When he’d seen the kid arrive at his back door—his back door, he didn’t even walk up the front steps like a normal human—Gerry was tempted to shoot him. It had been years since he’d killed anyone, but he intended to do it in the next twelve hours regardless, and the sight of Dax seemed to portend trouble. Gerry didn’t want to kill him on his own property and in a quiet neighborhood with an unsilenced weapon unless it was necessary, though.
Then he saw the phone, and killing Dax Blackwell became less of a concern. The phone was the whole point, and somehow the kid already had it.
Standing in his kitchen, Gerry was no longer thinking about the arrangements he’d made in Old Orchard or the suppressed handgun that was under his driver’s seat, the one that already had a bullet chambered for Dax. The phone had all his attention.
It was the right phone—no signal, a clone, and with a lock screen featuring a picture of the girl. Everything about this was good news except for the last.
“How do you unlock it?” Gerry said.
“Either with facial recognition or a code name.” Dax leaned laconically against the counter. “But does it matter?”
“Of course it matters!”
“Why?”
Gerry lifted his head and stared at the kid. He was standing there in the shadows, slouching and wearing his hoodie and the dumb friggin’ baseball cap, same as always.
“If you can’t open it, then it’s not worth a shit.”
“Were you hired to open it?” Dax said. “Or just provide it to your client? My understanding was that he wouldn’t even want you to wonder too much about it.”
Gerry’s angry rebuttal died on his lips. It was a fair point. He could do more harm than good if he even told the German about the lock screen. Let the German deal with it.
“I do think it could change your price point, perhaps,” the kid said.
“Change my price point.”
“Sure. The girl is alive. If your client wants us to bring that phone to her, I can do it. We can unlock it, which I’d assume is your client’s desire. But that’s above and beyond the initial job, isn’t it? Value added should not be free.” He shrugged. “At least, not in my opinion. But it’s your show.”
Damn right it was Gerry’s show. However, the kid was spot-on. The German was inevitably going to want to get the phone to the girl if this was indeed a biometric lock, and Gerry wasn’t doing that shit for free. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to do it at all, though. This job had been sliding sideways from the beginning.
“Maybe he wants this thing to disappear, period,” Gerry said, turning the phone over on the counter. It was a perfect replica of an iPhone. “That’s all he wanted for Oltamu.”
“He wanted Oltamu dead. The phone, he wanted in his possession. If he’d planned on having it destroyed, he could have asked you to do it. But he didn’t.”
Gerry had made it his business not to ask questions that he didn’t need the answers to, but the German had wanted the phone, and Gerry was curious just what was on this thing that made it so valuable. Already, the German had been willing to go to two million for the job. Gerry hadn’t even had to push to get that much. How much could he get for an unlocked version?
“Call him and ask,” Dax said, as if Gerry had voiced the question aloud.
Gerry looked from the phone to the gun and then up at the kid. He couldn’t see his eyes because of the shadow from the black baseball cap, but his posture was the same as it always was, the slouch of a bored delinquent. In this way, he was different from both his uncle, who had a military bearing, and his father, who was always in a state of physical calm but had presence, a means of commanding attention and respect without any alpha-male posturing. The kid would need to grow into that or learn the hard way that he came across as more sullen than sinister. Hard men would look him over and feel like they could test him. The more that happened, the more likely it was that one of them would succeed, and Dax Blackwell would be in a coffin before he was twenty.
His mind and his hands worked fast, though. He’d killed Carlos and walked away clean; he’d eliminated a pair of difficulties in Maine; he’d called Kaplan’s bluff and found the phone. While Gerry had been scrambling to deal with Kaplan, Dax had been solving problems. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was worth making a call.
“We’d have to be sure we can get to her,” Gerry said.
“I can.”
“Yeah? How? She’s in intensive care, she’s got doctors and nurses and family all over her, and there are cameras everywhere in a hospital.”
