Page 112 of The Maverick
Dominion Hall from a long lens at the front gate. The yacht at the pier from across the water. And three ofme. Walking out of The Palmetto Rose this morning. Walking out of Rebecca's apartment yesterday. Standing on the front steps of Dominion Hall in jeans and a t-shirt about ninety minutes before the yacht went up.
No captions. No instructions. No name on the device. No smoking gun in the contact list.
There didn't need to be.
The pictures were the assignment. These men had been pointed. At me.
I dropped the phone into my inner pocket.
I keyed my coms.
"Noah."
"Go."
"Tell Lucas I'm coming home."
"Copy."
"And tell him."
"Yeah."
"It's time we have a word with our friend at the Bureau."
A short laugh on the other end. Not amusement. Recognition.
"Copy that, brother."
I sat down on the gunwale of a stranger's boat in the cold dark, with two dead men on the deck and a phone in my pocket that told me what I already knew.
The Dominion Hall boat rounded the bend behind me, running dark and quiet, the way a Dominion Hall boat would run.
I got ready to be picked up.
30
REBECCA
The first thing I noticed was the ceiling.
Not Dominion Hall's ceiling—not the high plaster and the molding I'd glimpsed on the way through the house. This was a lower ceiling, clinical, with recessed lighting set to the dim, careful level of a room designed for people who weren't ready for full brightness yet. I lay there looking at it for a moment while the rest of my body filed its reports.
Left leg. That was the main dispatch. A deep, settled ache that ran from mid-thigh to just above the knee, wrapped in something thick and tight. I moved my foot experimentally and the ache sharpened. I stopped moving my foot.
My guitar.
The thought arrived sudden and specific—where was my guitar, had it been on my back when it happened, was the J-45 somewhere at the bottom of a Charleston harbor—and I must have made a sound because a voice came from my left.
"Hey. Easy. You're okay."
I turned my head.
The woman sitting in the chair beside my bed was not who I expected.
She was—I registered her in pieces, the way I'd been registering too many things lately in pieces because the whole was too much at once. Dark blonde hair. The kind of face that cameras loved because the bones of it were doing all the work and the bones knew it. She was in a cashmere sweater the color of oatmeal, legs tucked under her in the chair, a cup of tea balanced on the armrest, and she was watching me with the warm, direct attention of a woman who had decided I was her responsibility for the moment and was comfortable with that.
I knew her face.
