playing games, Sterling? You’re the subject of a federal investigation, and you’re blatantly meeting with Bratva on a street corner.”
“I wasn’t going to meet a Koltsov in a dark alley.” I drop my voice. “You knew I’d have to do this.”
“Yeah,” he matches my volume, “but that doesn’t mean you get to walk away without consequences.”
I guess our alliance is over. It’s possibly the shortest-lived one in history. I’m not surprised. Noah sees everything in black and white. He always will. I can’t expect him to understand gray.
“I’d like to report a crime,” I say, dipping a hand into my other jacket pocket and drawing out a neatly-folded manilla envelope. I slide it across the table to Noah, who makes an annoyed grimace while opening it. He removes a small, digital audio recorder.
“What’s this?”
“It seems one of the local businessmen got the wrong idea about our friend Luca. Can you believe he asked Luca to kill his wife?”
Noah looks like he can believe it. Probably since he’s privy to Luca’s FBI dossier. Still, he has to listen in order to figure out where to take the conversation. But he hates having to catch up, and he despises me watching him do it.
He clicks the play/pause button, and an audio recording of this evening’s comms starts playing. Noah glowers as he listens to our banter until the moment Randolph agrees to a price of $50,000.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he says, tossing the recorder down on the table in disgust.
“You’re always looking for bad guys. I got you one gift-wrapped,” I say, leaning back comfortably in my chair. “Consider it a thank you present for helping me get Sutton back.”
“That’s all this is? You don’t expect me to just take this and walk away, do you?”
“Not really. But you probably should.”
His whole body flexes, his massive, linebacker frame straining against the seams of his suit. I probably shouldn’t bait him so much—but I can’t help myself when he makes it so easy.
“You haven’t changed. You’d rather step in shit than back away,” he says, pocketing the recorder.
“Someone has to do the dirty work,” I say, savoring the look of outrage this produces. “We can’t all sit around polishing our idealistic attitudes.”
“You really don’t think you’re in the wrong, do you? You never have. Not then. Not now.”
“What would you know about hard choices? You almost got Luca, Jack and I killed. You were dead fucking wrong about what was going on in Afghanistan, and a lot of people died.”
“I didn’t kill them. I didn’t steal guns. Someone has to draw the line in the sand—”
“And you expect to draw that line for everyone else?” I ask.
“You’re a piece of shit, Sterling. You were a piece of shit when I met you, and you’re a piece of shit now. All the people in your life—they’ll end up paying for your mistakes,” he says, jabbing at me with his index finger. “You know it’s true.”
I stand, forcing myself to button my suit jacket, telling myself to walk away, even as my hand curls into a fist.
“I know you want to take a swing at me, Ford,” Noah says, reading me like a book. “Go ahead and try.”
“So you can arrest me? I’m not that stupid.”
“You think I care about that?” He gets up, edging closer to me until we’re chest to chest, and makes a show of pulling his FBI badge out of the interior of his suit pocket before tossing it on the table. “I need to make sure you understand me perfectly. When I nail you—and I will—it won’t be for picking a fight. That’s too cheap for you. I’m going to crucify you. I’m going to make you regret every bad decision you ever made. One day soon, you’re going to look up from the smoking crater that is your life, and you’ll see me standing there, wearing this same smug grin.”
I can’t help myself. I shift my weight backwards as if I’m going to throw an overhand right, but tuck my forearm in at the last minute, slipping inside his guard and striking the side of his head with my elbow.
The blow does almost nothing—aside from piss him off. He just shakes his head sharply, like a bear trying to figure out who dared to throw something at him.
Noah takes two choppy steps forward, his arms raised like a boxer’s, but instead of throwing a punch, he feints. I step backward, bringing my own guard up,