Chapter Twenty-Three

 

DAVIS

 

I don't know how long I'm supposed to wait, but it already feels like it's been too long. He should have gotten back by now, or if he wasn't going to, he should have given some kind of signal.

Then again, we both knew that the job involved some risks. Not, I think to myself, that he had much choice in whether or not to take them. It doesn't matter now, though. Nobody has any choice in the matter.

I take a deep breath. Nothing I can do but wait. If things go well, then we're in the game. If they don't go well—

I don't think I'd rather think about that. I can still feel a little buzz of arousal at the thought of what happened earlier that night.

The warehouse was a setup. It was a strange setup, in my opinion, but a setup nonetheless. If it was a setup, why waste your men, knowing they're going to die?

That part makes no sense to me, but then again I suppose it's not as if I'm a gangster. Maybe they needed people there to play it to the hilt.

The problem being, even from what I was able to tell, the plan had never been to hit them so soon. It was barely six hours between when they'd changed the plan and when they'd hit the place. Barely six hours to warn them, and barely six hours to get the plan in motion.

The car bomb by itself takes a while to set up, especially so that nobody will notice. With the rush they were in, there was always good odds that nobody would even check for something like that.

But why leave it up to chance? It seems like a big risk for surprisingly little reward. Too much of the plan was left up to chance, no matter how the setup was supposed to work.

Say they took their own truck, and loaded it that way. What would have happened then?

Suppose that they'd found the bomb. What would have happened then? The whole plan relies on nobody checking anything, and sure—it had worked out. This time.

Something about it was nagging at me, and it had been all night. Now, as the sun sits high in the sky, I have nothing but time to think about it, and it isn't making any more sense than it was before.

Unless they knew the details of the plan, there was no way to be sure. There simply was no way that they could have found anything.

I know I didn't report the job in. I couldn't have. I only had twenty minutes to myself the whole time, and if I did, there's no way that Donaldsen would have given me the go-ahead on pulling a job like that.

He'd have given me an unfathomable amount of grief about it, and then told me to just pick Ryan up and come back.

Of course, that wouldn't have killed his gang. It never does. But that's exactly the sort of thinking that they have on Capital Hill—you can't win the war, so you might as well not try.

I suck in a breath. I don't think that way, that's for fucking sure. If I can take one off the street, I will. But if I can cut the head off the whole snake, it doesn't matter that another one will just take its place eventually.

That's time where, even if it's only for an instant, a girl won't have to cope with her mother's dope habits. That's not nothing. It's not a win, not completely, but it's a damn sight better than just getting rid of one low-level guy.

I can't believe that Ryan did it himself. Not with the way that he reacted. Though, I've seen people's own problems come back to bite them in the ass before, and they always take it damn hard. So maybe I shouldn't take him off the list.

Another instant, and I take him off the list again. No, he couldn't have. Wouldn't have. He's clever enough, sure. But I don't believe he'd sacrifice a man just to play off a charade for me.

Which leaves three others. Hawkins, the brother, and the guy who got burned up.

If he knew about the job being a setup, he wouldn't have gone into that truck. I've been on the inside of setups before. Maybe you don't know everything, but you know something's fishy.

And the first thing you learn, nobody even needs to tell you: don't go first. Not ever.

It doesn't take long to wipe Logan off the list, either. He's Beauchamp's brother, and he's got about as much pull with the gang as anyone. Maybe as much as Ryan. Maybe more, even. I can't say for sure, but I know that he's well-respected. I was able to see it in an instant.

Hawkins, on the other hand—

He'd have gotten the call before long. There's no way that he wouldn't have reported it in. He has to. Every job that he does gets called in. Danny takes the call, and that gets passed along. Double quick, no doubt, because Donaldsen is breathing down his neck.

My face starts to twist up in annoyance and frustration. There's a leak somewhere. Command is a big totem pole, and things get shouted up and down it. Not much in the Bureau is a secret, not when orders are getting passed around.

So I have to figure, anyone who wanted to know about the job knew that Hawkins was going on that job. They wouldn't necessarily know that I was going, especially since I kept quiet about it.

No doubt there wasn't any reason to communicate to Hawkins. He looked as surprised to see me as anyone. Unlike me, he didn't have the benefit of being there for the change-of-plans meeting.

I suck in a breath of air. If there's a leak, it could be anyone. But someone must be in contact with the Crazy Horses. Someone inside A.T.F., someone who apparently decided that the money was just too good to pass up.

It's not hard to understand the reasoning. I wouldn't go for the money. Not in a hundred million years. But not everyone who gets into the business we're in, does it because they're true believers.

You run into a lot of big damn heroes, as well. People who want recognition. They want to get famous, to get ahead. Money doesn't just grease palms in the Capital building, it works the same way in the Bureau.

I can't get around one thing, though. I personally vetted every one of the people under me. There's always a chance that someone's dirty. Always, especially when there's boys working undercover.

But you always know. I had feelings. Plenty of times, I thought that I knew a guy was dirty. I get rid of them. It's not as hard as it might seem, especially when you're dealing with stone-cold killers day in and day out.

I always knew, every time. Every time someone was dirty, it didn't take more than a long, hard look at them to know that they were playing both sides of the field.

I imagine every face in my unit. All fifteen of them.

Not a one of them stands out to me. They're clean. Each and every one of them. And that's what bothers me the most.

I can't think of a single person who might have done it, not in my unit. Which means that there's someone who's much smarter than I'm giving them credit for, out there fucking with my operation.

Someone who is looking from the inside, out, and nobody knows that they're a snake in the grass.

Someone who's got me totally outsmarted.