He had a point, particularly now, with unknown Russians entering his equation on Berg’s side. But that was no reason not to keep going.
JJ shot him in the chest, the force momentarily stapling him to the sofa, his shirt bloodied and wet. He spared him the head shot, thinking of his wife or whoever discovered him, so for a while Pearson sat there staring at him with a look of total shock, like he’d believed the information would buy his own life as well as his children’s. Or perhaps he’d thought it possible to reason and discuss his way out of it, that JJ could be drawn into reasoning and discussing too, and death made to creep away again.
But whatever the cause of that dumbfounded expression, it probably served as some explanation for the way he’d been with JJ from the beginning. Pearson had no idea what it was really like; he’d never been any closer to risk than sticking pins in maps. And then he’d come up against it in his own home and realized too late that he was out of his depth, like a peacetime general thrown into a guerrilla campaign. No wonder he looked shell-shocked.
After a few seconds though, he began to come out of it, his eyes working rapid expressions as everything else shut down around them, his mind finding a focus one more time. He began to mouth something and JJ moved toward him. Normally when people had the chance to speak it was something about it not being fair, like dying was a game where the best team always won. Pearson though said in a breathy whisper, “Don’t hurt my children.”
“I won’t,” JJ answered him, though in one way or another it seemed a little late for assurances.
He’d considered not killing Pearson but, as compliant as he’d seemed at the end, the fact was JJ had forced his way into his home, held him at gunpoint, threatened his kids. Part of the art of staying alive was knowing that a man like Pearson would never have let that go. He’d have waited for the right opportunity maybe, but he’d have taken his revenge sooner or later.
JJ watched him die, checked his pulse to be certain, then stood and looked around the room, a fresh early-morning quality about it. He pulled the cord hanging from the wooden seagull and watched its wings and body move in an easy rhythmic flight that took it nowhere. He locked the door as he left and took the key with him, mindful that it was a room the kids were probably in and out of all the time.
He moved quickly down the stairs then and out of the house, the same noises still constant in the kitchen behind him. And outside he moved briskly along the street, the sky edging toward darkness, a hollow chill in the air that gave the lie to the summery warmth of the afternoon.
He’d walked twenty yards or so when he noticed a woman coming toward him in a smart business suit, glasses, attractive but severely professional looking. He knew instinctively that it was Pearson’s wife, and as she got closer thought he could even see a resemblance between her and the girl in the photograph.
He studied her face in the moments as they passed. She looked full of fatigue, heavy with it, like she couldn’t wait to get in and relax, take her shoes off, have a drink, mess around with the kids, simple pleasures that were a long way off now.
A little farther along the street he turned and watched as she walked up the steps, opened the door. It felt like if he waited there a few minutes more he’d hear a scream break through the stillness of the September air. It didn’t happen like that in real life though; in real life there was only the depressing silent yelling of the street itself, bleak, desolate.
He kept walking, dragged down inside by the thought of that woman, and by the memory of her husband’s final words to him before being shot. It had all been a waste, a pointless cavalry charge that had gotten him no nearer. And all because he’d wanted to avoid the awkwardness of meeting a victim’s family, the irony of it claustrophobic, and even more so now because he would have to meet them anyway.
Perhaps Pearson had been right to be contemptuous of him for being nothing more than a killer, someone who’d forgotten how to think beyond killing. Holden was the only option, something he’d already acknowledged to himself, and yet he’d refused to act on it, a day’s delay at a cost of three people, one of whom had been a friend, another as unconnected as Aurianne had been.
Pearson JJ normally wouldn’t have regretted; he was the kind of sneering, inflated guy who invited violence. But he’d killed him in his home, which made it harder somehow, the knowledge of that brightly colored study that would never be the same, the businesswoman whose life was going into a tailspin even as he walked away from her.