Inside Outt

now, “find, fix, and finish” had always constituted a half redundant description of what Ben did, with “finish” being the real point. He wanted to ask what Hort had in mind, and why he thought they might be able to end this without ending Larison in the process. But he’d asked the important questions already, and that kind of “why” wasn’t in his job description anyway. His orders were to find and fix Larison, and he would carry them out. Presumably, at that point, he’d get some new orders. In the meantime, someone else would worry about why.

CHAPTER 6
Don’t Want to Wind Up Like Him
    T he next morning, Ben was slowly circling Belthorn Drive in Kissimmee, Florida, a half-hour drive southwest of the airport in Orlando. According to Hort, this was the current residence of Larison’s “widow,” now going by her maiden name, Marcy Wheeler. For the moment, Wheeler was pretty much the only actionable thing they had to go on.
    He drove, his head sweeping back and forth, absorbing information, looking for the detail that didn’t fit: a parked car with a couple of hard-looking men inside, a van with darked-out windows, a man in shades strolling along and somehow not from the neighborhood. Nothing tickled his radar. Belthorn was a sleepy collection of modest ranch houses being inexorably replaced by more imposing McMansions. But for the heat and the occasional palm tree, it could have been a suburban street in just about any lower-middle-class American neighborhood transitioning from older families and long-standing homes to younger, more aggressive colonists, newcomers with more of a need to make a statement and more appetite for the housing debt such statements required.
    Wheeler lived in one of the older, smaller homes, a one-level, yellow rectangle that looked like it contained one or at most two bedrooms and that badly needed a fresh coat of paint. Ben parked at the end of the street, far enough to keep Wheeler from seeing the license plate on his rented car, near enough to watch the house. Hort had told him Wheeler had a son, and it was almost time for school.
    He watched and waited, hoping he was doing the right thing. He knew he couldn’t trust Hort the way he once had, not after what had happened with Alex and Sarah. But at the same time, when the op was blown, Hort had immediately stood down. He could have killed all three of them—should have, in fact, from a strictly operational perspective—but instead, he had let them walk away. Why leave all those loose ends? Ben could only surmise it had been personal, that Hort had almost been looking for a reason not follow his orders. But was that enough reason to trust the man now?
    On the other hand, what were the alternatives? Leave the unit and join a private outfit? He could, he supposed. With the government stretched so thin, men with his credentials were making a mint as contractors. Even elite groups were having to offer retention bonuses, bonuses that more often than not didn’t work.
    Yeah, he should do it. Three years as a contractor in some place like Somalia and he could practically retire.
    Ah, bullshit. The truth was, he liked being in the unit. Partly it was the training. He shot with Delta, jumped with the Smokejumpers, and learned his tradecraft from grizzled CIA survivors of Denied Area operations. He enjoyed the pride, the quiet swagger that came with being ISA. There were maybe three hundred men, not just in America, but in the world, who could legitimately claim to be his peers. That was saying something.
    But it was more than that. He liked being on the inside. He liked knowing the secrets, the way things really worked, the real world beneath the surface everyone else inhabited. Contractors had the salary, and maybe they still had the swagger, but they didn’t have the inside position. And he didn’t want to give that up.
    And why should he? What else did he have? A daughter who thought he was dead, an ex-wife who wished it were so… crap, it hurt, but when he was alone with his thoughts like this, he had to admit his life was a mess. He was glad he and Alex had managed to mend some badly broken fences recently, that was something. But what had it really changed? They weren’t attached by much more than blood before, and it wouldn’t be all that different now.
    And Sarah? Their chemistry was pretty unbelievable, it was true. They couldn’t have been more different, and at first he thought she hated him. Which maybe on