"Maybe. Down the line." He leaned back against the counter. "But the militia's the hand. Just a pawn, we think. Craine's the head. He's the one we need, and that's the whole problem, because Craine as he sits right now is untouchable. Man's a Deputy Director at the FBI."
That landed cold.The incorruptibles.My father's curled mouth.
"You go at a sitting federal deputy director head-on," Tommy said, "you're not solving a problem, you're committing suicide and handing him the rope. So, we've pulled in. Battened down. Here, we can see them coming. Here, it's safe."
"Andhereis what, exactly?" I looked around the gleaming kitchen, the staff, the wealth of it. "You keep saying it like it's a word I'm supposed to know. What is this, Tommy?"
He took a breath. Took his time with it.
"Dominion Hall," he said, "is the headquarters of an international defense outfit. A private one. Big. Bigger than you'd believe sitting here." He met my eyes. "And we're the good guys, Brock. I know how that sounds. But we are."
I frowned at him. "That's what every private army on earth says. Right up until the day they're not."
"It's not that." His frown came back to match mine. "I'm telling you, it's not what you're picturing."
And then, he stopped. Just—stopped, with his mouth half open on the next thing, and I watched him hold it back, swallow it down, a man standing at the edge of a thing too big to just say in a kitchen. There was more. A whole world more, sitting right behind his teeth, and he wasn't letting it out.
What is it?I thought.What aren't you telling me?
I never got to ask.
Because another of the armed men came through the kitchen door, quick, and crossed straight to Tommy and said something low and urgent.
"Where?" Tommy asked, snapping around.
The man's eyes cut to me. Just a flick. Then back to my brother.
"Craine's been spotted," he said. "At his girl's place. The studio off Wentworth."
19
MARY CATHERINE
Ihad just put the olive oil away.
That was the ordinary moment when it happened—the groceries almost unpacked, the studio beginning to feel like something that could actually be lived in, the morning light coming through the east window in the way that made the canvases glow.
I had been thinking about the show. About which pieces spoke to each other and which ones needed to be finished and whether the large canvas in the corner was ready or whether it needed one more session. I had been—for the first time in recent memory—thinking about nothing except what I actually wanted to think about.
The knock at the door was three measured beats. Unhurried. The knock of a man who was certain he would be answered.
I went still.
Brock would have knocked differently. I knew this already, after one day, the way you knew things about people who'd been let close. Brock would have come up the stairs with weight—I would have heard him. This knock had arrived from silence.Whoever was on the other side of that door had come up the stairs without making a sound.
I crossed to the door and opened it.
The man on the landing was not tall. That was the first thing—I had expected tall, for some reason, and he was not. Medium height, well-made suit, dark tie, the kind of face that had been handsome once and had organized itself into something more useful: authority. Gray at the temples, precisely trimmed. Eyes that did their accounting the moment I opened the door and showed nothing of the results.
"Miss Donovan," he said. Not a question. He knew who I was.
"Yes," I said, because there was nothing else to say.
"My name is Dominic Craine." He smiled. It didn't reach the eyes, which had already moved past me into the studio. "I wonder if I might come in for a moment."
Everything in me said no. Everything in me said close the door and call someone, though I didn't have anyone specific to call for this particular situation, which was itself the problem. But there was something in the way he stood—the absolute, unhurried certainty of a man who was accustomed to doors opening for him—that made the direct refusal feel like a thing with consequences I couldn't see yet.
"What is this about?" I said.
