Devils in Exile (36 page)

“So how do we do this?” he said.

Lash had never got a decent read on Maven until now. “Black Falcon Terminal. The mess that went down. You bandits were there, weren’t you?”

Maven nodded.

“You came down and saved my ass. Why?”

Maven shrugged. “I don’t even know.”

Lash liked that answer. He let go of his sidearm and leaned forward, folding his hands on the table.

“Okay, here’s the thing. You come to me at an awkward time. I don’t want to say you went and turned yourself in to the wrong guy, but … see, you wouldn’t know this, but I got my task force taken away from me. After that clusterfuck at Black Falcon, the one that was meant for you. Yeah. So they offered me reassignment overseas. And I was all set to walk, I even had this letter, this pretty little thing, all typed out. Had my boy proofread it for me—that’s what I’m paying his tuition for, right?” Lash smiled at himself. “But I couldn’t do it. I don’t know. Couldn’t go out like that. And that’s when it occurred to me. See, overseas means less oversight. More wiggle room. The game we’re playing here, the street game—it’s just a cycle. A carousel going round and round. And the cycle is endless, you know that. All a man can hope to do is define himself in it. And you did that, you made it to the center, flipped the off switch. Stopped the fucker dead. Even for just a day.”

Maven straightened a bit. He sensed something coming, something he hadn’t expected at all. What was it Danielle had said to
him that day in Gridley, against the flat edge of a painted rock by the side of the railroad tracks?
Don’t you know by now that nothing ever happens the way you think it will?

“This is my last chance to truly impact this game,” said Lash. “I don’t see anything left for me but to go all in. And to go all out. And if they don’t like it? Hell, in my mind, I’m already gone. Like you.”

Lash hesitated a moment. It was reckless, what he was about to do—but recklessness was exactly what the situation required.

This guy had something. Something Lash could channel and use.

“Long windup, but here’s the pitch.” Lash laid a hand flat on the table, calling for a new card from the dealer. “What if, instead of turning you in—I was to offer you a job instead?”

Chuck Hogan is the bestselling author of
The Standoff, The Blood Artists, The Killing Moon,
and
Prince of Thieves,
which was awarded the Hammett Prize for excellence in crime writing and is being made into a major motion picture by Warner Bros. He is also the author, with Academy Award–winning
Pan’s Labyrinth
filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, of
The Strain
trilogy. He lives with his family outside Boston.