where are you off to now, more investigating?”

  He looked down. “No, just getting some fresh air.”

  “Well, we have an abundance of that here. Your partner not going with you?”

  “No…she’s tired.”

  “Aren’t we all? Well, I won’t keep you.”

  He watched her walk off and then climbed into the truck.

  He got there in fifteen minutes, driving at a rate of speed that was above reckless on such an inclement night.

  Maybe a part of him was hoping he wouldn’t reach the place at all. Too fast around a curve, an animal jumps out of the darkness directly in his path, then it would be over.

  He would be over.

  He pulled into the driveway of a neat story-and-a-half bungalow painted blue.

  The skies opened up again and the rain poured down.

  Malloy’s police cruiser was under a carport. A potted plant was on the front stoop, the flowers drooping under the barrage of rain.

  She was waiting at the front door with a drink in hand. He took it.

  And then up the stairs the pair went, undressing each other along the way.

  By the time they got to the bedroom, they were both naked.

  They hit the mattress hard and Robie used up every last bit of energy he had pleasing her, pleasing someone, letting her rising moans and groans and the prodding of her fingers against his body guide where she wanted him to go.

  He increased his intensity of motion to the point where the bed was in peril of collapsing under them. Seeming to sense this, Malloy locked her legs around his torso. Right on cue, he lifted her off the bed and pushed her against the wall.

  In his mind Robie sought to drive the both of them right through the drywall and out into the storm, to just let the rain engulf them. Wash everything he was feeling away. Gone.

  For good. Never to return.

  Climaxing simultaneously, she screamed and ripped at his hair and he cried out as though in pain, though he was feeling the exact opposite.

  Totally spent, he carried her back to the bed and collapsed on top of her. Still gasping, she gently stroked the back of his head. Though the room was as cool as the outside, they were both drenched in sweat with their commingled efforts.

  He could feel the smacks of her heart against his heaving chest and she could no doubt feel his as well.

  Robie felt like he had just run a marathon, every nerve and muscle twitching.

  He also somehow sensed that he had not yet finished the race. That he would never reach the finish line.

  Robie finally rolled off her and put an arm over his eyes, blocking everything out.

  “My God,” she whispered breathlessly into his ear. She slipped her leg on top of his stomach and lay curled tight to him. “My God,” she said again. “That was intense, Will.”

  He nodded his head, trying to silently tell her that it was the same for him.

  Though he had just finished having sex with a very lovely woman, the only image in Robie’s head right now was of another woman.

  A woman who had this night, for the first time in her life, told Robie that she loved him. And then in the next breath, she had destroyed that astonishing admission before he even had a chance to react.

  Or to tell her that I felt the same way about her.

  “What are you thinking, Will?”

  Robie blinked, came back to the room he was in, and turned sideways to stare at her.

  I’m thinking about the woman I wish were here with me.

  Of course he couldn’t say that, and he didn’t.

  Guilt and shame were added to the swell of other emotions he was already feeling.

  Guilt, shame, whatever you wanted to call it. The precise name didn’t matter. It was all bad.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  He could feel her relaxed body tense just a bit and then that tension was released.

  Malloy replied, “You can talk to me, you know.”

  “I’
m fine. It was great. It was beyond great. Thank you. I…Thank you.”

  His words rang hollow even to him.

  He turned away from her and fell asleep on his side.

  She lay there for a bit watching the sharp edges of his muscular back before she turned in the opposite direction and eventually fell asleep.

  Robie did not slumber long. He woke thirty minutes later. He was dressed, out the door, and back on the road two minutes after that.

  He saw the headlights behind him about ten miles outside of Grand. They stayed with him the whole way, never speeding up, although he gave the vehicle several chances to pass him.

  When the bullet cracked the rear glass of his truck, he smiled. That was all the confirmation he needed.

  God help you, whoever you are.

  Chapter

  52

  JESSICA REEL HAD watched from her window as Robie drove off into the night after speaking with Patti Bender.

  Part of her wanted to run down the stairs and stop him. Not only because she thought she knew where he was going, but because people had been trying to kill them ever since they had set foot in Grand.

  But she had not run down the stairs. She had not tried to stop him.

  She had sat like a slug at the window watching him go off.

