Page 10 of The Fourth Option
“I know. That’s why I need you.”She paused, selecting her words.“John told me that if I ever needed help, you were the man to call.”
John’s blood pooled in the dust.
“Chris?”
“I’m here.”
“He said I could trust you.”
“You can.”
“Then help me.”
Walker looked back at the pistol. He could barely help himself.
“Do the police have any leads?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you need me?”
“Because they were in on it.”
Walker closed his eyes. His jaw clenched. The ringing that had subsided surged in conjunction with a migraine, sharp and blinding. He pinched his temples.
“I need help, Chris. Connor was an only child. He was all I had after John died.”
And that was my fault, Walker thought.
He felt dizzy, but inside, the gyros began to turn.
“Tell me.”
“Connor worked on his investigation for more than a year,”Leigh Ann said.
“What kind of investigation?”
“An exposé on overdoses, the drug trade.”
“Fentanyl?”
“Maybe, but maybe worse. I don’t know. Connor thought it was something new. I’ve seen some of those kids rushed into the ER. Maybe a synthetic.”
Walker stared at the envelope, the one marked for Leigh Ann Staub, the one he had meant to be opened only after he was gone. The timing of her call spoke to him. Impossible? Absurd? Divine? Cruel?
Walker’s mind, always a battlefield for long dead philosophers, lit up with arguments.
Spinoza whispered about substance and attributes.
Schopenhauer reminded him that desire was immutable.
The Tao offered no comfort, only inevitability.
The pistol beckoned him. He could almost feel the cold metal that had nearly ended it all. And now her voice, alive, urgent, familiar.
Connor was dead. Just like his dad.
Connor Staub. The kid with ambition. Gone.
