“Meaning now it’s my turn? Is this what Dennis would have wanted?”

  “Dennis never had a chance to know what he really wanted. But for what it’s worth, I’m very sorry, Travis.”

  She fired the gun and the bullet slammed into his right shoulder. He fell back against the file cabinet and then dropped to the floor. The blood spurted down his front, and he desperately tried to use his shirt to stanch the bleeding.

  She moved closer and aimed the gun at his head for the kill shot.

  “I’m sorry, I meant to shoot you in the chest. I don’t have really good aim. But it won’t hurt anymore in a second, Travis. I promise. I never wanted any of this to happen.”

  A second shot rang out.

  Devine watched Tapshaw stiffen as a bullet went into her back, traversed her thin torso, and exited out her chest. In his wounded, muddled state, Devine thought he could see the bullet in midair. The round smacked into the wall and stayed there.

  Tapshaw swayed on her feet for a moment. Then the Sig fell from her hand. And she followed along with it, hitting the hard floor face-first and not moving again, except for one last involuntary twitch as life quickly transitioned to death.

  A bleeding and rapidly weakening Devine swiveled his head to the doorway.

  Helen Speers stood there with her Glock still pointing at where Tapshaw had been standing a moment before. She looked down at Devine and started to run toward him, her phone coming out as she tapped in 911.

  “Travis!” she cried out.

  Right as Devine’s eyes closed.

  CHAPTER

  83

  DEVINE LAY IN A HOSPITAL bed, but his mind was elsewhere.

  The thump-thump beats of the chopper blades, the swirl of heated desert air, the taste of red sand in his mouth along with the biting fumes of aviation fuel in his bloody nostrils. None of those things should happen while you’re dying, because dying was enough of a bitch.

  Ass over elbows, the IED had taken Devine, a 225-pound man, loaded down with fifty more pounds of gear, and launched him like a human cannonball across a rut-filled road fifty clicks outside of Kandahar. He hit the dirt unconscious. He woke up to a morphine-inspired fog. He endured multiple surgeries and a skin graft and did it all over again two years later when a badly aimed sniper round went through a defect in his body armor and ripped his shoulder apart instead of his brain.

  Only this time it was the other shoulder, and he was nowhere near Kandahar.

  Devine blinked himself awake and stared around the antiseptic confines of his hospital room. Just beneath the intoxicating shimmer of the morphine drip, he felt both the snakelike bite of the Sig Sauer nine-millimeter round and the surgery that had followed. Without painkillers he knew he would be shrieking in agony right now.

  He flitted across time and space, and then his gaze lingered and stopped on twin figures.

  Emerson Campbell was in a suit but without a tie.

  Helen Speers was in a dark blue jacket and skirt with a red scarf around her neck. For a moment the drugged-up Devine thought she was an airline flight attendant.

  “How is consciousness treating you, Devine?” asked Campbell.

  Devine tried to form the words, but his mouth, along with his brain, was not entirely under his command.

  Speers sat down next to him and took his hand, squeezing it in a firm grip. “I’m sorry, I should have been there sooner. I’m so sorry.”

  And she did look sorry, Devine had to admit. Very sorry indeed. He thought he saw tears bubbling at the edges of those beautiful eyes. But perhaps that was the morphine talking.

  “Who are . . . ?” That was all he could accomplish.

  Campbell stepped forward. “She’s with us, Devine. Special Agent Helen Speers. She fired the shot on the football field that allowed you to escape from Eric Bartlett and company that morning. Of course, she would have further intervened if you had needed her assistance. However, with Ms. Tapshaw, she couldn’t take any chances.”

  “D-dead?” said Devine.

  Speers slowly nodded. “Yes. It was either her or you.” She glanced at Campbell. “Can you give us a minute, sir?”

  Campbell nodded and stepped from the room.

  Speers pulled her chair even closer and looked deeply at Devine.

  “So . . . you were my g-guardian angel?” he said.

