Chapter Fifty-Nine

KARLI brEECHER’S EYES blazed. Nick looked at his former teammate, friend, and lover, and felt cold inside, like the last embers of a fire were being unceremoniously stomped out. Breecher’s grip was firm on the pistol, steady and tight. A single droplet of sweat would have given him hope. A tendon straining. But it was that dry, controlled grip on the gun that told him everything he needed to know, even before she spoke.

“I was OK with you dying in the desert,” she said. “And I’m OK with it now.”

“I believe you,” Nick said.

“I’m broke,” Breecher continued. She took a moment to look at Vinny, dead in the chair; Neddy, writhing on the floor; Effie, tucked into Nick’s side. “I blew through my share of the money years ago. You know how it goes. I’d never had real money before. So I handed some out to family and friends. Spent some having a good time. Tried to chase my losses with bad investments. The rest drizzled away. So I got desperate. I figured I’d hit Dorrich first because he was going to be the biggest challenge. I needed to be fresh, ready for anything. But I spooked him on the approach. He left that message for me that he was being tailed. He knew someone was after him. He hid the money. When I finally came for him, he wouldn’t give it up.”

“He was always so hard.” Nick smiled sadly.

“Never said a word.” Breecher shook her head, hardly listening. “Even when I backed him into the tub. Even when it was clear, this was the end: tell me or die.”

Nick watched her shake the regret off like it was dust on her shoulders.

“So now I’m even more desperate,” Breecher said, composed again. “You understand?”

“I do,” Nick said. “But you don’t need to think about the money right now.”

“What?” Breecher squinted at him.

“You’ve got bigger problems,” Nick said.

Finally, that bead of sweat. Just one, at her hairline. She swiped it away. Nick relished in delicious, tenuous hope. He heard something thump in a room upstairs, a mattress being flipped off a bedframe, maybe, or a dresser being shoved over.

“The phone on the coffee table.” He pointed. “Pick it up.”

Breecher didn’t move.

“You need two things,” Nick said. “First, you need me to give you a code to unlock the phone. Then you need me to give you the password to my Twitter account.”

“Why the fuck do I need to get into your Twit—”

Breecher’s mouth fell open. She blinked at him, more sweat beading now on the smooth skin over her left collarbone.

Nick didn’t need to explain it. But he did, anyway.

“I made a confession video,” he said. “I tagged all the right people. It’s scheduled to go live on the internet at seven o’clock.”

Breecher’s head whipped around, looking for a clock. She stepped back and almost fell over the coffee table. She caught sight of the black marble clock on the mantelpiece that read 6:25 p.m.

“You—” She picked up his phone, shook it in her hand as though to weigh it, to measure if the device itself was real. “No. This is bullshit. You couldn’t have known we were coming here tonight. You wouldn’t have set this up. You wouldn’t have stayed in the house.”

“Are you going to bank on that?” Nick asked.

Breecher’s chest heaved with panicked breath. Nick winced as she raised the pistol and pointed it at Effie.

“The code,” Breecher said. “Now, or I’ll start putting holes in her.”

“No,” Nick said.

He looked at Effie, expecting her features to be taut with horror and betrayal. He was surprised by the smile he saw there. But he supposed Effie was calculating, as Breecher was calculating, the many exit routes now closed to the woman holding the gun on them. Because she couldn’t kill Effie and Neddy Ives now, or Nick wouldn’t give her the codes. She couldn’t flee, because leaving Nick and his friends to Driver’s men would be the same as killing them, and in thirty-five minutes her world would be destroyed no matter how far she ran.

When Breecher spoke, her teeth flashed brightly between her lips. She sneered the single word with so much malice, Nick winced.

“Go,” she said to Effie.

Effie didn’t wait. She dashed to Neddy’s side, swung the tall man’s arm around her shoulders, and helped him up. They limped out the door. Nick uttered six numbers, his whole body alive with exhilaration as he heard Effie slip out the rear kitchen door to safety.

Breecher’s eyes were downcast to the phone screen, her gun still trained on Nick’s face.

“You logged out of Twitter,” she said.

“I did.”

“So give me the password,” she said.

“No,” Nick said.

“I let them go,” Breecher said. She was panting hard, and Nick could see the little girl in her for the first time. The child who had grown up under a star-spangled military father. The one who was an adult now, fearing the disgrace that would follow: the discharge, the prison time, the disownment. “Give. Me. The. Password.”

“The moment I do that, you’ll call those men back in here,” Nick said, glancing toward the door. “And I’m as good as dead. You need to walk me out of this house alive. Then I’ll—”

He had no time to finish. Breecher walked off, disappearing through the foyer to the dining room. He should have run, but, drawn by curiosity or simply by fear, he followed her instead. Driver’s two men were in the room; one ripping books off a shelf in the back living area, the other crouched and poring over a pile of debris under a window. Nick could hear footsteps on the old boards overhead. It sounded like Driver was upstairs.

In three seconds, maybe less, Breecher had walked into the room and shot both of Driver’s men in the head. One in the back of the skull, the other in the temple as he turned toward the noise. Before Nick could react, bodily or emotionally, Breecher was with him again, the gun in his ribs as she shoved him toward the front door of the house.

“Go,” she said again.