“Tangi Valley,” Owen said through gritted teeth, wishing he could forget what he’d done in that hell called Afghanistan. What had been done to him. But willing to use it if it would keep his kids safe from a psychotic predator like this.
Abernathy went silent a moment. Then, “An urban legend.”
“The truth,” Owen rasped. The scars on his back burned. “My truth. Soon to be your truth if you . . . ever . . . go . . . near . . . my . . . family . . . again.”
Abernathy hesitated. “I’m . . . glad we understand each other. I’ll see you in three.”
SEVENTEEN
Mitch had wasted as much time outside as possible. But the sun was gone, he was shivering now, and he couldn’t see anything but the reflection of city lights off the river and silhouettes of the two guys guarding the riverbank.
He and Halina had made a lot of memories walking alongside this stretch of water. He’d thought reliving them might help him find some kind of resolution. But he found himself thinking less of the past and a lot more of the future.
He kept coming back to Cash’s words of advice—focus on the big fucking picture.
There was so much he loved and wanted about this new, improved version of Halina, his desire for her—as a lover, a friend, a partner . . . a wife—coiled and coiled inside him until he felt like a spring ready to pop.
Yet what kept him out here perched on a log near the shore instead of inside with Halina was fear from the past. Fear of that impending loss she’d all but admitted to today on the plane—running from him, pregnant or not.
He couldn’t fault her reasons, even if he didn’t fully believe in their source. She did. And she wasn’t even leaving because she didn’t love him. She was leaving because she loved him so much.
His brain just kept doing this—spinning and spinning and spinning. Yet he found no answer. No relief.
“Fuck,” he groaned, dropping his head into his hands and rubbing his temples with his palms.
“Hey.”
Mitch’s head came up fast at the deep voice. Too fast. A rush of blood hit his brain and pain slid beneath his skull. “Ah, shit.”
“Sorry,” Quaid said. “I was waiting for you to come in, but . . .”
“Did you find something?” Mitch asked, squinting toward Quaid’s dark silhouette. “A connection between Schaeffer and Classified? I know it was there when I last had the box.”
“Haven’t found anything in the box yet.” Quaid tossed a jacket to him.
“Thanks.” Mitch pulled it on. “Then what’s up?”
“Couple things.”
“Sit,” Mitch invited, gesturing to the log.
Quaid took something from his back pocket and sat next to Mitch. He unfolded some papers and Mitch took them.
“What’s this?” Mitch shone a flashlight over the pages. Scientific formulas lit up under the light. He flipped the flashlight off. “Shit, I already have a headache, dude. What is it?”
“A possible formula for the skin Cash has been trying to finish.”
Mitch perked up. “He finally got it?”
“Not Cash,” Quaid said. “I got this from Owen Young today when we were picking up the file box. He said he got it from Abrute.”
“What? When?” Mitch straightened. “How?”
“He has the guy in custody. Illegal custody, actually.” Quaid laughed. “Gotta love that, right?
“See, when Cash destroyed the Method pages at the Castle, Dargan sent Abrute home to get copies of Cash’s experiments. Evidently, he’d taken them from the lab for ‘safekeeping.’ We think he was going to sell them, but whatever. Anyway, Abrute left the Castle just before the explosion. Young was informed during the investigation and questioned Abrute. When he realized Abrute’s potential, he locked him up, put him in solitary, and had him working on finishing the formula.”
“Why the fuck didn’t he tell us this?”
“Young says Abrute would rather take his chances at a trial than risk Schaeffer’s hit men. And he’s not talking.”
“Give me five minutes in a cell with him and he’ll start talking,” Mitch said into the night. He glanced at the notes again. “Has Cash seen this?”
“Sure. He’s been studying it the whole time you’ve been out here.”
“And?”
Quaid shook his head. “It’s not right. Won’t work.”
“Fuck.” Mitch slammed the papers against his thigh.
“But it’s closer than he’d been,” Quaid said. “He says he’ll use parts of it. Seems excited. That’s got to mean something.”
Mitch nodded and braced for the other half of the couple things Quaid had come out to talk about. “What else?”
“Halina.”
The burn of panic cut through his gut. “You guys were supposed to watch her—”
“She’s still here,” Quaid said. “She took files up to one of the bedrooms to work on them. Dillon’s standing guard outside her window. She’s not going anywhere.”
Mitch relaxed. “Then what about her? I already got a lecture from Nelson about being a jackass on the plane. I don’t need another one.”
“She moved from St. Petersburg to Chechnya when she was nine.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“How do you know? She tell you?”
“No,” Mitch said. “From intel Young gave me.”
Quaid’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been to Chechnya?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know.” Quaid leaned forward, pressing his forearms to his thighs. “I have been to Chechnya. An assassination occurs every ten minutes. There are one hundred murders every day. Prostitution, drugs, and mafia are rampant. That move—from St. Petersburg to Chechnya—is the equivalent of moving from Jessica’s plush townhome in DC to a jungle hut in Columbia run by drug cartel.”
Mitch tried to absorb that, but realized he didn’t have the knowledge or experience.
“I’m trained to understand people,” Quaid said. “To read them, find their greatest weakness, and exploit it. I’ve worked with terrorists and assassins in Chechnya. Men like Halina’s uncle. You need to understand that Halina spent her formative years in an environment as warm as concrete. As frightening as hell. Orphans are a dime a dozen in Russia. The reason her uncle took her in was most likely for free labor—cleaning, cooking, and someone to abuse when he was pissed off.”
Mitch scrubbed his fingers through his hair. His gut ached.
“Halina was programmed to react a certain way, just like I was programmed to kill whomever Gorin told me to kill. Halina’s youth effectively rendered her as helpless to her programming as the drugs rendered me to mine. She never had a choice to believe one way or another, just as I didn’t.”
Quaid let out a breath and pushed one hand against his thigh to twist toward Mitch. “Halina believed Schaeffer would have assassinated you. She’d grown up around men who killed professionally, and she protected you the way she learned by watching them—she blackmailed the killer. Successfully, I might add.
“It’s difficult for me to describe the depth of what I’m trying to explain, but . . . you’re seeing the conflict from an empowered, privileged American’s point of view. Halina sees the conflict as an impoverished, suppressed, Russian underdog. You can’t expect Halina to go about solving problems the same way you would.
“As far as her visions, you don’t have to like what she’s seeing, but they’re very real. I’m telling you, that woman has a level of power caught up inside her that surpasses mine tenfold. When she learns to control the visions, there’s no telling what she’ll be able to predict or how her ability will expand.”