“Don’t.”
He sighed. Deeply, as if the world were crashing down on his shoulders.
Now you know how I feel,
she thought.
“It’s the truth, Allie,” he said. “All of it.”
They walked in silence for the next few minutes, neither one saying anything. She spent the quiet time turning over everything she thought she knew about Gorman and Smith. About Dan, her boss. How had she missed the signs? Were there even signs to
be
missed? The idea of working blind all these months gnawed at the pit of her stomach. More than that, it pissed her off.
Walter, in front of her, sneaked a look back at her, maybe to gauge her reaction. “Allie…”
“The three that were waiting for us at the house,” she said. “Who were they?”
“Mercenaries.”
“Did Gorman and Smith send them? Did they find out what you were doing?”
“No.”
“Who were they, Walter?”
“I hired them.”
“Jesus, Walter…”
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.” His voice had sped up noticeably, as if he was afraid she might not let him finish. “Once Gorman and Smith found out what I had done, they weren’t just going to take my word for it that I was held at gunpoint and forced to move their clients’ money around into places where they can’t access it. So this was the only way.”
“You needed witnesses. Lucy and me.”
“Yes.”
“You needed us to be believable, which we would have been because we didn’t know any better. For all we knew, we would be telling the truth.” She paused, and because she didn’t know what else to say, “Jesus, Walter.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “They weren’t supposed to hurt anyone. They had very strict orders
not
to hurt anyone. If Apollo hadn’t attacked one of them…”
“They didn’t know you hired them.”
He shook his head.
“Because you had an accomplice,” she continued.
He nodded. “Someone else communicated with them throughout the week leading up to the job, then, if necessary, during it. They were supposed to threaten me using you and Lucy, and I would eventually buckle and do what they wanted—move a sizable amount of money out of Gorman and Smith and into dummy shell accounts that only I could access later.”
“Not all of it?”
“No. We needed to leave enough behind for the feds to uncover. That was the other part of the plan. The U.S. government.”
“They know about Gorman and Smith. The
real
Gorman and Smith. That’s why you said the company only has a year at most before it goes under.”
“They’ve suspected for years, but they’ve only started actively investigating recently. This—what happened to us out here—would be the excuse they’d need to get their hands on company records. Once that happened, Gorman and Smith would have other things to worry about than trying to pick apart my story. And before anyone knew what I’d done, we’d be gone. You, me, and Lucy. That was the original plan, anyway.” He sighed. “Things…got complicated.”
No shit, Walter,
she thought, before looking over at Monroe. “What about him?”
Monroe wasn’t moving quite as easily next to them as before. He was clearly struggling with every step, his eyes permanently fixed on the ground. She still had to marvel that he was even moving at all. If he had heard a word of their conversation, he didn’t show it.
“He’s a company-hired gun,” Walter said. “It turns out I wasn’t being nearly as subtle as I thought leading up to tonight. They’d already suspected even before I started moving the money around, and had been tracking me.”
“But you were working with him. Monroe.”
“Not at first, but I convinced him he could make more money by not turning me in.”
“You talked him into double-crossing Gorman and Smith?”
“It wasn’t that hard, Allie. Everyone wants a retirement package. Even hired killers like Monroe.” He paused for a moment; she could feel the sales pitch winding up, and he didn’t disappoint her. “Things didn’t work out like I planned. We won’t be able to talk our way out of this now, but we don’t have to. Forget about returning to the city. We could leave now and never look back. Ditch our old lives and start all over again.”
“Start over where, Walter?”
“Does it matter? It could be anywhere in the world, Allie, and we’d never have to work another day in our lives. You, me, and Lucy.”
“Lucy doesn’t know…”
“Of course not. But I thought about telling you. God, I almost told you so many times…”
“But you never did.”
“I didn’t think you’d go along with it.” There was something in his voice, almost accusing, when he added, “That was before tonight.”
