The Detachment

Larison.
    “No,” I said. “I want Horton to feel that special tingling sensation you can only fully appreciate when you wonder whether a former Marine sniper is watching you through a scope right that very second.”
    “I can’t,” Larison said. “Much as I’d like to. Of the four of us, the one Hort fears most is me. Because he knows, with me, it’s personal. If you want to ensure compliance, you want him to picture his daughter, alone and helpless with me.”
    I didn’t particularly care for the thought of Larison alone with Kei, but I couldn’t disagree with his assessment.
    Treven said, “I’ll go.”
    The truth was, I would have preferred to handle it myself. I didn’t trust Treven. He’d been exceptionally quiet on the subway in L.A. when we’d first discussed going after Horton, and he’d been right at the Capital Hilton, when he’d accused me of suspecting he had a hand in our being set up about the cyanide. But I had no way of knowing, and besides, I didn’t want another confrontation. Whatever the relationship between the four of us, it plainly hadn’t yet evolved to the point where disagreements could be settled without the possibility of a firefight.
    Strangely enough, I wasn’t unduly concerned that Treven might abscond with the diamonds. A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, true. But you wouldn’t live long to spend it if Larison, Dox, and I were after you. Better to settle for an already galactic twenty-five million and live to enjoy it, too. I imagined Larison had performed the same calculus and had arrived at the same conclusion.
    “You’ll have to do a hell of an SDR,” I said. “We don’t know—”
    He held up a hand. “How he tracked us in Washington. I know. Satellites, drones, surveillance cameras, etc. I’ll be careful.”
    I nodded again, recognizing I was micromanaging, unable, it seemed, not to.
    “He’ll want to know when his daughter will be released,” Larison said. “Tell him only after we’ve had the diamonds certified by an expert. If he thinks he’s going to hand off another bag full of plastic, I’m going to make him pay.”
    “The diamonds are only half of it,” Dox said. “How’s he going to call off the heat now that he’s just a civilian? And how would we even know, one way or the other?”
    I realized Larison didn’t care about heat. He only wanted the diamonds. That wasn’t an entirely new development, but still, it made me uneasy. I sensed I was going to have to do something about him, something extreme. But I didn’t know what. Or maybe I just didn’t want to face it.
    I looked at Treven. “Horton’s going to give you assurances regarding the heat. We just don’t know what form those assurances will take. Let’s assume for the moment they’ll be worth something, because if they weren’t, he’d be putting his daughter at greater risk. So whatever he says, you just tell him you’ll pass the information along to the rest of us, and we’ll get back to him.”
    “He’s not going to like that,” Treven said.
    Larison smiled. “He’s going to hate it. But he’ll have no choice. He’s not going to risk sending you back to us empty-handed.”
    Then he looked at Dox and said, “Not as long as I’m here, anyway.”

T reven sat in a corner of the vast, ornate waiting room of Los Angeles’ Union Station, waiting for Hort. The Glock was concealed in an unzipped black hip pouch on the large, mahogany-and-leather chair next to him, but he wasn’t expecting any immediate trouble. Even if Hort hadn’t just left the government and resigned his commission, his options were fairly limited. Bring in a team for a snatch? They’d have to drag Treven out through the station, assuming they survived the preceding firefight. A straight-up hit? That would get Hort nothing, except maybe a dead daughter. No, the most likely scenario—next to Hort trying nothing at all, given the way they had him by the balls—was that Hort would have forces hanging back and hoping to follow Treven to wherever Kei was being held. Which is why they’d told Hort via the secure site the meeting would be at Union Station. With its multiple levels and points of ingress and egress; its numerous train, subway, and bus lines; and its proximity to three highways and countless surface roads, it would take an army to properly cover the place.
    He’d been a little surprised when Rain had agreed to let him be the one to meet Hort. The man had good