Page 127 of Denied Access

“Do you know why you’re here?” Lewis said after it became obvious that Mitch Rapp was content to pass the morning in silence.

“Greta.”

Lewis scratched something indecipherable onto the yellow legal pad he was balancing on his lap. This was not so that he could remember what Rapp had said. Instead, he was writing to mask his own reaction.

Surprise.

“What makes you say that?” Lewis said.

“Give me a little credit, Doc. You brought me back to the place where it all began to remind me what I’d sacrificed to get this job. Now you want to know whether I intend to keep it.”

Lewis’s reply was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream. The voice wasn’t recognizable, but the gravelly basso that followed it certainly was. In a nondescript-looking barn on the other side of the property, Stan Hurley was imparting some rough wisdom to the next crop of candidates slated to join the Orion program.

“How long is he going to be back in the schoolhouse?” Rapp said.

Lewis shrugged. “Believe it or not, he’s here of his own accord. After returning from Moscow, he asked for a meeting with me, Irene, and Stansfield. He said he had fences to mend and requested to oversee the training of the next batch of recruits.”

“Hurley volunteered to come in from the field? If that’s not a sign of the Apocalypse I don’t know what is.”

Rapp made the comment with a ghost of a smile, but Lewis kept his features carefully neutral.

He was good, this kid.

Good and getting better.

Where before Rapp had been primarily concerned with the martial aspects of the job, Irene’s prize assassin now seemed to be picking up a few HUMINT tricks of the trade. As a former Green Beret and now employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, Lewis was used to playing for the varsity team. A colleague considered average in Lewis’s world would be a top achiever in any other organization. But even on this extended talent scale, Rapp stood head and shoulders above the rest. The question Lewis was trying to answer this morning wasn’t whether the assassin could still do the job for which he was trained.

It was whether he still wanted to.

“Then let’s cut to the chase,” Lewis said, crossing his legs. “How do things stand with you and Greta?”

The smile vanished and the icy silence returned.

This time, Lewis was determined not to be the one who broke it. Losing Rapp would be a horrific blow to the Orion program and the nation’s security writ large, but what they were trying to build was bigger than any one man. As George Washington had so elegantly displayed by resigning from the presidency, no one was irreplaceable.

Not even Rapp.

“We broke up.”

The three words landed with the force of three granite boulders.

Rapp was one of his most guarded patients, which was saying something, since Lewis’s clientele was made up almost exclusively of spies. Trying to peer behind Rapp’s walls was nearly impossible, but he knew that the assassin’s relationship with Greta wasn’t a youthful fling. Rapp did not love quickly or easily. In fact, Lewis was willing to bet that he hadn’t used this word in the context of a romantic relationship since Mary.

“Why?” Lewis said.

Rapp’s expression changed to something Lewis couldn’t quite read. No longer the stoic assassin, but neither was there any hint of the earlier mirth. Had he been pressed to name the emotion paired with the assassin’s features, Lewis would have used one he’d never before associated with Rapp.

Resignation.

“Her grandparents’ death rocked her to the core.”

“And she blamed you?”

Rapp shook his head as he gave Lewis an annoyed look.

Lewis realized that he’d just violated a therapist’s cardinal rule—never interrupt your patient. It wasn’t so much that he’d broken in because of rudeness as surprise. Rapp seldom revealed what he was truly thinking, and on the rare occasions when he did, his feelings came in staccato bursts. It had never occurred to him that Rapp might continue speaking.

“I’m sorry,” Lewis said. “Please continue.”