Inside Outt

to soften it, she said, “Don’t, then,” and closed the door between them.

CHAPTER 7
The Easy Way
    B en walked down the steps, scanning the street. The information about Costa Rica sounded promising. He would check with Hort on ops in South America, and if they could eliminate business, he would assume Larison had been traveling for personal reasons instead. A lover? The wife certainly seemed to think so.
    And he’d follow up with McGlade, the investigator. Guy had to have been mildly brain damaged to try to tail someone like Larison, but he’d at least had the sense to figure out at some point the job wasn’t worth the per diem.
    Marcy. He had to admit, even beyond operational necessity, he was intrigued. She was a strange combination of savvy and honesty, openness and mystery. He wanted to do right by her, if he could. Not because he was interested in her. Or at least, not only because of that. It was something about the way she’d watched her son. That… sadness he’d seen in her face when the bus had pulled away. Initially it had made him think uncomfortably about Ami, but now it was summoning images of his own childhood, the breakfasts his mother would serve her three kids and her slightly absentminded engineer husband. Happy breakfasts, mostly, even though Ben had little patience for little brother Alex. Or at least they’d been happy until Katie’s accident. Happiness had fled the Treven household after that, with Ben close on its heels.
    Forty yards from his car, he noticed another one parked behind it, a brown Taurus that hadn’t been there before. His heart rate kicked up a notch and his alertness level moved from orange into red. He slowed, watching the car, aware of the weight of the Glock.
    Thirty yards out, the passenger-side door opened. A big white guy with close-cropped hair in a suit a lot like his own started to get out. The driver-side door opened, too, and a black guy emerged, as big as his partner and also in a dark, forgettable suit. Ben slowed more, his readiness now completely at condition red, his heart pounding, his limbs suddenly suffused with adrenaline. They started walking toward him, their hands empty. He sensed, without needing to consciously articulate it, that this wasn’t a hit. If it had been, they wouldn’t have moved on him while he was this far away.
    Ben’s head tracked left to right and he scanned his flanks to confirm the primary threat wasn’t just a setup—a trained response burned by combat into reflex. A petite young black woman with a short Afro, shapely and well-dressed in navy slacks and a matching sleeveless blouse, was walking along the sidewalk toward them. Her vibe was civilian, and he sensed no connection to the two men. He judged her not part of the threat.
    Ten yards. Ben watched their hands and shoulders, not their eyes. If anyone’s arm even twitched, he would have the Glock out and they’d have to skip the pleasantries.
    Five yards. “Excuse me, sir,” the black guy said. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
    Ben checked his flanks again. The black woman was watching them, but with no more than normal curiosity. When she saw Ben looking, she glanced away, just another civilian recognizing possible trouble and not wanting it to recognize her back.
    Three yards. “Who’s ‘we’?” Ben asked.
    “FBI,” the white guy said. “You need to come with us.”
    They stopped, close enough to try to grab him now, if they were that stupid.
    “Nah, I don’t feel like going anywhere right now,” Ben said. “Better just ask me here.”
    “Look,” the black guy said, his hand easing his jacket back, thumb first. “We can do this the easy way—”
    Ben didn’t give him a chance to finish the move, or even the sentence. He shot an open hand jab into the guy’s throat, catching his trachea in the web between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the cartilage shift unnaturally behind the blow. The guy’s teeth slammed shut and his head snapped forward.
    The white guy started to shuffle back to create distance, his hand going for something under his jacket. But he was on the wrong end of the action-reaction equation. Ben caught him by the lapels and smashed his forehead into his face. He felt the guy’s nose break. He took a half step back and shot a knee into the guy’s balls.
    He turned back to the black guy, who was clutching his throat with his left hand and groping under his jacket with his right, his eyes bulging. Ben closed the