Marked Man by Archer Mayor

Author:Archer Mayor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, with Sam driving, she turned to him and asked, “You want to tell me what happened, or should we just drop by a pet store and drown a few puppies?”

Usually quick with a comeback, Willy remained silent at first, before quietly replying, “We see a lot of bad things in this job, don’t we?”

Intrigued, she glanced at his profile to find him gazing ahead almost peacefully. “True.”

“And more times than not, we write them off to bad parenting, poverty, drugs and alcohol, social disadvantages. Things like that.”

“Yes,” she answered neutrally, wondering where he was headed.

“So what happens when none of that’s there? Where do you go when the person in front of you is just bad, like other people are naturally kind or generous or thoughtful?”

The latter image made her think of Joe, who’d always exhibited such traits, even when things were going poorly for him. “You talking about Rob?”

“Nah,” he said, before correcting himself. “Well, yeah, in a way. I meant Nathan, but Rob made me think of it. The guy’s like a loan officer, you know? As bland as a cucumber, all neat and squared away. Sleek and without feeling. But dependable. His dad? Holy Christ, what a unit he must’ve been. And it doesn’t sound like changing his name from Nick to Nathan did anyone much good.”

Willy twisted in his seat to look at her fully. She’d never seen him so philosophically wound up; he was such a poster boy for the dispassionate sniper he’d once been—a calculating assessor of human targets. To hear him now, she half expected him to quote scripture.

He spared her that, returning to his analytical norm. “And Rob’s got the same DNA. Talking to him, I suddenly felt like you do when a cabin door flies open in the face of a blizzard. That blast of coldness…”

“You think he’s dirty?”

Again, he hesitated. “He could be. Hard to tell. It’s like all these people we been talking to, every one of them seems to be living in a tar pit, built for them by Nathan Lyon. I just can’t separate the ones he pushed, versus the ones who jumped in with both feet.”

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