He finally found the courage to stop and turn around, and his eyes sought her out. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t point the gun at him, and at the same time wasn’t afraid he would lunge at her. Maybe it was because she could see the old Walter in his eyes; but the new one Walter was also there, too, which was probably why she never took her finger off the trigger.
“I did this for us,” he said. “For our future. You have to believe me.”
“I do.”
“You do?” Surprise—maybe a little bit of shock—registered on his face. “You believe me?”
She nodded. “I believe you.”
“Allie, that’s great!” he said, and the confusion was replaced by a big old Walter-like smile.
“Except you don’t get it.”
The smile stuttered. “Get what? What are you talking about?”
“It’s not a matter of me not believing you, Walter.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s about me thinking you’re delusional.”
The smile vanished, replaced by the beginning of a frown. “I don’t understand…”
“The fact that you think we could just pretend tonight never happened, that we could just move on as one big, happy family. You’re out of your goddamned mind, Walter.”
His frowned deepened and for a moment she thought he might start to cry, and she felt amazingly sorry for him. “I thought you understood.…”
“I do. And it doesn’t change a damned thing.”
“Allie.…”
“Turn around, Walter.”
“What?”
“Turn around. We’re going to walk back to the house, get Lucy, and we’re going to get into that car and drive away from here.” She tightened her grip on the gun. “Then I’m going to turn you in to the police and you’ll tell the feds everything. About Gorman and Smith, about tonight,
everything.
”
“Allie…”
“Shut up and
turn around
and start walking.”
He sighed and was turning around, when a loud
bang!
shattered her eardrums and something wet and clumpy hit her in the face.
Allie fell to her knees even as the gunshot echoed, and she managed to scrape enough of the material out of her eyes to see—
Walter on the ground on his stomach, his head turned sideways, his face toward her, frozen in that same frown she’d seen just a few seconds earlier. There was a hole in his forehead that hadn’t been there before.
A second
bang!
and Monroe collapsed to the ground beside her. He fell and lay still, staring up at the dark skies beyond the tree canopies. In an odd way, she thought he looked almost relieved.
Allie had forgotten when she had dropped the gun, but instead of looking for it, she could only focus on the sticky substance caking her face. She scraped at them with both hands, flicking blood and something thick
(Don’t think about it)
clinging to her skin, as boots appeared out of the bushes and from behind trees.
Men in black clothing surrounded her. They were carrying rifles, moonlight flickering off the long, polished barrels. She recognized the sleek frame of their weapons—AK-47s. Assault rifles. They all wore gun belts, all except for one. The man had on dress slacks and a white dress shirt with a sleek blood-red tie. He emerged from between two massive trees and stepped over Walter’s prone body toward her.
He crouched in front of her, took out a silk handkerchief, and held it out. She spied a pair of initials in the corner: D.W.
“Long night, huh?” the man said.
She grabbed at the proffered fabric and wiped at the pieces of Walter still clinging to her face. There was so much of it that she couldn’t reconcile how it had all come from that small hole in his forehead, but then she remembered she was looking at the entry hole, not the exit…
“Was that you that fired that shot earlier?” the man asked. “That’s how we knew where you were, you know. Then there was all that chatter. Walter, begging, as he’s wont to do.” The man glanced over at Monroe’s body. “I told them one-shot, one-kill, and look. Talk about professionals.” He fixed his eyes back on her. “You look like shit, Allie.”
She focused on the man’s face and couldn’t remember the last time she had personally seen him outside of Gorman and Smith. All of her interactions with Daniel “Dan” Wasterman, her boss, were always at the office.
“It’s definitely been a long and violent night, that’s for sure,” Dan said, standing up. “But it’s almost over. Just a few more hours to tie up all the loose ends; then we can all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. Well, for some of us, anyway…”
“I was the
one who recruited him, you know,” Dan said. “All three times. The first time was when he came to work for us, then again when he stumbled across our dirty little secret; and finally, for this job. The irony is, Gorman and Smith didn’t always use to hide ill-gotten money for bad people. We really were, once upon a time, an honest to goodness, well, honest enterprise. But, you know, reasons.”
