Read Online World Without End by Chris Mooney - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Chris Mooney
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yellow nails and nicotine-stained fingers, reach into his briefcase and instead of pulling out the money, pulling out a nine-millimeter Clock and boom, it was over.
The operation went fine. There had been a good deal of blood loss, shattered fragments of bone that needed to be mended, but overall it was a clean wound, the doctor had said. You're in great shape, Steve, all that muscle helped save your life. You're very lucky to be alive.
Lucky. The word was a constant echo in his mind, even in his sleep.
That's what life really came down to: people. Everyone's a victim of someone else's decisions. I suddenly don't like the look of your face and boom, you're bleeding to death on a cold basement floor, the pain is excruciating, and upstairs, two teammates from the Hazard Team, guys who you consider friends, John Murphy and Paul Devincent, men you respect and admire guys who have families and girlfriends and wives and kids have rushed in to save your life only to be ambushed, and guess what, Steve? There's not one fucking thing you can do to stop it. And the truth of the matter? The goddamn kicker? You should have died with them. Want to know why you didn't, Steve? Pure luck.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. It was pure luck that Armand's gun jammed on the second shot, pure luck that Pasha came rushing in at just the right moment with her drawn handgun, pure luck that it took only one shot for her to cancel Armand's ticket before he got the chance to use the knife. Pure luck, ladies and gentlemen, no grand design or scheme, no divine intervention. It was simply pure luck.
The rehabilitation for the shoulder went fine. The physical therapist kept saying the word over and over again: Everything's fine. You're doing fine, Steve, that's it, keep moving, the shoulder's doing just fine. The scar's healing nicely, don't you think? Conway knew that the worst scars are always the ones you can't see.
All he wanted was to be left alone. That landscape was very familiar, the mental geography well defined. Safe. A mental harbor. When the physical therapy ended, he turned in his cell phone and pager and left no forwarding address, promising to wear the watch with the GPS transmitter at all times, pay for everything in cash and use the alias.
Conway knew the drill. Thank you, good-bye, and please don't call.
He rented a nice, small house in Vail, Colorado. A little expensive, sure, but he had some money put aside and man, it was worth every cent.
Mornings were spent mountain biking, a sport that had always bored him, but he couldn't pass up the scenery: steep cliffs holding rolling fields of green, snowcapped mountains everywhere he looked, the air so clean and crisp that when it filled his lungs he felt a renewed sense of energy, of rebirth. Maybe a short run later in the evening if he was full of that peculiar energy that had no place to go or better, some reading. Dennis Lehane's excellent novels got him through most of those long nights when he couldn't sleep. Sometimes he would look up from a book, the fire crackling behind him, and just watch the sunset, marveling at the way the sky would show shades of magenta and red and orange, casting the world below in a soft, warm glow. His mind would grip it and carry it with him to sleep. The next morning the same routine was repeated. He craved routine the way a junkie hurts for a fix. Routine kept him from thinking about the shooting, kept him from hearing his two teammates screaming, begging for it to stop.
For five weeks he had spoken to no one. He had no family not in the biological sense but what he did have was two close friends from college, two people he could trust who both lived in downtown Boston. Booker and Riley didn't know about the shooting or how close to death he had really come, and they had no idea what he really did for a living. He had been pretending all his life, trying on different lives, seeing how they fit under his skin. Now he got paid to do it
The operation went fine. There had been a good deal of blood loss, shattered fragments of bone that needed to be mended, but overall it was a clean wound, the doctor had said. You're in great shape, Steve, all that muscle helped save your life. You're very lucky to be alive.
Lucky. The word was a constant echo in his mind, even in his sleep.
That's what life really came down to: people. Everyone's a victim of someone else's decisions. I suddenly don't like the look of your face and boom, you're bleeding to death on a cold basement floor, the pain is excruciating, and upstairs, two teammates from the Hazard Team, guys who you consider friends, John Murphy and Paul Devincent, men you respect and admire guys who have families and girlfriends and wives and kids have rushed in to save your life only to be ambushed, and guess what, Steve? There's not one fucking thing you can do to stop it. And the truth of the matter? The goddamn kicker? You should have died with them. Want to know why you didn't, Steve? Pure luck.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen. It was pure luck that Armand's gun jammed on the second shot, pure luck that Pasha came rushing in at just the right moment with her drawn handgun, pure luck that it took only one shot for her to cancel Armand's ticket before he got the chance to use the knife. Pure luck, ladies and gentlemen, no grand design or scheme, no divine intervention. It was simply pure luck.
The rehabilitation for the shoulder went fine. The physical therapist kept saying the word over and over again: Everything's fine. You're doing fine, Steve, that's it, keep moving, the shoulder's doing just fine. The scar's healing nicely, don't you think? Conway knew that the worst scars are always the ones you can't see.
All he wanted was to be left alone. That landscape was very familiar, the mental geography well defined. Safe. A mental harbor. When the physical therapy ended, he turned in his cell phone and pager and left no forwarding address, promising to wear the watch with the GPS transmitter at all times, pay for everything in cash and use the alias.
Conway knew the drill. Thank you, good-bye, and please don't call.
He rented a nice, small house in Vail, Colorado. A little expensive, sure, but he had some money put aside and man, it was worth every cent.
Mornings were spent mountain biking, a sport that had always bored him, but he couldn't pass up the scenery: steep cliffs holding rolling fields of green, snowcapped mountains everywhere he looked, the air so clean and crisp that when it filled his lungs he felt a renewed sense of energy, of rebirth. Maybe a short run later in the evening if he was full of that peculiar energy that had no place to go or better, some reading. Dennis Lehane's excellent novels got him through most of those long nights when he couldn't sleep. Sometimes he would look up from a book, the fire crackling behind him, and just watch the sunset, marveling at the way the sky would show shades of magenta and red and orange, casting the world below in a soft, warm glow. His mind would grip it and carry it with him to sleep. The next morning the same routine was repeated. He craved routine the way a junkie hurts for a fix. Routine kept him from thinking about the shooting, kept him from hearing his two teammates screaming, begging for it to stop.
For five weeks he had spoken to no one. He had no family not in the biological sense but what he did have was two close friends from college, two people he could trust who both lived in downtown Boston. Booker and Riley didn't know about the shooting or how close to death he had really come, and they had no idea what he really did for a living. He had been pretending all his life, trying on different lives, seeing how they fit under his skin. Now he got paid to do it
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