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“Last two years. Houston before that.”
“We looked into you, obviously.”
Ryder had expected that. He nodded.
“Like you said…corporate clients, couple of risk assessment contracts. Your office manager in Fort Worth had nice things to say about you.”
Cassandra’s work. Every line of the cover, every digital footprint, every trail that led to a desk in Fort Worth with a voice on the other end ready to confirm the story.
“Marianne,” Ryder said. “She was a perk of an otherwise pretty lame-ass job.”
“So everything about you checked out.” Arlo tipped his glass toward Ryder. “Clean as a whistle. Not that I expected otherwise.”
The room was quiet for a moment. One of the men on the couch shifted position. Outside, something mechanical hummed. A generator or a well pump.
Heath Diehl hadn’t said a word. Nor had his eyes left Ryder since he’d entered the room.
Heath was standing at the far end of the common area, arms folded, shoulder against the wall. He’d been there when Ryder walked in, and he hadn’t moved. Hadn’t greeted Ryder, hadn’t shaken his hand. Arlo had done all of that. Heath had watched.
Ryder had been aware of him the entire time. You didn’t stop tracking a weapon just because nobody had picked it up yet.
“Heath.” Arlo turned in his chair. “You want to join the conversation, or are you going to stand over there all night?”
Heath pushed off the wall and walked to the table. He pulled out a chair, turned it around, and sat with his forearms resting on the back like he was teaching a Bad Guy 101 class.
He was leaner than Arlo. Harder angles. The kind of face that had been through weather and didn’t care what you thought about it. Arlo made you comfortable in a room. Heath made you aware of every exit.
“Corporate security.” Heath turned the words over like he was checking them for soft spots. “Consulting.”
“That’s right.”
“Arlo says everything checked out.”
“It did.”
“Good for Arlo. Background checks tell you where a man’s been. They don’t tell you what he’s still good for.” Heath settled his weight against the back of the chair. “You’ve been out for a while, Sutton. Comfortable work. Comfortable money. Comfortable life. That changes a person.”
“It can.” And it had. Just not in the direction Heath was worried about. Four years of comfortable work hadn’t made Ryder soft.
Four years of trying to be someone worth knowing had made him desperate to believe the effort counted for something. Being here was going to put that to the test.
“So I need to know if it changed you.”
The two men on the couch had gone still. The one cleaning the gun had stopped. Even Arlo’s easy posture had tightened, just slightly, a shift in his shoulders that said he knew what was coming and wasn’t going to stop it.
Nobody spoke. Ryder felt his breathing slow. His shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. His hands went loose on the table. All of it automatic; none of it chosen.
“So what do you want me to say here exactly, Heath?”
“I want you to sit there and not move.”
Ryder didn’t see the gun come out. One second Heath’s hands were on the back of the chair. The next, the barrel of a Sig Sauer was pressed against Ryder’s forehead, cold and steady, and Heath’s eyes were inches from his.
The world went very quiet.
Ryder’s hands were on the table. He didn’t move them. His breathing stayed even. His heart rate, which should have been climbing, settled into something slow and thick, the rhythm of a body that had learned a long time ago that panic was a luxury and stillness was a tool.
He looked at Heath past the barrel of the gun, and he felt nothing. No fear, no anger, no adrenaline spike that needed managing. Just a vast, steady blankness where the terror should have been.
