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“I’m in,” snapped Kaiser. “What do you have in mind?”
Benson tapped the cleft in his chin as he thought. Then he raised an eyebrow. “Senator Robinson and his family are out on the campaign trail. His townhouse is empty. Secret Service protection hasn’t been approved for him yet, and he just ordered me to pull Darkwater out of there. He’s asked you to replace the Darkwater guys with some Agency guys in civvies, right?”
Kaiser nodded slowly, left eyebrow raised.
Benson continued. “So why don’t you pass that assignment on to Rhett Rodgers? And since Darkwater has been on site at the Robinson home for months, schedule a meeting with all three of us at the empty townhome to discuss security strategy. Debrief on what we’ve learned. Changing of the guard kind of thing. Late tomorrow evening.” Benson grinned. “Rhett’s no idiot. He’ll see right through it. But I know how his mind works. He'll also see it as an opportunity. Maybe even a challenge. Besides, he still can’t be certain how much Paige told us, how much we believe, how much we can prove. Either way, set up the meeting and see if he accepts.”
Kaiser ran his fingers through his hair, his cheekbones darkening with color, his eyes signaling that he knew exactly what Benson was suggesting.
A moment later Paige signaled that she had also damn well figured out what Benson was suggesting.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, jumping up from her chair. “You’re trying to bait Rhett by giving him a chance to kill both of you at once. You want to draw him into some kind of confrontation, maybe provoke him so . . . so you can justify takinghimout!”
Benson smiled coolly, shrugged with deadly nonchalance. “We’re just setting the board, kid. Each player makes his own choices. Rhett comes at us, we hit back. If he stands down . . . well, then nothing happens tomorrow night. His play. His move. His choice. Don’t look at us like that. This is how the game is played, kid.” He waited for Paige to settle down, then sighed and relaxed in his chair. “Anyway, it all depends on what happens in Mumbai. If Scarlet doesn’t check back in by tomorrow night’s meeting, Rhett is going to be very tempted to make his move on us there.”
Paige closed her eyes and shook her head, muttering under her breath like she was trying desperately to convince herself there was at least some moral high ground available in that room. “What if Scarletdoescheck back in? What if shedoeskill O’Donnell—kill her own daughter? For thesecondtime. Without evenknowingit! And Rhett doesn’t know it either!” She pulled at her ponytail, shook her head again. “This is too much to swallow. I still can’t believe that Rhett, Scarlet, and Indy are all connected in this crazy way but they don’t evenknowit! How can that possibly just . . .happen? Each of them thinks the other is dead, and now I’m supposed to believe they justcoincidentallygot pulled into this operation?”
Benson shrugged. “Believe what you want. Just remember what they teach every CIA recruit at the Farm: Sometimes things look like conspiracies when in fact they’re coincidences. You have all the facts, Paige.Youbrought up O’Donnell’s name to Rhett after seeing her position paper.Youpulled up Scarlet’s name in the NOC database. These wereyourchoices, so unless you think somebody hypnotized you and CIA is testing some cool new mind-control tech on your genius brain, you know that it’s not a conspiracy. Hell, simple mathematics says it’s too complex to be a conspiracy. Which means that calling it a conspiracy is actually the crazier conclusion.”
Paige closed her eyes and moved her lips like she was counting to ten or perhaps reciting the alphabet backwards to make sure she wasn’t drugged. “All right,” she finally said. “But even if I accept that it just played out this way, I can’t accept that we’re going to sit here and do nothing to help Ice and Indy in Mumbai.”
Benson looked up calmly. “Every player makes their own choice, Paige. Ice and Indy chose to cut off contact with me. Now they’re going to have to live with that choice.” He shrugged with feigned indifference, curious to see how much Paige understood about Darkwater, about fate, about destiny. About him. “Or die with that choice, as the case may be.”
Paige stopped her pacing, whipped her body around, her face drawn with shock. “You . . . you’re insane,” she whispered. “Both of you. Ice and Indy are sitting ducks there in Mumbai.”
“Hardly.” Benson smiled thinly at her, hoping to hell he was right. “Ice Wagner is a Delta killer with a woman to protect.Hiswoman to protect. This is the core of Darkwater’s energy, Paige. This is what puts the game in motion, and it’s what pulls everything to a close.” Benson took a slow breath, debating whether to reassure Paige or pull back the curtain even further.
