Edge

assessing him calmly.
    The way the game was moving was now clear. Loving had guessed that this was a trap and had decided to engage me personally. A rational decision. Which explained why he’d ordered the partner to hold back, near the Dodge, and not approach the warehouse itself, which he would have done if Loving had fallen for the setup.
    He’d known it was a trap but he’d taken the risk. Not to get Ryan Kessler, of course, but to kidnap me. Who, after sufficient coercion, would tell him where exactly the Kesslers were. I had suddenly become a principal.
    Loving’s murky eyes in the fleshy, nondescript face of a businessman approaching middle age tookin the scene quickly and noticed no threat around him, here at a distance from the command post and the warehouse.
    I realized that this was the closest I’d ever gotten to the man who’d tortured and killed my mentor. In Rhode Island, in the botched takedown, I’d never been nearer than a hundred feet or so. Close enough to see him squint slightly as he pulled the trigger—an instant before realizing that he’d walked into a trap and the principal was really an undercover agent, behind an invisible bulletproof shield.
    Neither of us said anything now. His plan was that we would talk, of course, but later and in the back of his vehicle or in another grim abandoned warehouse somewhere far away. He’d be thinking how long I could last before I told him where Ryan Kessler was.
    Because, Henry Loving knew, I would talk. Everybody talks sooner or later.
    With my weapon, the radio and cell phone on the ground and knowing he had limited time, Henry Loving gestured me toward him.
    Walking forward, I lifted my hands to shoulder level to show I was no threat, my gaze riveted to his. I couldn’t look away. This was not because his eyes were intense or focused, though they were, but because they were the last thing that Abe Fallow had seen as he died. I knew this because the bullet had been fired from close range and had struck Abe in his forehead. The men would have been looking at one another. I often wondered, sometimes for hours before I fell asleep, about Abe’s last moments. He’d given up the locations of the five principalshe’d been guarding. But I’d been listening on the still-connected mobile. Between the moment Abe whispered the address of the last witness and the fatal gunshot thirty seconds or so had passed. What had happened during that time? What had their expressions been?
    This was perhaps the reason I was so obsessed with catching Henry Loving: not only because he’d killed Abe Fallow, but because he’d forced the man to spend his last few moments in agony and despair.
    Hands submissively out to the sides, I began to wonder what shepherds always wonder under such circumstances: How long can I hold out under torture?
    Loving’s low-tech. Usually he uses sandpaper and alcohol on sensitive parts of the body. Doesn’t sound too bad but it works real well.
    This question, though, was merely theoretical, something that popped into my mind as I stepped forward.
    Because, despite appearances, I wasn’t the losing player at the moment.
    Henry Loving was.
    The real bait here wasn’t the warehouse and the suggestion that Ryan Kessler was inside.
    The real bait was me.
    The trap was something altogether different from what it appeared to be.
    And the moment had come to spring it.
    Squinting, I lifted my hands over my shoulders. This was the signal to the two FBI teams hiding nearby, my backup.
    And, as I dropped to the ground, I caught a glimpse of the shock in Loving’s face as the explosionsbegan. They were stunning. I felt the blast wave and heat slam into my face as I rolled on the dirt to retrieve my weapon, radio and phone. The powerful remote-controlled flash-bang grenades continued to detonate along the line I’d ordered them set up fifteen minutes before by the agents covering me, Teams Three and Four. They’d been told to set them off when I raised my hands above the level of my shoulders.
    Or if Loving shot me.
    “Move in, move in!” I shouted from the ground, plugging the earbuds in and grabbing my weapon. “He’s headed for the canal.”
    I heard Freddy’s voice, “Team Two, take down the partner!”
    The agents on Teams Three and Four—the ones who’d been with me the whole time, hidden only thirty or so feet away—were on the move now, heading after Loving. I joined them, sprinting. We ran in pursuit, through the brush and