I think we’re both expecting opposition at any moment—a car to come up behind us, guns blazing.
It never happens.
We reach the turnoff for the beach without issue. The sea is dark blue in the distance, and I cut off the AC, opening the windows. Sea breeze blows hot, and the crash of waves grows loud, and gulls caw and float in place, wing and wheel and flutter.
I stop as we near the beach, which here is wide and hard-packed, and scan in both directions. True to Harris’s word, it’s easy to spot them, from here—a few hundred yards south, there’s a huge seaplane, a four-engine cargo plane, bellied up on the beach, tail end facing the land. It’s a hive of activity, with several ex-military SUVs parked in the sand, crates of supplies being moved around by men in combat fatigues. The full might of A1S, being brought to bear.
As we head for the cargo plane, I hear helicopter rotors approaching from the sea, flying low and fast. There’s a pair of helos flying side by side, and they split as they reach the cargo plane, flaring to hover just over the sand on either side of the massive aircraft. Six people in full combat load-outs hop down from the helos, three on each side.
I glance at Rin. “Why would they send more in helicopters when that cargo plane is plenty big enough to carry everything and everyone?”
Rin merely shrugs. “I don’t know. We’ll find out, I suppose.”
A moment later, we’re parking the Isuzu out of the way of the ongoing operation—I see all the core members of A1S—plus Valentine Roth, Alexei, and a Black man I’m assuming is Thomas—standing around a folding table set up near the tail of the cargo plane.
Valentine sees us exiting the vehicle, turns away from the table, and jogs toward us. Rin swallows hard, blinking back tears.
I nudge her toward him. “It’s okay, Rin. We’re actually, truly safe now.”
There are no less than thirty armed operatives around us, including several on active guard duty, watching in every direction, including two with high-powered binoculars scanning the open sea.
She sniffles, throws the submachine gun by its strap around behind her back, and jogs to meet her father. They crash together, and Valentine lifts her clear off the ground, swings her around in two full rotations before setting her on her feet again. I stay back, giving them a moment.
I can’t hear their conversation, nor do I try to. He says something, she nods. A moment or two of this, back and forth. She shakes her head, gestures at me; she then meets my eyes and indicates that I should join them.
Valentine, instead of the handshake I was expecting, grabs me with a hug nearly as effusive as the one with which he’d greeted his daughter, slapping me on the back and squeezing till my ribs protest.
“Good to see you in one piece, more or less,” he says, when he finally releases me. “Quite an ordeal you’ve been through.”
Six core A1S members join us, surrounding us. I find Thresh, the seven-foot-tall giant with the muscles of a Mr. Olympia bodybuilder.
“The girl,” I say, looking up at him. “Yelena. She’s with her parents?”
He nods; his voice, when he speaks is as deep as you’d expect, rough and expressive. “I kept my eyes on her personally until she was reunited with her parents. As we speak, they’re in a safe house guarded by a contingent of operatives, monitored by the highest tech security equipment money can buy. Once this is over, they’ll be returned home. Currently, I believe they’re watching Disney movies and eating pizza.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
He nods again, but his eyes are thoughtful as they regard me. “You know what she said to her parents? The first thing she said to them was that Mr. ’Pollo protected her from the bad man.”
I choke up. “I tried. She should never have been in that position to begin with.”
“You did everything you could have, Apollo.” His huge, heavy hand claps on my shoulder like a ton of bricks, nearly sending me sprawling. “No one could have done more.”
I shake my head. “It’s hard to see it that way.”
“I get it. But you can’t hold yourself responsible for something you had no way of foreseeing. This guy, the way I hear it, wasn’t even your direct enemy or opponent.”
I shrug. “I’d done business with him, and I had sort of pulled one over on him, but it was business. I didn’t think it would have been enough to make me his enemy enough that he did allthis.I think it was financially motivated. I ruined his livelihood, cut his income stream. And to a man like Spaulding, that’severything.” I laugh ruefully. “Funniest part is, I wasn’t even targeting him. I didn’t have any direct proof that he was involved, at that point, or I would have taken him out with the others.”
Rin leans against me, arm circling my waist possessively. “His point is, you have to stop blaming yourself. Your past has things in it which you may not be proud of. But you’ve left all of that behind; you’ve truly, genuinely changed—you’ve become agoodman.”
“You traded yourself for that little girl without hesitation,” Thresh says, “with no guarantee you’d survive it. That’s not the kind of goodness you can fake.”
I’m uncomfortable with this kind of praise, and change the topic. “So, we have a lock on Spaulding’s whereabouts?”
Lear, a laptop balanced on one hand, interrupts. “Before we get into that—Rin, Mr. Roth says you needed me for something?”
Rin looks around at the gathered men, her six honorary uncles and her father. “There’s no point in trying to keep this on the D-L I suppose,” she mutters to herself; then, louder, to Lear but so everyone else can hear: “You all know by now that I posed as one of the girls in the shipment so I could get inside the fortress and rescue Apollo.” A pause. I take her hand, hold it. “Part of the intake process, you could call it, was cataloging each girl. This meant being photographed. Naked.” Her voice shakes slightly, then hardens. “This includes me.”