  She had seen him glance toward the sheriff’s station, where the police cruiser was not parked. The thoughts in his mind had been easy enough to decipher. As was the identity of the person he had phoned as she again watched from the window.

  Valerie Malloy.

  She shifted her position and looked across at the bar. It was ten o’clock now and it seemed like the place was just getting going.

  And Jessica Reel, ever the woman of action, decided she needed to get going, too. She was tired of sitting here doing nothing.

  She gunned up, left the hotel, and walked across the street. She spotted the stretch limo and wondered for a moment if the Randalls were at the bar. It seemed unlikely. She doubted the couple would stoop to drinking beer with the great unwashed.

  She entered the bar and took a few moments to look around.

  In one corner were a half-dozen Apostles, though she didn’t see Dwight Sanders among them.

  In another corner were several burly men wearing Confederate caps and do-rags and others with T-shirts that said DON’T TREAD ON ME.

  Someone had put money in a jukebox, and a few couples were doing their best drunken moves on the small dance floor set up on the right side of the bar.

  Sitting at the bar was the limo driver she had seen out at the bunker. The one who had thanked them for taking the Randalls down a peg. That explained the stretch parked outside.

  She walked over to the bar and sat down next to him. He glanced up from his beer and flinched.

  “So how are the Randalls?” said Reel.

  He smiled and swallowed some of his beer.

  “Who gives a shit? He don’t even tip. Punk’s got more money than God and he can’t even slip me a fiver? And she just sits there either checking her phone or fixing her makeup. Oh, and I’ve been ‘instructed’ to not make eye contact with her.”

  “Well, that might be a good thing. You look at Medusa, you get frozen.”

  He laughed. “Can I buy you a beer?”

  “Why not.”

  He ordered and then held out his hand. “We were never formerly introduced. Tommy Page.”

  “Jessica Reel,” she replied, shaking his hand.

  Her beer came and they tapped bottles. Page ran a hand through his thick gray hair.

  Reel took a swallow of her beer and said, “So you been driving limos long? Doesn’t seem like there would be much demand out here.”

  He shrugged. “I used to work at an ore plant that went out of business. Then I worked on an assembly line for a car parts company that went under too when Detroit and the Big Three cratered. Then I got a job at a grocery store stocking shelves. Got downsized from there and went to a McDonald’s flipping burgers. My paycheck kept shrinking and my back kept getting sorer and sorer. Finally, got old enough for Social Security. I inherited the limo from my old man. He had a funeral home business. I kept it in the garage. Then when this Uber thing took off, I was like, what the hell. I can put on a suit and drive a fucking car. Did some weddings and proms. And I got some gigs taking people to Denver and back. Parties and crap like that. And I knew Roark Lambert from way back. He hires me to bring his rich clients to the bunker. The pay’s okay. And I can’t sit around and do nothing. I ain’t dead yet. Right?”

  “Right,” replied Reel, sipping her beer.

  He grinned. “You two really shook those assholes up. They were screaming about what they were going to do to you.”

  “You took them back today? To their jet?”

  “Yep. I don’t think she liked the bunker much. All she was talking about was jetting off to the Hamptons. That’s in New York somewhere, right?”

  “Long Island. Very wealthy. On the water. Homes there go for like forty million.”

  “Are you shitting me? Forty million bucks for something you live in?”

  “Yep. And for a lot of those folks it’s their second or third home.”

  “Damn. Might as well be on another planet far as I’m concerned.” He paused. “I’ve worked since I was sixteen with some unemployment here and there. I’m sixty-six now. That’s fifty years. One night I added up all the money I’ve made. Want to know how much?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Sounds like a lot. But not over fifty years. Comes out to less than twenty grand a year. Thing is, I know folks who made even less than that. Look, I made shitty choices, I know. Dropped out of high school. But my dad died so I had to help out, you know. Maybe I should have joined the military, learned a trade. Too late now.” He gave her a sideways glance. “So you’re a Fed from DC?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I bet you make good money.”

  “I guess.”

  “You look like you could handle yourself in a fight.”

  “I’ve been in a few.”

  “Ever killed anybody?”

  She stared at him. “Now, is that a proper question to ask a lady?”

  He looked sheepish. “No, sorry. I ain’t thinking straight. No offense.”

  “So was that the first time you’d driven the Randalls out to the bunker? Lambert told us this was the first time they were coming to actually stay there.”