Chapter 39

“You’re not gonna believe what I found out,” Patrick said. “That was it. My message. Total clickbait, right? You’re not gonna believe what I found out.”

You’d think that waiting for the low rumbles and metallic shrieks to give me a space to talk would buy me some time, but no. I supposed it didn’t really matter. There was no chance of me playing dumb, not facing down a loaded gun.

Uselessly, I realized that back at Con’s old office, Triple-Shot was likely to have been taken down by law enforcement. Multiple shots to the body mass. Bang-bang-bang. Andy Parsons, on the other hand, had been killed by a single bullet, aimed with stunning accuracy, right through the heart. The type of thing fired by a sniper. Or an assassin.

Outside in the rail yard, something large and heavy ground to a stop, leaving an expectant gap of silence. Stiltedly, I said, “So, what did you find?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Then I can totally deal with not knowing.”

“Kidding, I’m kidding! You should see the look on your face. It’s priceless.” Patrick motioned with the gun, and herded me deeper into the boxcar. It smelled of old piss and older metal, and the flaking walls were layered with a decade of graffiti.

“Y’know,” he said, “I didn’t think I’d warm up to you. Back at Mid North Medical, you treated me like I was invisible. That’s a good thing while you’re trying to lie low, but still, not exactly endearing. Here, though? I’m really good at reading people, and even though no one was actually rolling their eyes or complaining, I could tell I wasn’t exactly popular. All the established agents treated me like an unwelcome lackey. They didn’t want Laura manning the helm and me as their go-to guy—they liked it better when she was The Fixer, catering to all their petty demands. You, though? You were actually pretty decent to me. Sure, you were basically using me to crack into the system without getting caught. But hey, at least you had the decency to take me out to dinner before you screwed me.”

“You’re grossly underestimating my lack of computer skills. I wasn’t setting you up to take a fall—I really did have zero chance of finding that stuff myself.”

“Maybe so. Honestly, there was such a wealth of information waiting to be uncovered, I can hardly blame you for getting greedy. And I’ve got to commend you for not spreading yourself too thin by trying to play the hacker. Sure, you could take a few tech classes, get up to speed…but my philosophy is that we should stick to what we’re good at and outsource the rest. And according to everything I’ve read, you, Agent Bayne, are one hell of a homicide investigator. It was only a matter of time before you tied Andy Parsons to me. So, tell me, did you ever definitively link anyone to that messy editorial?”

“The…what?”

“Those wild allegations that almost made it to the press. Genetic manipulation. Human experimentation.”

“Allegations—you’re saying it didn’t happen?”

“How uncharacteristically optimistic of you to think so. No, I’m pretty sure it did. But the FPMP wasn’t at the heart of it. The creative eugenics was old news, way before our time, back when this agency didn’t even exist. But the folks behind it all—the ones who sign my paycheck? They had to make this go away before Director Kim was forced to address the charges in a public forum. Because once it came out that the FPMP had nothing to do with it, people would want to know who did.”

Why was I not surprised that I bit into an apple expecting to find a rotten core, and discovered not only a big fat worm, but a razor blade too?

“I can take orders as well as the next guy,” Patrick said, “but when you set me to researching and I saw your old tutor was tangled up in this mess forty years ago, I couldn’t help but do a little digging to satisfy my own curiosity. It was vague. Back in those days, the Catholic Church was a power to be reckoned with.”

“So the Church is behind all this?”

“Oh no, they were too busy trying to salvage the downward spiral of their waning relevancy and shrinking population, but they made convenient pawns. My employer has no particular religious affiliation. Just the desire to make sure the best and brightest psychics don’t start plying their talents for North Korea or the Kremlin.”

I wasn’t exactly surprised that at the heart of it, everything came down to politics. “Look, Patrick, I don’t give a rat’s ass about exposing anybody—I frankly can’t see what good it would do at this point, and the court of public opinion is so willfully ignorant, it wouldn’t matter. So I’ll bet the two of us can figure out some kind of win-win.” I cut my eyes to the paperwork in his non-gun hand. “’Cos any information relating to my past is worth a hell of a lot more to me than trying to make the world right. Justice? I learned a long time ago…ain’t gonna happen.”

“Well, I suppose it would be a real shame to take out my lunch buddy. So how about this? I give you what I’ve got and let you walk out of here, and you tell me where Agent Marks has Lipton and Garcia stashed.”

“Andy’s coworkers? They didn’t have anything to do with it. Andy was the one who pieced together the redacted files. Not them.”

“Really? There was no mention of that in Jacob’s latest reports to Director Kim.”

How naive to think I was jaded enough to cut a deal with a freaking assassin. Even if I did make it out of that freight car alive, no doubt a bullet with Jacob’s name on it would be lurking somewhere in our future.

 Before I talked myself out of what had to be done, I shifted into survival mode. It wasn’t often I needed to go there, not these days, when a flash of my badge was enough to buy me a way out of pretty much any situation. But I stepped into the well-worn role just as easily as I’d shove my feet into my rattiest pair of Chucks. The lies flowed effortlessly, threaded through with just enough truth to make them believable, and shrouded with the perfect amount nonchalance to convey I didn’t care whether he bought the bullshit or not. “There hasn’t been time to report back to Laura. We only just figured out what was what when I talked to Andy’s ghost at the scene. Here, I’ll play you the recording.”

