Chapter 15 #4
Her fingers uncurled from his shirt. Slid up his chest. Over his shoulders. Into his hair. The dark strands were soft between her fingers.
When he finally pulled back—slowly, reluctantly, as if it hurt to stop—his forehead dropped to hers. Both of them breathing hard. Like they’d been running.
“I love you, Britta.” West’s voice came out wrecked.
Rough. Absolutely certain. “I don’t want to wait three years.
I don’t want to wait three days. If I have to stand in the shadows to make sure you’re safe—if I have to be the secret boyfriend no one knows about—I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to be with you.”
Britta’s eyes opened. Her hands slid from his hair to frame his face. Made him look at her. “No.” Her voice came out fierce. “No shadows. No sidelines. No standing back.”
“Your father—”
“Gave his blessing. You’re in, bub.” Britta’s thumbs stroked West’s cheekbones.
Felt the stubble. The warmth of his skin.
The slight dampness from tears he probably didn’t know he’d cried.
“Said God made me exactly who I’m supposed to be and I need to stop fighting to be what everyone else needs and just be myself. ”
West’s throat worked. His eyes searched hers. “So we can—”
“Be together. Now. Not in three years. Now.” Britta held on tighter. Eliminated every molecule of space between them. “You’re not in the shadows, West. You’re in the center. With me. Where you belong.”
West smiled at her, so much in his eyes, and then he leaned close, whispered in her ear. “Your detail’s not leaving.”
“No,” she whispered back. “They’re not. But it’s okay. They know I’m going to kiss you often.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Okay then.”
The screen door opened. Linda appeared with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses. “All done? Good.” She smiled. “I assume you’re staying for dinner?”
West didn’t take his eyes off Britta. “We’re staying. For dinner. Maybe longer.” He looked at his mom. “Hope that’s okay.”
“I guess I’ll manage,” she said and kissed his cheek. “I’ll set places for five.” She glanced at Patterson and Chávez standing near the house and waved.
Chávez gave her a nod.
Britta turned back to West. Then, “Wait—did you read—”
“Yes,” he said. “Eva.”
“Oh no—”
“Oh yes.” He smiled. “What’s the line? ‘I choose you. Not because you make my life easier. Because you make it matter.’”
Oh. “I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too.” West kissed her again. Soft. Sure. “And I’m never letting you go.”
“Promise?”
“I’m on duty, forever.”
“Oh no. This is going to be—”
“Fun,” he said. “Very, very fun.” Then he kissed her again.
And it was.
PRIVATE MEMORIAL GARDEN, VIRGINIA
The hymn started out soft. A woman’s voice, clear and aching, carrying across the small cemetery tucked behind a grove of oak trees.
“‘I need Thee ev’ry hour, most gracious Lord; No tender voice like Thine can peace afford.’”
York Newgate stood with his hands clasped in front of him, watching the simple casket draped with an American flag. The wind rustled through the trees, pulling at the edges of the flag, making it ripple.
Seven people had come. Seemed a crowd for a man who’d spent sixteen years as a ghost.
Timea stood closest to the grave. Black dress, black veil.
Her shoulders straight despite the weight pressing down on them.
Beside her, Fia. Sixteen years old in a dark-blue dress, holding her mother’s hand.
The girl’s face was pale but composed. She hadn’t cried yet.
York had watched her. Waiting for the tears. They hadn’t come.
Maybe they would later. Maybe they wouldn’t come at all.
Grief was different for everyone.
“‘I need Thee ev’ry hour, stay Thou nearby; Temptations lose their pow’r when Thou art nigh.’”
RJ stood next to York. His wife’s hand rested in the crook of his elbow. She wore a navy dress and heels that squished into the lawn when they walked. She glanced at him now and again, also unsure how to feel, if the set of her shoulders was any tell.
She was quiet. Beside her, listening to the hymn. Her thumb traced small circles on his arm through his suit jacket.
Ham stood behind them. Logan Thorne beside him.
President Isaac White stood apart from the main group. At the edge of the tree line. Secret Service flanking him. He’d come quietly. No press. No announcement. Just a president honoring a man who’d saved his daughter’s life by throwing himself out of a plane.
But a traitor to his country because he’d believed lies and bought into vengeance.
“‘I need Thee ev’ry hour, in joy or pain; Come quickly and abide, or life is vain.’”
The hymn swelled. The woman’s voice stronger now. York recognized her—one of the CIA chaplains who served families in crisis. She’d sung at a dozen funerals over the years. Always this hymn or something like it.
Always about need. About clinging to something bigger when everything else fell apart.
