Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

A smile started and spread wider and wider over my face as I stood staring at her. Beer foam spilled over onto my hand, and I kept smiling. I don’t think I can properly describe how happy seeing her made me.

She was tan and glowing and looked fabulous.

“You look… fabulous,” I said.

“Yes, I do, Mike,” she said. “Is that so surprising?”

“No. Fortuitous, is how I’d put it.”

“For who?”

I was speechless for the second time that night. I was really losing my touch.

“Hey, you want to hear some rock music at the Sugar Bowl?”

Mary smiled.

I smiled back.

“You wake up Seamus,” she said, rolling her Irish eyes. “I’ll get my flip-flops.”

Chapter 98

THE SAFE HOUSE APT had rented on 29th Street between Lexington and Third was a small brick town house that actually had a one-car garage. After he coded open the box on the sidewalk, he drove the S65 in and closed the gate behind him. He left the convertible running as he grabbed the money-filled suitcases piled on the front seat. This wouldn’t take long.

In the back of the loft-style space’s bedroom closet, he took out a North Face knapsack. Inside were several driver’s licenses and passports with his picture on them.

He’d paid a hundred thousand dollars for them to a Canadian counterfeiter who’d just gotten out of jail. They were excellent forgeries, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. He’d picked up a few things from the Intel people he used to run with in his other life. Names of folks who could get you things. Guns. Documents. Whatever. It was all about the networking.

As he shouldered the bag of documents, he glanced at the bulging garment bag above it. In it were the clothing and equipment and research he’d done to prepare for his final hit. He stared at it for a second, regretfully. All that recon for nothing. A shame, he thought, heading outside. Oh, well. Next life.

Back inside the garage, he sat for a moment in the front seat of the S65, thinking. He’d been planning on heading down to New Orleans, where a pretty girl he’d gone to City College with was living, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d stirred up one hell of a hornet’s nest here with all these killings. What if the news had gotten to her?

He finally decided to ditch that idea and head down the coast to Key West for some extended R & R. Dip his toe into the Gulf of Mexico until he figured out his next move. With the bulging suitcases beside him now, he could certainly take his time.

He hit the garage door and cranked the Benz. He sat in the car, listening to the purring thunder of its engine, as he stared out at the open road. It was a warm and lovely night. A haze hovered along the edges of the str

eet lamps down the slope of 29th Street. It was one of those magical moments in New York when it feels like it’s all yours: the buildings, the streets, all of it built for you, waiting on you, pivoting on you.

He kept sitting there. What the heck was he doing? What was he waiting for? He was done now. Time to hit the road and see exactly how free $8 million could make him. How good he could make himself feel.

But he didn’t go. Instead, he shut off the car and hit the garage door down and went back inside. When he came out again he was holding the garment bag. He laid it down on the front seat on top of the money and stared at it.

He was probably being foolish, but he just couldn’t leave things like this. Fuck what the lawyer, Duques, had said about Lawrence’s having changed his mind. He knew what Lawrence would have wanted him to do. He understood the big man better than anyone. Maybe better than the guy understood himself.

Lawrence had done so much for him. It wasn’t about the money. He realized it never had been. This was about friendship. About faith, respect. Lawrence had been the father he never had. You couldn’t put a price tag on that.

Besides, he thought as he opened the garage door again and revved the engine.

He always completed the mission.

He unzipped the bag and took out the MapQuest sheet for the final target and turned on the Mercedes’s nav system.

Point of start? the screen asked.

Manhattan, he typed.

Point of destination?