“I’ll get to her,” Dax said, unfazed. “I look the part. A visiting friend from good old Hammel College. I don’t need to stay long—I can just pass through, say a prayer, take a picture.”
Gerry grinned. The kid could probably play that role just fine. He was young enough to get away with it. “Okay,” Gerry said, straightening. “I’ll make the call. But keep your mouth shut. He’s going to need to think I’m alone.”
“Sure.”
It was two in the morning in Germany, but Gerry figured he’d get an answer. He wasn’t even sure if his man was still in Germany. He was supposed to be in the States by tomorrow, so maybe he was on a plane or already on the ground.
Wherever he was, he answered the phone. They used an end-to-end encryption app that allowed for texting, voice, and video calls. Virtually untraceable, and the messages vanished. The German also used a voice-distortion device, though Gerry had never wasted time on that.
“Do not tell me there is trouble,” the German said. Through the distortion, he sounded cartoonish, a Bond villain.
“None on my end,” Gerry said. “Maybe some on yours.”
“Explain.”
Gerry did. Told him that Oltamu had put a facial-recognition lock on the phone before he died, and the face wasn’t his but the girl’s. He could get to the girl, he said, or he could hand the device off and let other people deal with it. He didn’t care; his work was done.
There was some swearing, and then some silence. Gerry was beginning to think he’d made a mistake by allowing the kid to goad him into this when the German said, “Do you know it will work? She is in a coma. Will it work with someone who is in a coma?”
Gerry looked at Dax, who nodded, pointed at his eyes with two fingers, then moved his fingers up and down.
“It should,” Gerry said. “She’s got eye movement.”
Dax gave him a thumbs-up. The kid was so damned cocky. He was also awfully good. In fact, after Dax’s work on this job, Gerry’s faith in him was renewed. The kid was more than a beta-Blackwell; he was the real deal.
And to think, Gerry had planned to kill him. What a waste that would have been.
“If it can be done safely,” the German said, “then do it. Otherwise, back off.”
“Fine,” Gerry said. “And how much is that worth to you?”
Another pause. Then: “Half.”
Half was a million. If Dax Blackwell could walk into that hospital, hold the phone up to Tara Beckley’s face, and unlock it, Gerry was three million dollars richer.
“Fine,” he said again, but he saw Dax shake his head and gesture upward with his thumb. He wanted Gerry to go higher. The balls on this kid. Gerry didn’t respond, just glared at him, and Dax shrugged and jammed his hands back into the pockets of his hoodie.
“Has to happen fast,” the German said.
“It will. Or if it isn’t doable, I’ll back off.”
“We meet at the same place and same time, no matter what. Don’t risk anything that compromises that. I won’t wait.”
“You won’t have to.”
They disconnected. Gerry put his phone in his pocket, looked at Dax Blackwell, and smiled. He was feeling warm toward the kid, and why not? He’d just made Gerry an extra million bucks. “It’s on,” he said. “Think you can get to Tara Beckley without trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Of course not. What about Kaplan? She’s still out there. She doesn’t have the phone, but she’s still a threat. Somebody ought to meet her in Old Orchard, right?”
“Ought to be you. You’re the one she’s seen, the one she wants.”
“It’s personal to her, huh?”
Gerry was still riding the buzz of an extra million, and problems seemed to be solving themselves, so he nodded. “Yeah, her bullshit was that she’d trade the phone for you.”
Dax said, “I don’t recall you mentioning that.”
Gerry hesitated, realizing that he hadn’t brought that up before, then shrugged. “Wouldn’t have mattered much. We’d have taken her tomorrow and gotten the phone. Now it’s even easier. Cleaner.”
“Because we have the phone.” Dax was watching him intently.
“Right,” Gerry said. “So tomorrow, it can be quick. No need to waste time. Just clip her and move on.”
“Where will you be?”
Gerry frowned. “Taking the phone in.”
“Where?”
“The hell business is that of yours?”
“Abby Kaplan wants to see you. Maybe we should both be there.”
