Inside Outt

rest—the million a year, the protection, the power to set some wrong things right—we need to talk more.”
    Idiot. Fucking idiot. You could have killed him. You could have—
    “Think it over. Take your time.”
    —killed him, you—
    His stomach clenched. He clicked off the phone, leaned over, and convulsively threw up onto the curb. He gasped, his back heaving, then gagged and threw up again.
    You could have killed him.
    He stood there for a moment sucking wind, his hands on his knees, his eyes and nose streaming.
    And not just Hort. He could have killed Marcy, too. Why hadn’t he? What stupid, pathetic sentiment had permitted him to be so fatally, disgustingly stupid? He told himself he would never make a mistake like that again, and even as he thought it he knew how meaningless the vow was now, how hollow.
    When he felt a little steadier, he looked around. There was a gas station across the street. He walked over and found a guy in blue coveralls in the garage.
    “I need to borrow a hammer,” Larison said, his voice ragged.
    He could tell the guy wanted to refuse, and was almost glad for it. He looked at the guy, struggling to control his rage, wanting someone to vent it on. The guy figured out refusing would be a bad idea. He leaned over and pulled a large orange dead blow hammer off the floor. He handed it to Larison. “This is all I’ve got,” he said.
    Larison hefted it. It weighed about four pounds. He imagined the damage it would do to a man’s skull. He said, “I’ll be right back.”
    He walked around to the side of the building, took a diamond out of the bag, and set it on the concrete sidewalk. He put the bag down, lowered his stance, and gripped the hammer. He looked at the diamond for a moment. It was meaningless, inert.
    He raised the hammer over his head and smashed it down. The diamond—the plastic—exploded beneath it. Shards flew in a thousand different directions.
    He pulled another from the pack and smashed it with the hammer. It exploded exactly like the first. He did it again. And again. He attacked the bag with the hammer, blasting it, savaging it, beating it the way he wanted to beat Hort’s brains.
    He realized he was screaming. He stopped and looked up. The gas station guy was looking at him from around the corner, appalled and afraid and frozen to the spot.
    Grimacing, his breath snorting through his nose, Larison stalked over to him, the hammer dangling from his hand like a war club. The guy’s eyes widened and his face went pale.
    Larison stopped an arm’s length from the guy. He looked at him for a long moment, grinning with hate. He held out the hammer. “Thanks,” he said.
    The guy took it without a word or even a nod. Larison went back to the bus stop. He left the bag where he’d dropped it.
    Another bus pulled up. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. He got on. He didn’t even know where it was going.
    It didn’t matter. What mattered was that even through his rage and his nausea, his horror at how close he’d been and at how badly he’d blown it, he understood what he was going to do.
    Accept Hort’s offer.
    Take the money.
    And when he was ready, when he had regrouped and resettled and refocused, get to Hort. He thought the courier, the blond guy from the unit, might be the right place to start. He was good, Larison could see that much. But he saw something else, too: the guy wasn’t happy. He knew he was being manipulated, and was looking for a way out. Maybe Larison could give him one.
    He smiled grimly. Because when he found Hort, he would do things to him, do everything to him, until he made the sound Larison could never get out of his ears.
    This time, it would be like music.

CHAPTER 37
A Drink
    U lrich’s secure line buzzed. He looked at the phone, wondering if it would be better to just not answer. It was never good news. Never.
    Still.
    “Ulrich.”
    “Clements. Okay to talk?”
    “Why do you always ask me that? Yes, it’s okay. It’s always okay. This is a fucking secure line, do you not know that?”
    There was a pause. “Are you watching CNN?”
    “No.”
    “There was a shooting in Arlington. Two dead.”
    Ulrich clenched his jaw. “Theirs or ours?”
    “Ours.”
    Ulrich didn’t say anything. He felt numb. The numbness wasn’t unpleasant. At the moment, he much preferred it to whatever sensation it must have been blocking.
    “We can still turn this around,” Clements said.
    Ulrich laughed. It started slowly and built to