Sandra’s mouth was still open.
“Nick,” Eddie said, “it’s okay. We got this. Don’t worry.”
Mason turned to face his friend.
“Promise me,” he said to him. “Promise me for both of you. Diana needs to stay here with you. If you don’t hear from me in three days, you need to get her out of town. Don’t take her to an airport. Don’t take her to a train station. Just drive her the fuck out of town. Get her a car somewhere. Pay cash. Then you can come back.”
“No,” Sandra said, finally finding her voice. “We can’t do this. You have no right—”
“You have no right to say no,” Mason said. “Not tonight.”
He turned to his friend and said, “I need this, Eddie.”
Eddie’s eyes went from Mason to his wife, then back to Mason. “Of course,” he said. “I told you I’d do anything for you.”
Sandra wrapped her bathrobe even tighter around herself. She swallowed hard and nodded her head once, but she didn’t look at him.
Eddie’s two kids appeared in the hallway. They were both in their pajamas, a Chicago Bears helmet on each boy’s chest. They came over to Eddie and held on to either leg, looking up at Mason like a monster had invaded their living room.
“Jeffrey and Gregory,” Mason said. “Right?”
“That’s right,” Eddie said.
Mason got down on one knee and looked at the boys. “I have a daughter,” he said to them. “Her name is Adriana.”
The boys both retreated behind Eddie’s legs.
“Sorry if we woke you up,” Mason said. He got back to his feet and gave Diana a quick hug.
“Stay inside,” he said to her. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”
“What are you going to do?” she said.
Mason took out his cell phone and looked at it. He’d received a dozen phone calls over the past few hours, all from Quintero. All of them unanswered.
“I’m going to end this,” he said.
35
Nick Mason waited for Frank Sandoval to arrive. He had done everything he had been told to do. Now he was going to do something else. Something for himself.
He was too tired to sleep. Too tired to close his eyes. He had seen too much since the day he had stepped through those prison gates from one life to the next.
The benches in Grant Park were all arranged in a great circle around the fountain. The water hadn’t been turned on yet. The air was cold, so he had his arms wrapped around himself. The black box was held tight between his forearm and his chest.
He had nowhere else to go. He waited there through the last hours of night until the dark horizon of the eastern sky started to lighten. A change almost too subtle to see unless you were watching for it. Black to something almost black and then to something almost purple. Mason sat and waited motionless through a hundred more shades until the sun finally started to rise.
He heard the traffic starting to hum on the roads surrounding the park. The city coming back to life for the day. He heard someone whiz by on the bike trail behind him.
He waited a few more minutes. The sun came up and sent its light across the surface of the lake. The boats all slept, covered and anchored in place. Nothing moved in front of him until he saw the man walking toward the fountain. A black silhouette against the blue dawn.
Mason stood up, stretched himself, worked the pain from his body. He walked over to where Sandoval waited for him.
“What am I doing here?” Sandoval said.
He was dressed in a dark blue windbreaker. Not his usual rumpled suit jacket. He wasn’t wearing a tie. His face was unshaven and his eyes still looked like he’d just gotten out of bed five minutes ago.
“I told the guy at the station five thirty,” Mason said, looking at his watch. “You’re two minutes late.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I thought you might want this.”
Mason handed him the hard drive. Sandoval took it and looked it over.
“Don’t take it to the station,” Mason said. “Don’t check it into Evidence or you’ll never see it again. That’s very important. Don’t tell any other cops you have it.”
“What is it?”
“Take it home,” Mason said, “and make a copy. Make ten copies. Then go through everything. You’ll know what to do next.”
Sandoval looked around them at the empty park.
“You brought me all the way down here, at the crack of dawn, to give me a hard drive?”
“You told me there’s nothing more dangerous than a dirty cop. Here’s your chance to take down a whole squad of them.”
Sandoval just stared at him.
“I know your real target is Cole,” Mason said. “But you’ll never get to him through me. This is what you get instead.”
Sandoval looked at the box again. “Who exactly are we talking about here?”
Mason didn’t answer.
“There were three SIS detectives found at Thornton Quarry,” Sandoval said. “Someone on the road heard gunshots and called it in. Do you know anything about that?”
Mason shook his head. “Haven’t seen the paper today.”