  “I was supposed to be. When Campbell was thinking of recruiting you, he had me get a room at the town house.”

  “Do . . . you sleep with all your . . . ?”

  “No, I don’t. I made an exception with you.” Her face crinkled into a smile even as her eyes filled with tears. “I made some mistakes in my earlier career, Travis. I guess you did, too. I don’t know if you know this, but Campbell collects people like you and me. We’re sort of like the misfit toys on that island in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Damaged but capable of—”

  “—re-redemption,” he finished for her.

  “Yes, redemption.”

  “So, you slept with me to show you were my ally?” he mumbled.

  She stared at him for a long moment, something building in her expression that Devine’s drug-induced thoughts could not readily interpret.

  “I slept with you, Travis, because I wanted to sleep with you.”

  “W-why did you s-search Will’s r-room?”

  “I was suspicious and there seemed to be things hitting too close to that town house. I wanted to find out if we had enemies in our own camp.” She reached down and stroked his cheek, and it felt so good.

  Devine nodded and closed his eyes as the morphine flowed into him, engaging in a pitched battle with the pain ebbing just below the surface of his punctured shoulder.

  When he awoke again, he was feeling better, and time apparently had marched on. It had been dark when Campbell and Speers had been there. It was daylight now, and he sensed that multiple days had passed. Nurses walked in and walked out after checking on him. Doctors and specialists examined him constantly.

  He eyed his vitals on the monitor. They looked closer to normal than he probably deserved.

  Campbell visited him regularly, and then walked in one morning and sat down next to him. “You look much better today,” he said.

  Devine managed to inch up a bit on his pillow before hitting the bed control to raise himself up more. “I think I’ve rounded the corner.”

  “Good.”

  “Jill Tapshaw?”

  “Her mother came to claim her body. We gave her a full briefing. Well, as full as we could.”

  “How did you know what to tell her about Jill? I haven’t been able to tell you anything.”

  “She left a full written confession in her room,” said Campbell. “I think when she went to her office that night, she intended to kill herself using your gun. But she found you there instead. Worse luck for you. If she had killed you, she probably would have turned the gun on herself. Her poor mother was . . . devastated. She’s lost both her children.”

  “Jill was a brilliant person. She did a lot to help people. And could have done a lot more.”

  “She did a lot to hurt people, too,” countered Campbell.

  “What about Cowl and Comely?”

  “Shut down. The people behind Area 51 are still out there. But you disrupted their operations to a considerable extent.”

  “But how much damage have they already done?”

  “We reviewed the report your friend Valentine cobbled together. That was hardly all of it, and we’re working on finding out more. From what we can make out, foreign interests who are no friend of the United States own more of this country than most people, myself included, can even comprehend. And a lot of politicians across the country have received dark money from these same groups.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “Probably nothing. They’ll shout to the heavens that they didn’t know, or it’s all fake, or entrapment, or a political hit job. And they’ll keep their positions and go on doing exactly what they were doing and sucking on the same dark-money teat.”

  “That is some sick shit,” Devine said wearily.

  “But we have to keep this on the QT, Devine.”

  “What, why?”

  “International relations, key alliances, not wanting to rock the boat too much, disrupt political arenas and financial markets, that sort of thing.”

  “That is total bullshit.”

  “I agree, it is,” Campbell conceded.

  Devine looked out the window at the sunny day. “So, I didn’t really complete my mission, then. And you don’t give out participation trophies. Am I headed to USDB?”

  “I think you’re well on your way to a second chance, Devine. If you want it.”

  The two former soldiers stared at each other.

  “I want it,” Devine finally said.

  “And that’s a good reason to get out of bed every day.”

  Devine looked around the room. “Is . . . have you heard from Michelle Montgomery?”

  “She’s left the country.”

  Devine nodded, looking and feeling disappointed. “Okay.”

  “She didn’t really have a choice.”

  Devine glanced back at him. “What?”

  “She wanted to visit you here many times, but that would not have been a good thing, so I put the kibosh on that. We arranged for a safe place for her to live abroad.”