Maybe my shoulder holster was outdated, but one advantage it had over a regular belt holster—it allowed me to make like I was reaching for the phone in my breast pocket. I angled toward the shadow and drew in one easy sweep. Three shots to the body mass.

The sound was covered by the squeal of rails and the mechanical pounding of the switchers, so it took me an extra moment to register that my bang-bang-bang was more like bang-click-click, and I hadn’t been pelted by a single flying casing.

When the train noise ebbed, Patrick said, “And here I thought I was being overly cautious back at the range when I handed you a magazine full of blanks. Out here in the field, your form’s pretty good and I can’t find fault with your aim.” He stepped forward, backlit by the sliver of winter light stabbing through the only exit, and aimed his barrel directly between my eyes. “Was Andy the leak or not?”

“It was him. Definitely. No one else.”

 “Excellent.” Vaguely, I saw him smile. “FYI, your pupils dilate when you lie—but with enough practice, you’d be able to get a handle on all those pesky physical tells, and even pass your annual polygraph with flying colors. Google is your friend. Just don’t do your research on the company phone.” He dropped the papers he was holding, took off his glasses—which served a purpose that had nothing to do with his eyesight—and tucked them into his pocket. Without them, he looked like a different person. “As to your marksmanship performance, my guess is that you need that hit of adrenaline to really focus. Do a few squats before your next assessment, get that heart rate going, and see if it doesn’t help your score.” 

With the gun still pointed at my head, he pulled up the hood on his jacket and cinched the drawstring tight. It hid enough of his face to make an ID unlikely at best. All the while, the gun was pointed at my forehead. And yet, if he was planning on pulling the trigger…. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Hoping things end between us on a less negative note. I’m just doing my job here, and I’m not a violent man.”

I scoffed. Maybe he was onto something when he said I should work on quelling my natural responses.

In the closed-down circle of the hoodie, I saw Patrick smile. “Okay, you got me. It would feel so damn good to pull this trigger, I get chills all down my spine just thinking about it. But I can’t.”

“Why? Who’s pulling the strings?”

“As if I’d tell you something that would lead you right back to my doorstep. I’m guessing you’ll find out soon enough—they’re not keeping you alive just to enjoy your sullen charm.”

“You tell your handlers, if someone wants something from me, get in touch and make an offer. I was a stubborn kid at Camp Hell, but now I get how the world works. Everyone’s got their price. Even me. All I want, for once in my life, is for someone to tell it like it is.”

“Is that so?” he said. Luckily, he wasn’t a telepath, otherwise he’d know I’d just as soon lie down on the railroad tracks as climb into bed with the brains behind Camp Hell. “The truth is out there. Consider this intriguing fact I discovered while I was indulging your personal agenda and rifling through your old schoolmarm’s records. Jane Maxwell was shipped off to that convent when she was just a teenager, and four months later, little Richard Duff is put up for adoption.” He sidled toward the boxcar door, then got in his dramatic parting line. “Coincidence? I think not.”

Whoa. No wonder Miss Maxwell had an endless font of patience for Richie. I blinked at the painfully bright rectangle of daylight where Patrick Barley had slipped away. His exit line might be over the top, but in terms of undercover work, he could give the FPMP field agents a run for their money. I’d never seen anyone hide in plain sight as long, or as believably, as him.

At least, I hoped not.

I was staring numbly in the direction of the mid-afternoon sunset, where the sky was pinking between the silhouettes of the craggy trees interspersed with spindly buildings and a water tower when Jacob finished his loop of the rail yard and caught up with me. He paused beside me and matched his line of sight with mine, decided I wasn’t staring at anything in the physical plane, and then noted I was holding a very manhandled sheaf of papers, and a gun. His hand eased over to his holster. “What’s that?”

I glanced down. “Good question. Most of it’s redacted.”

“Andy Parsons?”

I sighed and tucked my gun away, folded the papers into my pocket and swept my gaze over the cold, ugly, and distractingly loud rail yard. And I realized that whatever I had to say to Jacob, now was the time.

“Patrick killed him. Patrick was the Assassin.”

Jacob almost laughed. But by now he can tell when I’m kidding, and his expression immediately sobered. “Is Laura behind all this?”

I scoffed. “Laura sends people fruit baskets, not bullets. Especially not her own people. And Carl? Just as soon as I can think straight again, I’ll be phenomenally relieved he had nothing to do with any of this.” I headed for the car, where Darla waited. My nose was running and the aftermath of my adrenaline spike made me queasy. Jacob fell into step beside me, a little too close, but I felt reassured by his solid presence.

A freight train rolled in, and the ambient noise drowned out conversation for a few minutes. When it was low enough to talk over, Jacob asked, “Is he going after Lipton and Garcia now?”

“I told him Andy was acting alone. If my word carries any weight, they’re safe.”

“This is like Roger Burke all over again,” he said. “How does Patrick end up as Laura’s second in command if he’s a double agent?”

“By riding the prescription window at The Clinic for half a dozen years, until Andy Parsons stumbled across something he shouldn’t, and needed someone to shut him up. Whoever put Patrick in that job, they’re playing the long game. So you and me, we’ve got to stay vigilant, and we’ve got to be smart.”

“And we’ve got to stick together.”

“That goes without saying.” I bumped him with my shoulder. “Always.”