Persuader

The food truck was gone. Evidently di

I kept tight against the house wall and looked in every window. The cook was in the kitchen. She was cleaning up. Keast and Maden had left all their stuff there. I ducked under the sill and moved on. The dining room was a ruin. The wind blowing in through the shattered window had caught the linen tablecloth and thrown plates and glasses everywhere. There were dunes of plaster dust in the corners where the wind had piled them. There were two big holes in the ceiling. Probably in the ceiling of the room above, and the room above that, too. The Bre

The square room where I had played Russian roulette had the three Libyans and Qui

Beck and Qui

I made it back to the kitchen after completing a whole circle. Stepped inside. I didn’t make a sound. The metal detector stayed quiet. The cook didn’t hear me coming. I caught her from behind. Clamped a hand over her mouth and dragged her over to a counter. I wasn’t taking any chances after what Richard had done to me. I found a linen towel in a drawer and used it as a gag. Found another to tie her wrists. Found another to tie her ankles. I left her sitting uncomfortably on the floor next to the sink. I found a fourth towel and put it in my pocket. Then I stepped out into the hallway.

It was quiet. I could hear Elizabeth Beck’s voice, faintly. Her parlor door was standing open. I couldn’t hear anything else. I went straight to the door of Beck’s den. Opened it. Stepped inside. Closed it again.

I was met by a haze of cigar smoke. Qui

“I’m back,” I said.

Beck had his mouth open. I hit him with a cigarette punch. His mouth slammed shut and his head snapped back and his eyes rolled up and he went straight down on the three-deep rugs on the floor. It was a decent blow, but not my best. His son had saved his life after all. If I hadn’t been so tired from swimming, a better punch would have killed him.

Qui

“No,” he said. He had no air. “Please.”

I put the flat of one hand on the back of his head. Took my chisel out of my shoe and slid it in behind his ear and up into his brain, slowly, inch by inch. He was dead before it was halfway in, but I kept it going until it was buried all the way to the hilt. I left it there. I wiped the handle with the towel from my pocket and then I spread the towel over his head and stood up, wearily.

“Ten-eighteen, Dom,” I said to myself.

I stepped on Qui

It took me thirty minutes to get to Duffy’s motel. She and Villanueva were together in his room with Teresa Justice. She wasn’t Teresa Daniel anymore. She wasn’t dressed like a doll anymore, either. They had her in a motel robe. She had showered. She was coming around fast. She looked weak and wan, but she looked like a person. Like a federal agent. She stared at me in horror. At first I thought she was confused about who I was. She had seen me in the cellar. Maybe she thought I was one of them.

But then I saw myself in the mirror on the closet door and I saw her problem. I was wet from head to toe. I was shaking and shivering. My skin was dead white. The cut on my lip had opened and turned blue on the edges. I had fresh bruises where the waves had butted me against the rock. I had seaweed in my hair and slime on my shirt.

“I fell in the sea,” I said.

Nobody spoke.

“I’ll take a shower,” I said. “In a minute. Did you call ATF?”

Duffy nodded. “They’re on their way. Portland PD has already secured the warehouse. They’re going to seal the coast road, too. You got out just in time.”

“Was I ever there?”

Villanueva shook his head. “You don’t exist. Certainly we never met you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Old school,” he said.

I felt better after the shower. Looked better, too. But I had no clothes. Villanueva lent me a set of his. They were a little short and wide. I used his old raincoat to hide them. I wrapped it tight around me, because I was still cold. We had pizza delivered. We were all starving. I was very thirsty, from the salt water. We ate and we drank. I couldn’t bite on the pizza crust. I just sucked the topping off. After an hour, Teresa Justice went to bed. She shook my hand. Said good night, very politely. She had no idea who I was.

“Roofies wipe out their short-term memory,” Villanueva told me.

Then we talked business. Duffy was very down. She was living a nightmare. She had lost three agents in an illegal operation. And getting Teresa out was no kind of upside. Because Teresa shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.

“So quit,” I said. “Join ATF instead. You just handed them a big result on a plate. You’ll be flavor of the month.”

“I’m going to retire,” Villanueva said. “I’m old enough and I’ve had enough.”

“I can’t retire,” Duffy said.

In the restaurant the night before the arrest, Dominique Kohl had asked me, “Why are you doing this?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Having di

“No, working as an MP. You could be anything. You could be Special Forces, Intelligence, Air Cavalry, Armored, anything you wanted.”

“So could you.”

“I know. And I know why I’m doing this. I want to know why you’re doing it.”

It was the first time anybody had ever asked me.

“Because I always wanted to be a cop,” I said. “But I was predestined for the military. Family background, no choice at all. So I became a military cop.”

“That’s not really an answer. Why did you want to be a cop in the first place?”

I shrugged. “It’s just the way I am. Cops put things right.”

“What things?”

“They look after people. They make sure the little guy is OK.”

“That’s it? The little guy?”

I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “Not really. I don’t really care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.”

“You produce the right results for the wrong reasons, then.”

I nodded. “But I try to do the right thing. I think the reasons don’t really matter. Whatever, I like to see the right thing done.”