No, Abby Kaplan wanted to see the kid. The kid would go there and kill her. Or possibly he’d go there and fail, but Gerry had trouble believing that. If the bitch actually appeared, the kid would handle her. And if Abby Kaplan was somehow leagues better than anticipated and had arranged for cops all over the pier, well, Gerry still wasn’t overly concerned about that. Dax didn’t seem like the talking-to-cops type, and if it turned out he was, Gerry had silenced people in prisons before.
“Let me handle my shit,” Gerry said, “and you handle yours.”
He didn’t like the way the kid was looking at him. It was that clinical, under-the-microscope stare, penetrating and yet distant, the look that his father and uncle wore so naturally. The look they’d given those hard boys in Belfast all those years ago.
As if reading his thoughts, Dax said, “I’ve cleaned it all up pretty well so far. Things had the potential to get out of hand, and now they’re back in my control. Do you still think my father and uncle would have done it better?”
“They couldn’t have done it any better than this,” Gerry said, “and there were two of them.”
Dax’s face split into a wide smile beneath the shadow cast by his baseball cap.
“You’re right,” he said. “Since there’s just me, I’ve got to be twice as good, don’t I? Nobody in my corner. They were good, but there were two of them. I’m solo. I have to reach their level and then push beyond it.”
“You’re on your way,” Gerry told him, unsettled by the conversation, by the way the kid happily measured himself against dead men. He nodded at Oltamu’s cloned phone, which was still sitting on the counter. “But you got some work left to do. Let’s not waste time.”
“They liked you,” Dax said, as if he hadn’t heard the instruction. “They didn’t like many people either. But my father once told me that there were only two things I could trust. One of them was Gerry Connors.”
This was oddly flattering. Gerry had looked out for the kid. Giving him chances, bringing him along in the business. And now, he’d decided to let him live. He’d extend their relationship; grow it, even. It wasn’t too late for that.
“Glad to hear I earned their trust,” Gerry said. “Who was the second man?”
“What?”
“You said he told you to put your trust in two things.”
“Oh.” Dax laughed. “I confused you, sorry. The second one wasn’t a person.”
Gerry cocked his head and frowned. A question was rising to his lips when Dax Blackwell said, “It was this,” and then there was a clap and a spark of light that seemed to come from within the kid’s black hoodie, and suddenly Gerry was down on the floor, hot blood pumping out of his stomach. He put a hand to the wound and let out a high moan that brought the taste of blood into his throat and mouth. He looked at the counter and saw his gun sitting there, out of reach.
Dax took a black revolver with gleaming chrome cylinders out of his hoodie pocket and waved it in the air like a taunt. Or a reminder.
It was this. Gerry saw that gun and remembered where he’d seen it before: Jack Blackwell’s hand.
Of course, he thought, the pain not yet rising, the panic not rising, nothing rising but the taste of blood and the sense of inevitability. Of course Jack would have told the boy to trust the gun above all else.
Dax knelt beside him and brought his face down low. This close, Gerry could finally see his eyes beneath the shadows of the baseball cap. They were a light blue, and the expression in them could almost pass for compassionate. Gerry needed some compassion now. Just a trace of it. He needed the kid to understand that they could make this right. They could get Gerry patched up, could save his life, and if that happened, he would never turn the kid in, would never try to get revenge for this. He’d never even speak of it. If the kid just gave him life, there would be no end to Gerry’s kindness.
He opened his mouth to speak, to convey his promise, but all that left his lips was a warm stream of blood.
Dax Blackwell looked down at him sadly, and then he leaned even closer, his eyes still on Gerry’s, his gaze unblinking.
“I want you to know,” he said, “how much I’ve appreciated the opportunities.”
When Gerry opened his mouth to beg for his life, Dax shoved the gun between his lips and pulled the trigger once more.
Gerry Connors died on his kitchen floor, three thousand miles and thirty years from the place where he’d first met the Blackwell family.