Inside Outt

tapes. Then he found a bus stop and waited, his head down, his baseball cap pulled low.
    He supposed he should have felt happy, or at least relieved. But he didn’t. He’d always intended to release the tapes after he’d received the diamonds. And now he couldn’t. He’d been exposed, and Nico was at risk. Yes, as long as the tapes were out there, Nico would be safe. And he’d gotten the money. But he’d also been neutralized. There wouldn’t be any justice. And more than anything else, he’d wanted this thing to end with justice.
    He tried to focus on what was in the backpack. At least there was that.
    He took out the letter from Hort and looked at it again. He didn’t need to call. What could Hort tell him, anyway?
    But what the hell, there wasn’t any downside. They couldn’t trace the sat call. And maybe he would learn something useful, not from anything Hort intentionally told him, of course, but by reading between the lines.
    He keyed in the number. Hort picked up immediately. “Horton.”
    Larison waited a moment. It was strange to be talking to him again, just the two of them, the way it had been so many times in the past. It felt like an impossibly long time ago.
    “Why’d you want me to call you?”
    There was a pause. Hort said, “I was expecting to hear from the courier first.”
    “The courier is fine. He’s good. I hope you’ll treat him better than you treated me.”
    There was another pause. Hort said, “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you. But bear with me. It gets better as it goes along.”
    Larison felt his scalp prickle. He said nothing.
    “I figured your next stop would be a jewelry store somewhere. I wanted to let you know before you got there that the ‘diamonds’ you’re carrying are fake. They’re plastic. Hold a hot flame, like a butane torch, to any of them. Or hit one hard with a hammer. You’ll see.”
    Larison felt an icy rage begin to spread out from his chest. It crept down his stomach and up his neck. A red haze misted his vision.
    “You just made the biggest fucking mistake of your life,” he said, his voice near a whisper.
    “Hear me out now. There’s good news, too.”
    “Yeah, the good news is, I’m going to listen to you scream before I let you die.”
    But he hadn’t hung up, and he knew how Hort would read that. Well, let him. It wouldn’t change the way this thing was going to end.
    “Instead of the diamonds, I’m offering you a million dollars—diamonds, currency, gold, whatever you want.”
    “Forget it.”
    “On top of which, my protection and another million a year if you come back to work with me.”
    A bus pulled up. Two people got off. The doors closed and it pulled away.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Think about it. You could never have spent that money anyway. Most of what you were going to spend would have been for security. If you’re working with me, you won’t need that, you’ll already have it.”
    “In exchange for what, exactly?”
    “Peace of mind, ultimately.”
    Larison laughed harshly. “You’re offering me peace of mind. That’s funny.”
    “I know what you planned to do with those tapes after you got the diamonds. Well, you can’t now that Nico’s exposed. But it was the wrong way to go about it anyway.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You want people to pay for what happened to you? We’ll make them pay.”
    “I want you to pay!”
    “I already have, son. I have the same nightmares you do.”
    “You weren’t there. You didn’t do it. You don’t live with that fucking sound in your ears.”
    “I live with all kinds of things. It’s the others that don’t. Well, I want them to pay, too. And there’s something more.”
    “What?”
    “You need to be on the inside, son. You can’t cut loose, not after the things you’ve done. You’ve tried nihilism. And it’s been caustic to your soul, I know.”
    Larison squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like his head was being crushed in a vise. “I can’t. I can’t take this anymore.”
    “We’ll get you help. The best help there is. Between the money and what’s on those tapes, we can change some things that should have been changed a long time ago.”
    Larison opened his eyes and breathed through his mouth. He felt sick. He’d been such an idiot, thinking he could get free. An idiot.
    “The million is yours no matter what. You earned it. You paid for it. Tell me how to get it to you and it’s done. If you want the