  Campbell pulled an envelope from his pocket. “But she asked me to give you this.”

  Devine took the envelope. Without another word, Campbell left.

  Devine slowly opened the envelope and slipped a single page and two photos out. He glanced down the paper and began to read:

  Dear Travis, what a ride! I’ve never been more scared and more excited in my life. Not sure what that says about me, but just being honest. I guess the general has told you what happened. I didn’t want to leave you, but he didn’t give me a choice. I can say I will miss you, and I will. But I’m convinced we will see each other again. And while the general won’t like it, you can reach me at this phone number.

  Devine eyed the international phone number with the country code for Italy.

  He read the rest of the letter.

  I won’t call you because I don’t want to put pressure on you. But you can call me. I’m so sorry about what happened to you. I never would have guessed that that sweet-looking girl who founded a dating service to help people find love would have been so screwed up. I hope you recover quickly. Even though I couldn’t visit you in the hospital, I was thinking about you, all the time. And remember, while we both have baggage, it can’t last forever. And even if it does, life must go on. And I don’t think you or I need a dating service to find the person just right for us.

  I’ll Always Love You,

  Michelle

  P.S. The man in that photo is a keeper. The one of me is so you won’t forget.

  Devine next looked at the photos. The one of him was the same photo she’d taken on the rooftop of her building: the troubled man with baggage. The one of her did not have her in a bikini but, rather, jeans and a T-shirt. With the loveliest smile he had ever seen.

  He reluctantly set her picture aside and stared at the ceiling.

  He had never suspected Jill Tapshaw. He had trusted her and then nearly been killed by her.

  He had not trusted Helen Speers, and she had been the one to save his life.

  He had suspected Will Valentine of wrongdoing, and the man had done nothing but be his friend and help him. And his payment for that had been the loss of his life.

  During an earlier visit, Campbell had told him that Valentine’s family back in Russia had been taken away by the state. The infant Valentine had been left alone and then whisked out of the country by family friends.

  But with Michelle Montgomery, in the end, he had trusted her. And that trust had been amply rewarded.

  So maybe my instincts aren’t all bad. But one out of four isn’t going to cut it while working for Campbell.

  He turned to the window and lay there, staring at the rising sun of a new day.

  CHAPTER

  84

  IT WAS THREE WEEKS LATER, at precisely 6:20 in the morning.

  Devine, his arm in a sling, stepped onto the train. He was leaving the area the next day. But he wanted to take one more trip on the 6:20. He wasn’t sure why, but then again, maybe he was.

  The train started to fill, station after station, with the young gladiators in their suits and skirts, their laptops and clouds fired up and gestating future wealth for those with already too much of it. Later, the train climbed the little knoll, slowed, and then stopped, like a thirsty animal does at creekside for a drink.

  The Cowl palace was for sale. There was no Michelle Montgomery in her Morse code bikini. No swaggering billionaire in his natural habitat of unparalleled luxuriousness. Devine looked around the train car and saw all gazes stuck to computer screens.

  He took out his laptop and looked over the email he had crafted along with a large attachment. It documented everything he had found out about Cowl and Comely. He hit the Send key, and off it flew to one Elaine Nestor, the tarred-and-feathered journalist.

  Go and win a Pulitzer, Elaine. And screw the powers that be and the dark money they suck on.

  Devine found himself staring out the window and conjuring up images that bordered partly on nostalgia and partly on necessity. His need to feel something. To regret things. To sense guilt and loss and other things he couldn’t readily identify right now. Figuring out the inexplicable was never easy.

  Sara Ewes and Jenn Stamos dead. Jill Tapshaw, too. Three remarkable women who could have done a lot of good in the world, given the chance.

  But Tapshaw hadn’t given the other two the opportunity. In her brilliant, twisted mind they needed to be punished and removed from the living.

  And Will Valentine, his beer-guzzling friend with more optimism than any person Devine had ever met, and who loved his adopted country more than some native-born citizens, was also dead.

