The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)(11)

“I don’t track Livia, Dox. Out of respect for her, and for you. And for myself. I’ve seen too many people in this gig get addicted to the voyeurism.”

“Sure, loveint and all that.”

“Loveint is the least of it. People lose sight of the purpose. I’m not going to let that happen to me.”

The truth was, Dox didn’t find the declaration reassuring. It felt to him like protesting too much. But he had bigger concerns for the moment than Kanezaki’s self-awareness about the allure of power. “Is Livia in danger?” he said.

“I don’t have any reason to think so, no.”

“You’re sure?”

“Based on everything I can tell, I think Rispel believes Diaz is the problem, and that eliminating her will solve it. She’s probably right, too. Assuming they can make it look natural.”

“Natural? Wonder why they didn’t reach out to John? Or maybe they did. But he’s retired, and besides, he won’t take a job if it involves a woman.”

John Rain, half-American and half-Japanese, was once so adept at “natural causes” that he had been the go-to man for elements of the Japanese government and for the CIA. But age, conscience, and maybe the love of an ex-Mossad agent named Delilah had conspired to impel him to find a way out of all that. Still, pound for pound, even now Rain was the most formidable urban operator and tactician Dox had ever known.

“I don’t know if they tried Rain,” Kanezaki said. “My guess is they didn’t. The guy they’re bringing in is more deniable. A ghost named Marvin Manus. Whose only known connection is to former NSA director Theodore Anders.”

“Didn’t Anders drown a few years ago?”

“That’s the official story. The truth is, he was crushed to death. Back broken. Rispel says Manus did it, but who knows?”

“And Rispel says she wants me to, what, drop this guy for killing Anders?”

“Correct. But I think what she really wants is for you to drop Manus after he kills Diaz.”

“And what do you want?”

“I want you to stop him.”

“You mean preempt him?”

“No, not like that. Not kill him. Just . . . stop him.”

“By what, sweet-talking him?”

“Look, I’m not going to micromanage you. I don’t want Diaz dead, and I don’t want Manus dead, either. He’s more valuable to me alive.”

Dox didn’t even have to ask why. With Kanezaki, it was always about the information.

It wasn’t his kind of job. And he didn’t need the money. He realized that’s why Kanezaki had mentioned Labee. Go ahead and turn me down, I’ll just call in that marker your girlfriend owes me. Yeah, of course that was it. It had worked, hadn’t it?

Not that Labee was his girlfriend exactly. He didn’t know what label to put on it, and wasn’t inclined to try. Whatever it was, it was about as unlikely a thing as he could have imagined, which is probably why the gods or fate or the universe or whatever had decided to have a laugh by making it happen. Dox had been in Cambodia, hunting for a guy named Sorm as part of a contract. And Labee had been in Thailand, where she had tracked down the men who had trafficked her and her sister, Nason, when they’d been girls. They’d run into each other, somehow gotten past their initial suspicions, and realized they had the same objectives, albeit for different reasons. Then they’d killed a bunch of people who had it coming and then some. She’d told him things about her past, things she’d never told anyone but that he needed to know to understand the forces they were up against. Maybe it was the way she’d trusted him. Or how brave she was. Or beautiful. But the truth was, when it came to love, you could come up with all the articulable reasons in the world and in the end it wouldn’t mean a thing. But he did love her, he knew that. He’d never said it for fear of scaring her off, but he did.

When it came to Kanezaki, though, none of that mattered. What mattered was what might be negotiated on Labee’s behalf.

“If I take this thing,” Dox said, “it squares Livia’s debt with you?”

“I wouldn’t say squares, but—”

“Squares, son. That’s the deal. I save Ms. Diaz via less-than-lethal means, and Livia owes you nothing, not even a cup of coffee if you happen to be in town. You want it or not?”

There was a pause. Kanezaki, with his theatrical pauses. If things didn’t work out at CIA, he could always teach a course on negotiation.

“All right,” Kanezaki said. “Do this, and Livia and I are square.”

Dox spotted the loophole. “Not just square to date. Square forever. Even if she asks for your help again, with Guardian Angel or whatever.”

He was aware he was revealing too much, that Kanezaki would use it as leverage next time. But the damn rascal was already using how much he cared about Labee. And besides, the point wasn’t to protect himself. It was to protect her.

“Come on, Dox. I don’t know what she might ask of me in the future.”

“Neither do I, and I don’t care. Those are my terms.”

“Okay. But then next time she asks me to go out on a limb for her, what’s my incentive?”

Damn, he hadn’t thought of that. “All right. But whatever she might ask of you going forward, when it’s time to collect you come to me first, you son of a bitch.” Which of course Kanezaki was going to do anyway. After all, he’d just done it now.