Edge

in pain and, off balance, sat back.
    Then, grimacing, he blinked and leaned forward once more for my jacket. He fished for and found my full clip. He yanked it out and reloaded.
    His face was only a few feet from mine when Ryan Kessler shot the lifter twice in the chest. Henry Loving blinked and slumped, then fell to his side. And as he died, it was my eyes, not the cop’s, he was staring into.
    Then Ryan Kessler too sat down, studying a bloody tear in his belly. His eyes were dismayed. Though not, it seemed, at this wound—which looked bad to me; it was Loving’s second hit that troubled him most. He gave a disgusted sigh as he pressed his bleeding thigh. “My other leg.” He looked at me. “My good one. Son of a bitch.” Then he passed out.

Chapter 66
    A HALF HOUR later—the old government facility lit up like a carnival and populated with a hundred agents and emergency workers—I was standing near the front of the compound.
    Freddy’s tac people, in respirators and masks, were working their way through the building and over the grounds, clearing the place for the fire crews. They’d found the other three hostiles, all dead, but the flames were still raging where Pogue had made his last stand and they couldn’t get to his body yet. The guard out front was now conscious and in cuffs.
    Nearby, medics were preparing to take Ryan Kessler to Leesburg Hospital for surgery. He’d regained consciousness and didn’t seem as badly injured as I’d thought. “In and out,” he told me, the same phrase Dr. Frank Loving had used to describe the course of my bullet through his cousin’s side.
    I’d called Joanne and told her that her stepdaughter was fine and that her husband had been shot. “He’s stable,” I told her. I gave her the name of a doctor to call. Then I broke the news to her about Pogue. There was a beat of a pause and then she thanked me for letting her know.
    I wondered again about their history.
    I asked, “You let Ryan out, didn’t you?”
    Another pause. “Yes. I kept Lyle distracted.”
    She must have watched one of us punch the code to deactivate the alarm to the door and memorized the number. Or maybe she had some special app in her security-blanket purse that cracked locks.
    I explained to her, “He saved my life.”
    I saw Freddy approach. I told Joanne I’d call her back.
    “Wait, Corte,” she said.
    “Yes?”
    “Hold on.”
    A moment later I heard Maree’s voice. “Corte?”
    “Yes.”
    “You get hurt?”
    “Nothing serious.”
    Silence.
    “I’m glad.” Then, incongruously, she added, “I just wanted to say . . . I got an image of you. When we were by the river? Remember?”
    I digested this for a moment. “Yes.”
    “It’s really good.”
    “An image.”
    She hesitated. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
    “I’m fine, yes. I have to go.”
    “All right. Call me when you can.”
    Now I hesitated. “Sure.” We disconnected. Freddy now joined me.
    I asked, “What’d you find?”
    “This’s a mystery wrapped in whatever else that expression says.”
    I glanced his way impatiently.
    “Okay, here we go. Loving we know. The others?” He swept his hand around the compound.“They were capital C contractors. As in former-Blackwater-type contractors. Not that outfit but you get the meaning.”
    Mercenaries, security forces. I wasn’t surprised, given what I’d seen in the wallet of the guard we’d knocked out. But I was discouraged. Groups like that were expert at leaving no traces back to their primaries. “So we just don’t know,” I offered.
    “That pretty much says it, son.”
    “And him?” I looked toward the revived guard.
    Freddy said, “Wants a lawyer like a baby wants a bottle.”
    “Loving made a call. I’m sure he warned the primary off. You check his phone?”
    “No record of anything. You didn’t expect there would be, did you?”
    “No.”
    “We got Loving,” Freddy pointed out. Probably thinking I’d consider this a major victory.
    I muttered, “But I want the primary.” I found myself gazing at the tarp covering Loving’s body.
    I asked the agent, “You clean out your department?”
    Freddy’s lips tightened. “An assistant in Communications. I checked her phone records. She’d been making calls through a dead letter line in the Caribbean over the past day. Loving got the names of her kids and the school they go to, so she fed him everything he wanted.”
    Edge . . .
    “Her kids are okay?”
    “Yeah.