He looked down at Fowler again.
Or else it better be a fucking mystery why the three of you guys were down here alone.
I don’t know if I can do that, Bloome said to himself. These are the three guys I trusted the most, now that Jameson is gone. That’s why they were here tonight.
But Bloome knew he had to sell them out to save himself. He had to go get his neck cleaned up somewhere. Get rid of this vest. Then play dumb about this night when they ask about it tomorrow. And every other day for the rest of his life.
That feeling he had whenever they had a target identified, that cold chill in his gut, knowing they were going to put that man away . . . Bloome had that same feeling now. But for the first time, he was on the other end of it.
Bloome knew that Mason had the evidence to put him away forever. Those recordings, all of their conversations with Harris . . . Mason would take them right to the man who sent him here in the first place. And Darius Cole would now have the power to destroy him.
The war was over.
If he lets me live, Bloome thought, Cole will own me. For the rest of my life. Anything he tells me to do, I’ll have to do it.
Even if I get to Mason, or Quintero, or anyone else he sends . . . I’ll never be able to touch Darius Cole.
We thought that prison would keep us safe. It keeps him safe.
Bloome walked toward the tunnel. He had to see his other two men one more time. He felt smaller and smaller as he took each step toward the giant ring of light. Then as he disappeared into the earth, walking through the first puddle, the line came back to him one more time. That question that Sandoval had asked him.
Do you even fucking remember when you were a cop?
34
Eddie Callahan promised Sandra he would never do anything that would put him in handcuffs and take him away from his family again. He had promised her when he proposed to her. He had promised her when the police came to question him about the harbor. He had promised her when their twin sons were born.
Tonight he had broken that promise and put everything at risk.
Eddie had already locked up his sniper rifle in the gun cabinet. It was an H-S Precision Pro 2000 with a Leupold Mark 4 scope on the rail. Good thing he’d already had the scope sighted on the range because he wasn’t getting any practice shots tonight. Now he was waiting for Nick Mason to show up at his front door.
He picked up some of the toys off the floor. He was about to get a rag and wipe off the coffee table when he said to himself, What the fuck am I doing?
It was after two o’clock when they finally got there. If Eddie had any hopes of letting Sandra sleep through it, they ended as soon as she came padding out into the living room, wrapped up in her white robe.
“What’s going on?” she said. Then she saw Eddie holding open the door, his old friend Nick Mason walking into her living room, and then a woman with blood on her face.
The last thing Mason needed was another scream, but that’s what he got.
“What are you . . .” she started to say when she was done screaming. “Eddie, what are they doing here?”
“They’re coming in,” Eddie said.
“No they’re not! What the fuck are you—”
“Sandra, calm down! They need our help.”
“You called him before,” she said, coming over to Mason and standing in front of him while she tightened the belt on her robe. “That’s why Eddie left.”
It had been five years since Mason had seen this woman. She’d gained a few pounds, but otherwise she hadn’t changed. Never mind the friendship between the two men or everything they’d gone through growing up, Sandra would never see Mason as anything but the one man she needed to keep her husband away from at all costs.
Not that he could argue that point tonight.
“He needed my help,” Eddie said to her.
“In the middle of the night? Where did you go?”
“Never mind. Sandra, will you—”
“Eddie helped me,” Mason said. “That’s all you gotta know. And now I need something else. From both of you.”
“I’m calling the police,” Sandra said, crossing the room and picking up the phone.
“No cops!” Eddie said, taking the phone from her.
“Eddie, give me that fucking phone!”
“Listen to me,” Eddie said to her. “I’m only going to say this once. Our house?”
He gestured at the four walls.
“We wouldn’t have this house if it wasn’t for him. We wouldn’t be married. We wouldn’t have our boys. Everything in this house, everything you see, everything in our entire fucking life, we owe to that man. Everything.”
Her mouth hung open. She didn’t even try to respond.
“This woman needs to clean herself up,” Mason said, nodding to Diana. “Then she needs to sleep. You need to take care of her because she’s been through a lot.”
Diana gave her a thin smile. She looked like the most exhausted person who ever lived.
“Nobody can know she’s here,” Mason said. “You’d only be putting your family in danger.”