The more Dan talked, the more she wanted to punch him. Better yet, drive a knife through the back of his skull. She’d never hated anyone more than she did him now. He walked in front of her, hands in his pockets, like he owned every old tree and inch of ground around them.
He didn’t have to pay any attention to her or their surroundings, because the well-armed men in black military-style clothes did that for him. There were four of them, and they looked every bit like Jack and his two comrades—except deadlier and more silent. Two of them walked up front, flanking Dan, while the other two followed closely behind her. They hadn’t restrained her, but they didn’t have to. She had no illusions that she could escape from them. Not for one millisecond.
“Your résumé left out a few things about your past,” Dan was saying. “Walter called me post-Jack, told me what you did. Let’s just say we were both speechless.”
She knew he wanted some kind of response from her, wanted this to be an ongoing (walking) conversation until they reached their destination. If there was one thing Dan liked more than loose women, it was hearing himself talk. A part of her wanted to deny him, but she needed answers. Despite everything Walter had already told her, there were still holes, information that she didn’t have.
“You planned this,” she said.
“How much did Walter tell you before…well, you know.”
“Everything he knew, but it wasn’t everything, was it?”
He shrugged. “He probably told you that Gorman and Smith’s days are numbered. It’s been for a while, ever since the feds first started sniffing around, thanks to a few loose lips. Why did you think I hired you? Single, a long way from home, and just the right age. Not too young, not too old. Besides, you’re just his type. Right down to the blue eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed to give Walter a reason. Lucy alone might have done it, but why settle for one when you can have two? The combination of a future with you, and freedom for Lucy, was enough to convince him. He knew as well as I did that when the feds made their move, we’d all be under the gun.”
“Walter told me that he planned it, that all of this was his idea, including the three mercenaries back at the house.”
Dan chuckled. “Of course he did.”
“But it was always you. You planted the seed. And I was a part of it.”
“Don’t be so modest. You were a big part of it, Allie. The hardest part was getting him to reach for the brass ring. You. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Walter can sometimes be a little meek. He needed nudging, and I have very sharp elbows.” He mimed nudging for her. “Of course, it was lust at first sight for him. Like I said: You’re his perfect type.”
Oh, Walter. You never knew, did you? He played you all along. He played
us.
She swiped at something dripping down her right eyebrow and flicked it away, purposefully not looking to see what it was. She didn’t want to know.
“You told Jack and the others to kill us when Walter was done, didn’t you? That’s why they showed us their faces. I bet you didn’t bother to tell Walter that part.”
“No comment.”
“You fucker.”
He shot her a warning glance over his shoulder. “Let’s watch the language.”
She ignored him, said, “How are you going to get the money now, genius? Walter’s dead.”
He flashed her a smug grin before turning back around. “You really think I’d tell these boys to pop ol’ Walt if that part was still in doubt? You know me better than that, Allie. I was mirroring everything on the laptop Jack gave Walter from the time it booted up. I recorded every keystroke, every URL, and every account. Walter, bless his soul, was never going to last long after tonight. Even if everything worked out perfectly, he’d break. Either to the feds, or to Gorman and Smith. It’s in his nature. These boys were always supposed to deal with Jack and the other two, but I have to admit, I didn’t know Gorman and Smith would send their goons first. But hey, that’s why they call them contingency plans, right?”
“He trusted you,” she said. “Jesus, he trusted you like a brother.”
“What’s that saying, ‘Bros before hoes’? I like to think of it as, ‘Dough before bros.’”
From the very beginning, Walter. He played you from the very beginning. And you had no idea, did you, you poor, dumb bastard.
“What now?” she asked. “Why haven’t you shot me yet?”
“You anxious to get shot, Allie?”
She didn’t answer him, and he let the silence linger for ten, then twenty seconds, where the only sounds were their footsteps and those of the armed men around them.