His fingers are flying over the laptop keys. I’m not sure what he’s looking for, but ever since he came back from dropping Ashleigh off at the cinema, he’s been eerily silent. Just tapping away on the one thing that keeps him totally sane. Access to information no one else has.
Ford has never filled Ronin and me in on what happened with Ashleigh and her baby, but he told Rook. She told Ronin, and Ronin told me. If Ford wanted it kept a secret, believe me, his mouth would’ve stayed shut. But he told Rook, and that means it’s considered Team knowledge.
This whole mess is getting more and more complicated by the day.
“You finding anything helpful on there, Ford?”
“Lots,” he huffs back. “But I need access to get answers.”
He continues his typing and I give up on the conversation as I turn into his apartment complex. I head over to his building and park in an empty spot I know belongs to him. As soon as I put the van in park, he’s out. I jump out after him and follow him up the stairs to the third floor, then walk through once he unlocks the door and enters.
The apartment is very generic. Just some basic furniture—couch, chair, lamps, tables—and that’s pretty much it.
Ford heads straight to the bedroom where he hides the hard drive that holds his hacking scripts and I head straight to the one that holds what I came for.
The guns.
I have almost fifty of them here and this makes me happy in the same way bike sex with Veronica does. All the rifles and shotguns are propped up against two walls, lined up like good little soldiers. After that Boulder job went FUBAR I told myself I was done with the guns. I meant it too. I was done. But luckily it took me about five minutes to come back to my senses. You need three things to pull off the shit we used to do.
Access to information. We got that with Ford.
A tight-as-fuck alibi. We pull that off with Ronin.
And security. That’s me. When we’re on a job I’m the lookout with Ronin. And I protect us at all costs.
I do that last part with guns.
Guns are the only real equalizer when you’re up against criminals as big as the ones we were f**king with in the past.
Ford was appalled when I started unloading all the guns last year. Especially after I killed our target. But that’s precisely why I have so many guns.
The Boulder Mistake, as we call it now, was a life-changing event. Killing someone is not something I take lightly. I’m not an angry, violent man. I don’t fight much, only when provoked or when Ronnie’s brother gets on my ass too hard. I’ve tussled with Ford and Ronin a few times, of course. But that’s just what guys do.
I played football in high school, I can take a beating. I’m not afraid to fight. I have no problem pummeling the shit out of people. But it’s not a habit I’ve developed. I’m pretty easy-going most days. And if I could go back and talk to my twenty-year-old self and tell him he’ll be killing someone in the very near future, I’m pretty sure my twenty-year-old self would laugh his ass off.
I feel very little guilt about actually taking that ass**le’s life. Especially now that we know that motherfucker was as dirty as they come. He really was directly tied to all the human trafficking shit Rook was involved in back in Chicago. Even if we did manufacture most of that story she told the police to cover our asses and take most of that particular branch of the crime ring down, these people deserved to take the fall.
And call me God for making that decision. Call me self-righteous. Or morally superior, or smug. I don’t care. I am.
I am better than those ass**les we took out. My whole team is better than those ass**les we took out.
So no, I’m not gonna feel guilty about killing that motherfucker. It was me or him.
I chose me.
And once we cross-checked the names of those guilty of buying and selling sex slaves out of Rook’s unassuming suburban Chicago barn and found him on it, I felt even more sanctimonious.
It happened and I live with the consequences. But guilt isn’t one of those consequences.
Looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life is.
And Ronin’s. And Ford’s. And now Ashleigh and Rook are included in this group too.
Sure, I f**ked up. Given the choice, I’d choose to not have to kill people. So yeah, we f**ked up.
And now that shit has come back into town to remind us. Give us a little homecoming queen wave from atop a parade-day float. ‘Hello, boys,’ that shit says. ‘Remember me?’
Hell f**king yeah, I remember.
Three and a half years ago
Ford and Ronin flank me as we get out of the van and walk up the driveway. They are calm. Not me. I’m a f**king mess of nerves. I feel funny. Not like how we usually feel before a job, all amped up on the adrenaline of knowing we are about to commit a crime that will net us millions of dollars of untraceable digital money.
No. That’s not how I feel at all.
I feel… wrong. “I feel wrong,” I say out loud for the twentieth time.
“Just relax,” Ronin whispers. “The father’s out of town on business, the mother’s up in Idaho Springs at some spa day thing. And Jennifer’s in class and work after. She told me all this yesterday.”
I know this. Ronin has said it over and over this morning, but I have this sick, sick feeling.
The beeps of the security alarm jolt me out of my unease and bring me back to what the f**k we’re actually doing.
We’re wearing work clothes for one. With the power company’s logo on them. Our white work truck has a large magnetic logo on the side as well.