Page 159 of The 9th Man

He stepped over to her and checked for a pulse.

None. Dammit.

He freed the gun from her hand.

“When can you deliver the items?” Rowland asked.

“Couple of days. It won’t be a problem.”

“You can start to work then. Talley said you were resourceful. A man not to be taken lightly.”

He continued to stare at Jillian. How was this going to play out? He’d had no idea. He’d been improvising. Making it up as he went. And he’d been hoping this moment would not come. The idea had been to spur some conflict, where things could be ended in the heat of battle. Like in combat. You never thought about what you were doing, you just did it. Thinking about it took too much time, and time was a commodity in short supply on the battlefield and in the intelligence business. How many peoplehadhe killed? He really did not know. But there was one thing about every one of those kills that was the same. None were ever in cold blood. Each was a matter of survival. Kill or be killed. No third choice. Here, there was no heat of battle. Just him and an old man who’d spent his life dealing out misery to others. And all for favor or profit. Jack Talley had been a good man. A little lost at the end, but still good. Jillian murdered him, as she had David Eckstein and her grandfather. Had she reaped what she’d sown?

Afraid so.

True, this could play out through the media and the internet with the book, the photos, the film, and all the other assorted sundries. But none of that would offer justice for the men who’d died. Their lives would have little to no meaning, as Rowland fought the truth through lawyers until the world tired of the spectacle and moved on to the next. Which would not take long. Stephanie had told him to handle the situation as he deemed best.

“Sometimes you’re going to have to do things you might not like,” Malone once told him.

“How do you know if you’re right?”

“You don’t. You just do it.”

So he stood, turned, and fired.

The 9mm round struck the old man square in the chest and sent him reeling back in the chair, eyes wide, mouth agape. The gun dropped from Rowland’s grasp. Breath wheezed. Luke shot him again, this time in the head. All sound and movement ceased. He lowered the weapon. Was that murder?

No. That was justice.

He still held his phone. Right before he found the pictures to show Rowland he’d hit theRECORDbutton. Most everything had been memorialized.

Including Thomas Rowland’s confession.

77

College Park, Maryland

Tuesday — April 7 — 10:40A.M.

LUKE ENTERED THE SECURED STORAGE FACILITY LOCATED WITHIN THENational Archives and Records Administration Building. This was the place where some of the most valuable national artifacts were stored under lock and key and high security.

He’d left the Bahamas Sunday night. Rowland’s and Jillian’s bodies were not found until Monday afternoon when officials boarded the anchored yacht, after having been tipped off to a disturbance. He imagined that Thomas Rowland had far more enemies than friends, and that even the friends were tenuous as most had been bought or coerced. Few would mourn his passing. Jillian either. As far as he knew her only family had been Benji, and he now knew what she’d thought of him. She would be buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave somewhere in the Bahamas, no one even bothering to claim the body. A part of him was sad at that reality, but another recalled Deuteronomy 19:21.

You must show no pity. Life for life.

Stephanie had not questioned what happened. She merely listened to his report and nodded when he finished, asking, “You did what was necessary in the situation to protect yourself?”

He nodded.

“That’s good enough for me.”

He’d returned to Maryland to see Victoria Sandberg. There were a couple of details that still needed fleshing out. And he hated loose ends.

“You ready for me?” he asked her.

“Everything is out.”

Stephanie had made all the arrangements with the head of the national archives, obtaining the necessary permissions. Victoria led him to a second-floor conference room where two large wooden cases lay atop a wooden table. She opened one of them to display a rifle. But not just any rifle. An Italian Fucile di Fanteria, an infantry weapon, Modello 91/38, manufactured at the Royal Arms Factory in Terni, Italy, sometime in 1940. Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle.