Henry went to the tool cabinet and opened the drawer where he kept small squares of sandpaper, organized in order of coarseness. He chose a square from the middle, then swapped it for the next finer grain and went out to repair the birdhouse.
He finished and looked around for prospective tenants—Okay, I fixed up the fixer-upper. Better move in fast before some nasty-ass kingfisher snaps it up and you have to raise your chicks in an open-air nest above a thorn bush, he announced silently. But instead of bird calls, he heard the alarm on his cell phone, telling him a car was approaching the house.
Henry knew who it was. He had been bracing himself for this visit, had actually expected it to have come sooner. Maybe traffic had been especially heavy. He started to walk around to the front of the house, then remembered the sandpaper and went back into the living room, ignoring the honking horn. If the entire company of archangels came to his door to tell him it was Judgment Day, his ass was grass, and the good Lord Himself was the lawnmower; they would have to wait till Henry put everything back where it belonged. There was a place for everything and he made damned sure everything was in its place before he did anything else. His house, his rules.
The car horn honked again. He went out to see Del Patterson finish parking his land yacht (badly, as usual) before he leaped out of the driver’s seat and rushed at Henry brandishing the resignation letter he’d sent the day before.
“You can’t do this!” Patterson said by way of hello.
“Yeah, good to see you, too, Del,” Henry replied. “Come on in, sit down, make yourself at home while I get you something to drink.”
Moments later, Patterson was perched on the edge of the sofa in the living room. The cheerful daylight was lost on him. He was still clutching the letter when Henry came in from the kitchen with a beer and a Coke.
“I have to quit,” Henry said. “In almost any other line of work, you can lose a step. Not this one.”
“You’re still the best we’ve got—the best anyone’s got,” Patterson said. “And believe me, I keep track.”
Henry put the Coke on the coffee table in front of him. Patterson glared up at him with the expression of a man who had been pushed to his absolute limit and wasn’t taking any more shit. The black-framed glasses would have made another man seem bookish, like an absentminded professor; they gave Patterson the look of a no-nonsense authority whose decisions were final.
“Not a soda. Not today.” Patterson crumpled the letter into a ball, dropped it on the table, then batted it away.
Henry’s eyebrows went up. “You sure?”
“Are you really retiring?” Patterson said evenly. Henry nodded. “Then I’m sure.”
Henry moved the Coke aside and gave him the beer. When he had first met Patterson, it had been obvious the man was fond of a drink and as time went on, he had grown even fonder. For a while, it had looked as if Patterson was going to take up drinking as a lifestyle. And then one day, without fanfare, explanation, or apology, his drink of choice had become Coca-Cola.
Everyone including Henry had wondered how long it would last, waited for Patterson to say something about it, but no one wanted to come right out and ask him. An agent who had suffered with the same problem inquired as to whether he was now a friend of Bill W., and reported that Patterson seemed genuinely mystified by the question.
Henry finally decided he had to know; his life could depend on it. Patterson told him that his job required him to be on call 24/7. Therefore, he had to stay clean and sober for the sake of his agents. And that was all he was ever going to say about it, Patterson added; talk was cheap, actions spoke louder than words, and the subject was now closed.
Henry had been satisfied. Everybody had their own reasons for doing whatever they did. If this was how Patterson managed to avoid going down a very dark path to destruction, then it was what it was and Henry was glad he didn’t have to think about it any more.
Now Patterson would probably claim he had driven him to drink, Henry thought. He sat down next to him on the sofa, refusing to flinch from the other man’s death-ray glare.
“Lots of guys can shoot,” Henry said. “Marine STAs, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs—”
“They aren’t you.” Patterson made it an accusation, as if this was yet another way in which Henry had failed him. “They don’t have the history you do.”
“Yeah, I think the history might be the problem,” said Henry. “I’ve got too much of it. We both know shooters don’t get better with age, they just get older.”
“Then who’s going to finish training Monroe?” Patterson demanded, his expression pained. “Guy’s called me three times already asking me to talk you back in.”
Henry sighed and shook his head again. “I wish he hadn’t done that.”
Patterson sat forward, his face urgent. “Henry, we’ve been through a lot together, you and me. We made the world safer. If we hadn’t done the things we did, good people would have suffered and bad ones would have profited, good things would have gone bad and bad shit would have gotten worse. What we do is important—it matters. But I can’t do anything unless I’m working with someone I trust and I’m not going to trust a new guy the way I trust you.”
Henry shook his head again, more emphatically this time. “I’m telling you, Del, something felt different on this one. That’s why the shot was off—even the ground beneath me didn’t feel right.”
Patterson looked around as if there might be something in the room to support his counter-arguments, then spotted the birdhouse outside the window.
“So, what now—you’re just going to build birdhouses?” he asked Henry.
“Del. There was a kid right next to him. If I’m off by six inches, she’s dead,” Henry said, talking over him. “I’m done.”
Patterson’s expression said he had finally heard him and he was devastated. Henry had known this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. In their line of work, there was no wiggle room, no time or space for socializing. Your focus had to be on the job, the whole job, and nothing but the job, not the people on your team. You had to be able to take it for granted everyone would be in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. It was all planning, nothing left to chance, no wasted movement, no nonsense, no slip-ups, so that nobody died who wasn’t supposed to. Every time Henry thought about how it was only by virtue of sheer luck that he hadn’t killed a child—a child—he felt shaky inside.
“You know, when I started in the Corps, it all made sense all the time,” Henry went on. “My job was to take out bad guys. Art of the Kill—whatever worked. But in Liège—” he shook his head. “The truth is, in Liège, there was no Art of the Kill. I just got lucky. I didn’t feel the shot, not like I should have.” He paused, took a breath.
Patterson was starting to look more resigned than hurt. He was a pro; he understood.
“It’s more than being older. I’ve made seventy-two kills,” Henry said. “That many, it messes with you deep down. It’s like my soul hurts. I think I’ve reached my limit of lives to take. Now I just want peace.”