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She realized, as he said it, that he hadn’t ordered her to do anything. Not like before. And she didn’t feel that her will had been taken away from her.
You can choose to put the gun up and walk away.
Or she could choose to go with him.
He didn’t try to convince her one way or the other, just waited as the seconds ticked by. A distant wail of sirens made him stir, just a little, but he still stayed quiet.
Bryn relaxed her stance and put the gun back in the holster under her shoulder. “I need to understand what just happened,” she said. “You need to tell me. Now. ”
He nodded. “Then please, let me help you. ”
* * *
He drove her—to her surprise—to a familiar house, glowing with lights. She recognized the kid’s bike up against the hedge, and the leaning, weathered mailbox.
“Why here?” she asked.
“Because I don’t think you feel safe with me,” McCallister said, as he put the car in park and killed the engine. “Joe and his family have a … calming effect. ”
“You bring a lot of people here?”
“No,” he said, then hesitated for a second before getting out of the car. “Never, in fact. ”
Bryn pondered that as she followed him up the walk, and as he rang the bell. Joe’s wife, Kylie, answered the door, drying her hands on a dish towel; she blinked in surprise, then smiled in genuine delight and opened her arms to McCallister for a hug. “Patrick, you’ve been avoiding us,” she said. He stepped into the embrace, briefly, and then pulled back to glance at Bryn. Kylie did, too, and if her smile faltered just a touch, it quickly warmed again. “Bryn. Nice to see you. ”
McCallister said, “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this, but—”
“But you need to see Joe?”
“I’m afraid so. ”
“He’s out back in the workshop. Follow me. ”
Kylie led them through the warm, comfortable house, past the playing kids (who stopped to wave, or to stare, or, in the case of the baby, to gurgle), and out the back door. She pointed to a structure twenty feet away across the yard. “Out there,” she said. “Pat, you know how to get in?”
“I know,” he said. “Thanks, Kylie. ”
“Visit us for dinner sometime. ”
“I will. ”
His smile disappeared as soon as she closed the back door, and in its place was a moment of unguarded emotion. Sorrow, Bryn thought. She didn’t need to be told that McCallister dreaded bringing danger here, as much as he enjoyed the company. It was written all over his face.
“It’s this way,” he said, and walked across the yard. He held out a hand to stop Bryn as they approached the closed door of the respectably large wooden shed, and a motion-activated light came on to bathe the area in a mercilessly bright glare. “Wait here. ”
She couldn’t see why, but she nodded, and then, just to test that she could, disobeyed him and followed him as he climbed the three steps up to the door.
He shot her an irritated look and shielded a keypad from her as he punched in a series of numbers … a long series, longer than usual for these types of locks. She heard a musical tone sound, and a click as the lock disengaged.
Then McCallister knocked. “Joe? Coming in. ”
“Come ahead,” said Joe’s voice from within, and McCallister opened up and entered, with Bryn at his heels.
Joe Fideli was sitting at a desk that was absolutely loaded down with monitors, computer equipment, storage drives—and it took Bryn a second or two to realize that he was putting away a gun. A serious weapon, too, not a pistol but a semiauto rifle, which he put back on a rack behind him.
The man had more guns in here than an armory. In fact, Bryn was fairly sure that she couldn’t even identify many of them, and that was a statement, after four years of supply duty in Iraq. That wasn’t even counting the shelves of other types of weapons—knives, Tasers, throwing stars, and brass knuckles in tidy order.
“Close the door,” Joe said to Bryn. She didn’t do it—another test, to see if she could. She did feel a weird impulse to move, though, and that worried her. Badly.
