Dox frowned. “If we have to drop him, we’ll drop him. But my deal with Kanezaki was less-than-lethal methods in exchange for he won’t go pestering Livia. I mean to hold up my end, if at all possible.”
Not for the first time, Larison was impressed by the man’s loyalty. And, if he was being honest with himself, moved by it. In part because of the wonder of knowing it now extended to him. Before he could overthink it and change his mind, he said, “She’s lucky to have you.”
Dox smiled. “Maybe.” And then, as though reading Larison’s thoughts, added, “But then so are you.”
Larison didn’t disagree, but he wasn’t going to give Dox the satisfaction of saying so. “Well?” he said, extending his left hand toward Dox’s right. “You ready to get into character?”
Dox took hold of his hand and smiled. “My whole life.”
They walked off, hand in hand. It had actually been Dox’s idea. There were a lot of patterns an operator might run to spot opposition—sniper hides, elevated positions generally, flanking maneuvers . . . the list was long and varied. But whatever this guy Manus might be alert to, two men walking openly hand-in-hand probably wasn’t part of it.
And this was another thing Larison was still struggling with. Decades in the closet. His sexuality a lifelong torment he had worked so hard to conceal—from the military, even from his estranged wife. But Dox, and Rain . . . they knew. And just didn’t care. It mattered to them about as much as whether he was left-handed or right. If it meant so little to them, why was he still so . . . private about it? Nobody could hurt him with it anymore. And nobody who mattered wanted to. So why couldn’t he let it go? Something that was once a vulnerability no longer was. Why was that anything but a wonder, a relief?
They strolled along, seeing no one but an occasional jogger or vagabond. Dox kept up a medley of cover-for-action small talk—blather about Brutalist architecture and urban renewal and whatever else he’d learned about the park while researching it online. Larison had never known a sniper who liked to talk even half as much as Dox did. Most of them were as quiet as Larison himself. It had taken a while to get used to. The weird thing was, he’d actually come to enjoy it.
Now and then Dox would pause to extend a cellphone in front of them from a selfie stick as though snapping a picture. Another of Kanezaki’s toys—the phone was a dummy, while the stick was a twenty-six-inch extensible steel baton. Then they would link hands again and continue walking. Dox was carrying his own small-of-the-back pistol—the Wilson Combat Tactical Supergrade he favored—but there had been no need to discuss whose right hand would be free. From behind a scope in low light at a half mile out, there was no one better than Dox. But for pistol work, everyone recognized Larison was in his own league.
Though as Dox had said, hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
They walked. Dox talked and Larison periodically grunted responses, heart pounding steadily the way it always did in the moments before action, eyes sweeping the terrain.
They went around a corner. And there, fifty feet away, was Manus, coming straight toward them.
chapter
ten
DOX
The instant Dox saw Manus, he knew. Larison had been right: a reloader for sure.
Even under the rain parka the man was wearing, Dox could see he was thick-boned and heavily muscled. And while Larison had the build of someone who pumped a lot of iron and took supplements on top of it, and while Dox himself had once played tackle on his high school football team, Manus . . . It was like one of his parents had been an oak tree and the other a bank vault. For a second, Dox pictured the sumos and wondered what would have happened if they’d charged this guy. Whatever the outcome, it would have been the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object.
But none of those thoughts made it to the surface. If there was one thing he’d learned from John, and he’d learned more than a few, it was not just to act as if, but to feel it. And his feeling was, he was just a tourist taking a walk in the park, not a care in the world, enjoying the outdoors despite the steady drizzle. And if his heart was beginning to beat hard, well, that was only because he was excited to be here side by side with Larison, his special friend.