He chose the latter.
“Don’t mistake my calmness for certainty,” Benson said softly. “We can’t be sure exactly how the curtain closes on this drama, can’t say for sure whether it’s a tragedy or a romance. Either way, you’ve got a front row seat. All you can do now is watch and wonder, listen and learn, wait for your turn.”
Paige frowned at Benson’s last turn of phrase, but was either too confused to acknowledge it or too worked up to question it. “Well, maybe we should tell Rhett that Indy is his daughter. Maybe it softens his heart.”
“He had his chance thirty years ago.” Benson’s gaze was cold stone now. “And trust me, kid, I don’t think he’s softened after thirty years in the shadows getting better at being a cold-blooded snake. If anything, Rhett would use that knowledge to make things look even worse for Kaiser and me.”
“Oh, because you lied about his daughter being dead and then blackmailed him into becoming a CIA assassin?” Paige rolled her eyes, huffed out a breath. “Why would that make you look bad, Benson? Isn’t it just how thegame is played?” She shook her head in disgust. “You guys areallsnakes. One worse than the other.”
Benson grinned wickedly, flicked his gaze at Kaiser. “I think she’s finally getting it, Martin.” He looked back at Paige, his gaze hardening just enough to send a message. “You’re free to walk away from the game anytime, kid. Choices. Choices. Choices. You want your job back? You want to go back to Rhett? You want to sit here and pretend like you don’t see the difference between us and him? You want to pretend like what you’re seeing here isn’t beautiful, mysterious, magical? You’re not a helpless player in this game, Paige. You have the power to choose, so go ahead and do it.”
Paige rubbed her eyes, sat back down in her chair, bent forward and covered her face. She hyperventilated into her palms, then looked up and exhaled hard. “You know I’ve already made my choice. I’m just . . . just struggling to come to terms with it. I know how to calculate probabilities, so I get what you said about how coincidence is often more likely than conspiracy.” She shook her head. “But the part about what happened thirty years ago with Indy O’Donnell . . . I still don’t know how to square that with what I believe about life and death. And it’s not that I don’t believe in the afterlife or something more than just physical reality. I’ve seen studies about near-death experiences, about people leaving their bodies and then coming back. I’ve seen research suggesting there might be something like a soul or spirit. But what I don’t get is that even if there is such a thing, why would that poor unwanted twice-murdered child’s soulwantto come back to this life?”
“Don’t you see?” Benson’s smile hardened, his voice dropped to a cold whisper. “Same reason Rhett and Scarlet wanted to send that soul away from this life. It’s what bound those three together. It’s what brought them together again. And it’s what dragged that child’s soul back into its little body. Unfinished business. That’s why it came back not once but twice. Unfinished fucking business.”
Paige frowned, then her eyes lit with dark realization. “You think Indy O’Donnell came back twice for . . . for . . .revenge?”
Benson shrugged lazily. “She’s Rhett and Scarlet’s daughter. Sometimes fate is burned into the flesh, destiny boiled into the blood. She is their spawn, carries something of Rhett and Scarlet in not just her body but her soul.” His face tightened into a smile. “And if that’s the case, Indy O’Donnell didn’t come back to forgive. She didn’t come back to love. She came back toavenge.” The smile faded now, his eyes misting over as he turned his mind to Mumbai, to the game unfolding in a hotel room ten thousand miles away. “I wonder when Indy O’Donnell will figure that out about herself, about her own shadow. I wonder when she’ll learn how to use the beautiful dark energy burning in that angry little infant, buried deep inside its violent little soul. Insidehersoul.”
Because that’s the only way this game ends well, Benson thought as he turned away from the stunned Paige and fixed his mind on what was to come.
That gnawing anxiety made Benson shift in his seat again. He glanced at his watch, calculating ahead as he tried to predict the future.
Of course, the future was just a set of probabilistic potentials vibrating in the quantum field, waiting for the players to make their moves, choices that would collapse the wave into particles known as physical reality, the ephemeral infinite manifesting as concrete events within time and space.
Benson couldn’t predict that outcome for certain, but he could damn well sense those probabilities like dark storm clouds gathering above them all.
Some carrying the sweet rain of relief.
Others hiding the sharp hail of horror.