  But Michelle Montgomery was still alive, though denied a place at whatever table Devine would be heading to, alone.

  But I have her phone number. And a letter from her in which she says she’ll always love me. Right now that is enough.

  The train started up again with a jolt.

  He turned away from the glass and stared straight ahead.

  The only direction he could now see himself heading.

  What lay there for him could be bullets or bombs once more. Or the more subtle entanglements that happened all over the world outside combat zones.

  He didn’t know which was more dangerous, or whether it would end up being a tie.

  He only hoped that he was up to the task.

  Ranger tabbed and Ranger scrolled. And a seasoned financial analyst to boot.

  Devine would probably need all of it and a little bit more to survive. Along with luck.

  A good soldier never discounted the intervention of well-timed luck.

  Redemption, a second shot, a new lease on life.

  Maybe this was all of those things.

  You’ll never know until you try, soldier.

  He sat back, closed his eyes, and let the 6:20 train take him somewhere, one more time.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Michelle, thanks for the early read and great comments on this one.

  To Michael Pietsch, Ben Sevier, Elizabeth Kulhanek, Jonathan Valuckas, Matthew Ballast, Beth de Guzman, Anthony Goff, Rena Kornbluh, Karen Kosztolnyik, Brian McLendon, Albert Tang, Andy Dodds, Ivy Cheng, Joseph Benincase, Alexis Gilbert, Andrew Duncan, Morgan Martinez, Bob Castillo, Kristen Lemire, Briana Loewen, Mark Steven Long, Marie Mundaca, Lynn von Hassel, Rachael Kelly, Kirsiah McNamara, Lisa Cahn, John Colucci, Megan Fitzpatrick, Nita Basu, Alison Lazarus, Barry Broadhead, Martha Bucci, Ali Cutrone, Raylan Davis, Tracy Dowd, Melanie Freedman, Elizabeth Blue Guess, Linda Jamison, John Leary, John Lefler, Rachel Hairston, Tishana Knight, Jennifer Kosek, Suzanne Marx, Derek Meehan, Christopher Murphy, Donna Nopper, Rob Philpott, Barbara Slavin, Karen Torres, Rich Tullis, Mary Urban, Tracy Williams, Julie Hernandez, Laura Shepherd, Maritza Lumpris, Jeff Shay, Carla Stockalper, Ky’ron Fitzgerald, and everyone at Grand Central Publishing. As my readers can see from the long list of folks, it does take an army!

  To Aaron and Arleen Priest, Lucy Childs, Lisa Erbach Vance, Frances Jalet-Miller, and Kristen Pini, for being such great partners.

  To Mitch Hoffman, for continuing to be an amazing editor and friend.

  To Jeremy Trevathan, Lucy Hale, Trisha Jackson, Stuart Dwyer, Leanne Williams, Alex Saunders, Sara Lloyd, Claire Evans, Eleanor Bailey, Laura Sherlock, Jonathan Atkins, Christine Jones, Andy Joannou, Charlotte Williams, Rebecca Kellaway, Charlotte Cross, Lucy Grainger, Lucy Jones, and Neil Lang at Pan Macmillan, for continuing to amaze me with your creativity and dedication.

  To Praveen Naidoo and the wonderful team at Pan Macmillan in Australia. Praveen, great to finally see you, albeit in a Zoom.

  To Blake Smith and Thomas Dearden, for able assistance on the technology material.

  To Caspian Dennis and Sandy Violette, for being far more than agents: for being dear friends.

  To the charity auction winner, Paul Ekman (James V. Brown Library), thanks for supporting such a great institution. I hope you enjoyed your namesake in the story.

  To Chuck Betack, for all matters military. Thanks for making me look good.

  To Tom DePont, for making me look smart in financial matters, and providing me inspiration for monetary skullduggery!

  And to Kristen White and Michelle Butler, who keep everything rolling along!

  BY DAVID BALDACCI

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