Sterling called Jasper. His voice was flat, controlled, the voice he used when the situation was critical and he needed everyone to understand that he was not, in fact, panicking. “It’s time,” he said into the phone. Then, after a pause: “Yes. Now. The house. Yes.” He set the phone down. Looked at it. Picked it up again.
Mitch found the boot. It had been on the bed. He had been sitting on it.
“This is why we can’t have nice things,” I said.
“This is why we have each other,” Mitch replied, already pulling the boot on. “Teamwork. Synergy. One of us sits on things and the other one finds them. It’s a system.”
Sterling was still holding the phone. Something had happened to his face—something I would tell everyone about for the rest of my life, the detail that would outlive all his other stories, the one that would get told at birthdays and anniversaries and probably his funeral if I outlived him, which at this rate seemed likely.
Sterling Callahan, survivor of Tbilisi and Caracas and a treason investigation and three armed contractors on a Montana road, looked at my face and went completely, visibly blank. Not calm. Blank. The blank of a man whose operational framework had just encountered a situation it had no category for.
He picked up his phone. Set it down. Picked it up again. “I called Jasper already,” he said. “I said that already. Did I say that?”
“You said it,” I confirmed.
“Good.” He picked up the phone.
“Put it down, Sterling.”
He put it down. Picked it up.
“You’re going to call Jasper again,” I said.
“That’s not necessary,” Sterling said, holding the phone exactly like a man about to call Jasper again.
“I didn’t say you should call him. I said you were going to.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re holding the phone.”
“It’s for something else.”
“What something else?”
Sterling set the phone on the nightstand with the deliberateness of a man defusing something. Then he picked it up.
Mitch, one boot on and one boot off, announced from the doorway: “He’s going to call Jasper a third time.”
“I am not,” Sterling said, thumb hovering over the screen.
“You absolutely are.”
“I have it under control.”
“The phone is in your hand.”
“It’s a precautionary measure.”
I breathed through a contraction and watched both of them and felt an enormous, helpless wave of love wash over me that was almost indistinguishable from amusement. The kind of love that made your chest hurt in the good way, the way that said you had built something worth keeping and the people in it were exactly as ridiculous as you’d hoped.
Jasper arrived fifteen minutes later with his bag and Decker behind him. Jasper took one look at me, one look at Sterling and Mitch, and said with perfect neutrality: “You two. Sit down or go outside.”
Mitch sat immediately. Folded himself into the armchair by the window with the quickness of a man who recognized authority when he heard it.
Sterling stood by the head of the bed. Arms crossed. Jaw set. Doing his best impression of a man who was not, in fact, terrified, which was approximately as convincing as Mitch’s impression of a man who could be quiet for more than thirty seconds.
Jasper, without looking at Sterling, said: “Sterling, your hands.”
