The Tower

Darby smiled. "And one more operation."

Thomas tried to laugh, but it came out a dull wheeze. "Oh yeah. Nose job, right?"

Darby laughed softly and tears moistened her eyes. "I'm leaving in five."

"Okay. I love you."

Her voice cracked and she struggled to keep it from shaking. "I love you too."

She hung up and sat on the couch in the living room, sipping her coffee. The very couch where they had met Jade time and time again, she realized, where he had helped them in his own guarded way.

She had come to care greatly for Jade. She had come to respect him and almost love him. She knew that some part of her emotions had to do with his role in protecting them, and some part had to do with her son. Though she didn't understand, entirely, her feelings for Jade, she sensed them, as if through a fog that wouldn't lift. It saddened her that they would never see Jade again. There was too much there for her, too much there for them. He had freed them, finally and painfully, from a lifelong ache, but she could never forgive him for it.

She heard the soft rattling of the mail truck outside and she rose and went to the door. It was a splendid morning, she thought as she moved down the walkway to the mailbox.

Turning to face the sun, she fanned through the mail. Mostly bills and mailers. At the bottom of the stack was a plain white envelope, her name and address written neatly in black.

Opening the envelope confirmed it: a single earring.

Placing it back in the envelope, she crumpled them together into a ball and walked over to the trash can at the end of the driveway. She lifted the lid and tossed the small ball of metal and paper inside.

She whistled softly to herself as she headed back inside, closing her eyes and tilting her face to the sun. It was a splendid morning.

Chapter 60

T H E room was dark, as always. Once again, Travers sat in the gloom, across the desk from Wotan. She held a thick folder in her lap.

She inhaled deeply and continued. "Well, sir, that just about covers it."

"Very well," Wotan said softly.

"We've placed Marlow's money in an account that he can claim when he gets out of the hospital." Travers cleared her throat. "Although we're not really sure when he'll get out, sir. I put in an order to cover his full medical expenses."

"Very well."

"He did…" Travers tilted her head back a little, biting her bottom lip. "He did a good job, sir."

Wotan nodded once, running his fingertips over the dry socket of his eye. "Put the file to rest," he said, turning his attention back to some papers on his desk. A long silence ensued as Travers watched him work.

"I didn't understand it before, sir. Your faith in him. Marlow. How did you know?"

The room was quiet for so long that she began to wonder if Wotan was going to respond. Just as she was rising to leave, he looked up from his desk. He picked the bullet slug from the ashtray and held it up in the dim light.

"Do you know what this is, Agent Travers?"

She shook her head.

"It's a slug. Early in my marriage, when my wife was still alive, my girl was kidnapped. She was my… our only child. Four years old. She had just learned to ride a bicycle with training wheels alone to the end of the street." He spoke with no emotion at all, as if reciting a memorized passage.

"Marlow was a young agent at the time, fresh out of Quantico. It was his first kidnapping case. He pursued her kidnapper with such determination and vengeance that I could have sworn the burden was his instead of mine."

Travers listened tensely. "And he saved her, sir?"

"When he found her kidnapper, my child had already been raped and killed." Wotan stared directly into Travers's eyes, refusing to flinch.

Travers finally looked away.

"When they meet the devil, they always bring something back," Wotan said. "Marlow brought this back to me." He held the slug between his thumb and forefinger and then gripped it tightly in his fist. He looked back down at the papers on his desk. "Do you think we'll be seeing him again, Agent Travers?"

Travers looked down at her hands, in her lap. "I hope so, sir. I hope so," she said, then stood and walked to the back wall. She twirled the combination lock through a series of numbers, then used a key that she'd removed from her pocket. She swung the metal door open and rolled out a tray with raised edges. It protruded into the room like a small morgue slab. Laying the file carefully inside, she tapped it once with an open hand and then slid the vault shut, slamming the door.

She walked across the room to turn the large metal wheel of the exit door, and left without saying a word.

Wotan sat alone, the darkness settling around him like a cloak. In the dark, he cracked the knuckles of his right hand with his thumb. They snapped loudly, the sound echoing off the hard walls. He made a fist with his thumb inside and tightened it, cracking the joint. He repeated the same ritual with his left hand. Then he stood and walked to the door.