York thought about Alan Martin. No—James Cooper. The name on the temporary headstone.
JAMES COOPER.
No inscription, but what could they say? Alan was, at best, confusing. At worst, a man at war with his own life. He’d masterminded so much chaos, killed people, cried when he heard his wife’s voice. Held his daughter’s hand for thirty seconds before they’d rushed him to surgery.
The one who’d run for sixteen years searching for something he couldn’t name.
Peace.
York hoped he got it, somehow. That in the mystery between life and death, there was a final offer of repentance.
“‘I need Thee ev’ry hour, most Holy One; O make me Thine indeed, Thou blessed Son.’”
The hymn ended. The woman’s voice faded into silence.
The chaplain stepped forward. Opened his Bible. Read something from Psalms about valleys and shadows and fear.
York had heard it before. Would hear it again. The words were true. Comforting, even. But they felt distant. Like they belonged to someone else’s grief.
His grief was different.
He’d known him only as Alan. Before the boat explosion. Before Budapest. Before everything went wrong.
They’d been partners. Friends, even.
Alan had come to York’s first wife’s funeral.
Had known his pain. Had known the man York became before, well, before God had reached in and redeemed him.
But York very easily could have—perhaps even had—become Alan Martin.
Not a traitor, but a man unmoored. Cast to and fro by his own anger, by vengeance, by a questionable moral compass.
And yet God…
He squeezed RJ’s hand, hearing the words in his mind: There, but for the grace of God, go I.
So yes, York’s grief was complicated. Layered. York mourned the friend he’d lost sixteen years ago. Mourned the man that friend had become. Mourned the man he’d been again at the end.
Too many losses in one person.
The chaplain finished.
Timea walked forward and put a rose on the casket. Then Fia did the same. They stepped back as the officiant read the final burial words.
York went quiet.
“What are you thinking?” RJ said softly.
“That I wish I’d found him sooner.”
“It wasn’t for the lack of hunting.”
“Yeah. But I should have…” York stopped. Shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“Should have what?”
“I don’t know…asked more questions. Like, why?”
She looked at him. “I think you were too busy trying to figure out why he bombed a Russian subway. Or killed my boss in Seattle. Or maybe trained an assassin—”
“I think Damien trained himself.”
“Or tried to kill us on Air Force One in Europe. Or how about masterminded a plot to poison America at the happiest place on earth?”
“RJ—”
“Wait, I’m not finished. Do you suppose you would have pulled him aside during halftime at a football game after he rained down nuclear waste on the country of Lauchtenland? Or how about when he helped program a bunch of crazy robot dogs to attack us in New York City, or—”
“Shh. Calm down.”
“Or maybe when he burned down our home in Shelly!”
York turned to her, took her hands. “Okay. You’re right. He was a bad man.” His gaze landed on Timea, on her daughter holding her hand, staring at them, maybe close enough to hear, or maybe far enough that perhaps she just saw RJ unraveling.
He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want her to know…well, everything. Fia didn’t need to grow up with that darkness.
RJ had quieted. “It bothers you, doesn’t it? Thinking about…you know. What happens after…” She gestured toward the casket. “And I know I just listed off all his terrible things. But he also saved Britta.”
“So he could see his family.” York sighed. “I’m not sure what the balance is when you spend sixteen years as someone’s weapon and three minutes as a father. Three minutes reaching for redemption.”
RJ sighed, then nodded. “We always think of justice as balanced on a scale. You do enough good, it outweighs the bad. But that’s not how it works.
He doesn’t need three minutes reaching for redemption.
None of us do. We need one second. One final desperate decision to reach for salvation.
” She patted York’s chest. “I sort of got carried away.”
“Who wouldn’t? What gets me is…well, if Alan hadn’t tried to kill me and thrown me off a cliff, then I would have never lost my memory and never met Jesus. I would have never…been saved.”
She said nothing.
“In a way, Alan saved me.”
“Let’s not go crazy here.”
He looked at her. “Yes. Okay. But God used that moment with Alan to save me…so I guess I do have mixed feelings.”
“And once upon a time he was your friend.”
“Yeah. I keep thinking, you don’t know what God will do with a man in his final hours,” York said quietly. He looked at the grave again. “I talked to him, right before he went into surgery.”
RJ looked up. “What did you say?”
“I don’t know why—I just felt…something pushing me. So I leaned down so only Alan could hear and I said—” York’s throat tightened. “I said, ‘I forgive you. For all of it. And if you ask, Jesus will too.’ Even a man like Alan. Or like me.”
RJ squeezed his arm. “Like any of us.” Her eyes turned glossy. She leaned into him, her head against his shoulder.