Jim laughed now. Then he said, “I saw you once. At the diner. The feds came to talk to me about you, I look up, and there you were. They never suspected you were twenty-five feet away.”
Court nodded. “That was me. Just checking up on you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
Court sighed. “You’re annoyed I haven’t been home, and you’re annoyed that I did come home. There’s no winning with you.”
Jim let out a raspy laugh. “Anyway, they said you were a traitor to your nation.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it was all just an honest misunderstanding.”
“Really?”
“Fuck no.” Jim laughed again. “I figured you pissed off the wrong person, a person with some clout, and they were trying to use the levers of power to squash you like a bug.”
Whoa,Court thought. “Yeah…pretty much exactly that.”
“I’ve got the Internet, son. I know what’s going on in the world.”
Court suspected that whatever his dad looked at on the Internet didnottell him what was going on in the world, but he let it go.
Jim said, “Those G-men. I didn’t tell them shit about you.”
Court chuckled. “Probably helped that you didn’tknowshit about me.”
“Well…yeah…that was a plus.” He asked, “Ever settle the score with the boss man that came after you?”
“He’s no longer a factor.”
Jim looked at his son a long time. Finally, he said, “You send any flowers to his funeral?”
“I did not.”
Jim said, “So…that was, what? Three years ago? I’m guessing by the fact that you’re here, you’re armed, and you’re looking around all frosty-eyed, you must have pissed off someone else.”
“Yep.”
“And you think they might be coming here?”
“We have to move you, just to be sure.”
“What did you do this time?”
Court hesitated; he didn’t want to give his father too much information at first, but something told him this extraction would go better if he did talk. “There’s a lot going on. Problems in Washington. Problems that aren’t going away any time soon, I imagine. But this thing I’m worried about with you? These people I’m concerned about? This is about something personal.”
“Personal?”
“Yeah. A Northern Irishman. He’s an assassin. I killed his son.”
Jim Gentry did not reply; he just looked at Court behind his coffee mug, his eyeglasses steaming from the heat.
“The son? He had it coming?”
“Depends on your point of view.” Court shrugged. “I was going after a target. A legit bad guy, but somebody I just needed to silence for operational reasons. This Irishman’s son was in the way. Just…a bodyguard. He shot me, I shot him. We fought. I knifed him. Moved on.”
“Jesus, Court.”
