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Nighty night.
He looked at the two men on the ground. In a fair fight, they probably would have wiped the floor with him. But as Shay had been fond of saying, “Fare is what you pay to get on a bus.”
Recalling Shay made his jaw clench. Chase shook thoughts of his wife from his head.
He needed to act fast. He patted the fallen guards down, stripping them of anything useful. Glocks, paramilitary blades, small LED flashlights, portable access tools, even their Avalon watches, which were voice activated. He tossed them all into the woods. Finally, he removed one of their black jackets and put it on.
Chase found his stun gun by the fence and returned it to his pack. He swapped it out for more supplies. He propped the men up and zip-tied them to the chain link fence. Then he duct-taped the mouth of his stun gun victim. He seriously considered taping the mouth of the second guard he grappled with, but the man’s broken nose would be useless as a breathing apparatus for a while. He figured he would have a few minutes before they were even capable of calling the cavalry.
More than enough time,he thought.
He marched toward Gillen’s brightly lit fortress, the 9-millimeter in his hand.
CHAPTER 19
MILES GILLEN’S FIFTH-GRADE teacher once told the class that Albert Einstein could not remember his own phone number. His fifth-grade classmates cracked up.
Miles understood. There simply was no room in his mind for the inessential.
What was essential to Miles was the future.
As a result, he was never fully present.
Miles was stuck between how things were and how wonderful theycouldbe. It was only when Miles felt he was closing the gap between the two that he felt alive, consumed with purpose, radiant.
When he felt the gap widening, he became incredibly irritable.
Yoga helped. As did all the systems he had put in place. The meditation, the journaling, the digital sunsets, but most of all, ignoring the inessential. But when new information—even of the unpleasant variety—disrupted his carefully cultivated routines, Miles prided himself on assimilating and adjusting faster than just about anyone on the planet.
So when he turned from his refrigerator to find Chase Weldon pointing a gun in his face, Miles immediately deemed the development essential and reconfigured the rest of his evening accordingly.
Miles sized him up. Cataloging the man’s appearance, sorting bits of evidence into a narrative. Weldon was clearly distressed. More than that, he was disheveled. He wore dark clothes and a dark ball cap—a sort of modified covert uniform—streaked with mud. Miles pictured Weldon lying in wait in the woods behind his estate, away from prying eyes. Weldon’s cargo pants were torn at the knee and Miles glimpsed bloody skin. He pictured the loops of razor wire topping the high fence that separated his property from a ravine that emptied into the Potomac.
And, of course, there was the gun.
Teague had already briefed Miles that Chase Weldon had murdered his entire family and was at large. As a precaution, the Avalon CSO had deployed the roving guard force.
The idea of armed security skulking around in the darkness had seemed both unnecessary and unnerving. And apparently ineffectual.
“Chase,” said Miles, loading empathy into his voice, “are you hurt?”
Weldon said nothing. Miles decided to press his luck.
“Chase, I heard some very disturbing news earlier. Please tell me it’s not true.”
Weldon gritted his teeth. “He made me. He said… unspeakable torture if I didn’t…” Weldon gripped his pistol tightly. Gillen saw the knuckles going white. “They came out on gurneys. Under sheets. I was a few blocks away, behind a tree. I watched them get loaded into ambulances. Then I came here.”
Gillen could scarcely square the self-assured man from his office yesterday with the unbalanced man before him now.
“I see,” said Miles. “How did you get here?”
“I walked. After.”
After.The word hung heavy in the air between them.
One of the many systems Miles had put in place was rigorous exercise. His latest passion was Brazilian jujitsu. He was quite skilled at it, but rolling around on a mat with an opponent was nowhere near trying out a move with a gun pointed inches from your skull. And Miles knew Weldon had prior military experience. He also knew that if he was a fraction of a second too slow, his significant intellectual property would rapidly exit the back of his head to paint his stainless-steel refrigerator.
He reached deep for empathy.
