Page 24 of Go First
People who asked about his memories of the war expected sorrow, trauma, the polite vocabulary of damage.He had learned to let them think that.They offered sympathy like coins dropped in a beggar’s cup, and he took it with a nod.They would never understand.
He had loved the war.
The simplicity of it.The certainty.
And Cox knew that.Had understood.Remembered him doling out a ladle of soup in that shelter, tall with that big old silver prophet-beard.Oklahoma City.Cranktown.Jakes the only one in that whole, shuffling line of them with teeth.
“Miss it, doncha, soldier?”
“What?”
“The war.”
“Whatchu say, old man?”
But Cox just ducked his head.Carried on ladling out the soup like he hadn’t spoken.That was how they first met.
A truck’s horn blared far below, yanking him back to the present.
The studio footage still rolled on the monitor, Harper’s figure now framed by the glittering arch of Studio B.Jakes flexed his fingers, the muscles in his forearms tightening as the memory drained away.
Time to work.
He laid out the tools on the table with the slow precision of a craftsman.
First the vial of baclofen—liquid relaxant, pharmaceutical purity.He measured the dose with a practised hand.Eight milligrams would do it, based on the preacher’s bulk and the lazy weight of his step.Eighteen seconds, perhaps twenty, before muscle turned to water.
Next the scalpel: carbon steel, balanced to a hair, the scent of the whale oil still pungent and sharp.He held it up to the light, tested the edge with the soft pad of his thumb.
Then the six-inch nail, cold and black, sharpened at one end to a fine wicked point.It would carry the inscription when the work was done.
A length of nylon cord.A syringe.Two sterile swabs.
He worked without hurry, the way he had in Basra when a single slip of sound could bring death from an unseen barrel.
Outside, the Greek woman downstairs began her evening ritual, thumping her broom handle against her ceiling—his floor—in some private symphony of complaint.Three sharp thuds, a pause, then three more.
Jakes allowed himself the flicker of a smile.
The world remained full of noises: broomsticks, truck horns, the cheap static hiss of the city.But inside this room there was only the quiet weight of purpose.
He slid each item into its place in the black canvas pack, the motion fluid and unthinking.Drugs, scalpel, nail.
Order was everything.
Order was holy.
And soon, William Harper would learn what it meant.
CHAPTER TEN
Kate had never been a fan of early mornings, but she liked Saturday mornings least of all.Something about the way the city still slept while she was up and moving gave her a sense of weary injustice, as though she was being cheated of her entitlement by everyone else’s snores.
Marcus, of course, was chipper.
He slouched across the diner booth opposite her, already halfway through a plate stacked with pancakes, eggs and bacon, his grin as unrepentant as a schoolboy skipping class.“You’re makin’ that face again.”
Kate stifled a yawn with her hand.“What face?”