Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

“What a gentleman,” Van observes.

“At your service,” Moretti replies. He plucks the larger of the two cups from the origami coffee trap and begins enumerating. “Triple. Venti. Half-sweet. Nonfat…” It’s coming to him…“Caramel macchiato. I practiced all the way over.”

“How the hell do you know my coffee order?”

“Come on. This is the CIA, not the FBI. Give me some credit.”

“Ouch. You know my son’s at Quantico, right?”

“I remember writing the recommendation. Let me know when he wants to join the winning team.”

They are strolling up the aisle toward the back of the auditorium, moving together much more slowly than either would alone.

“I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

“Beautiful speech, by the way,” Moretti says.

“Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious. All bullshit aside. When they recruit you, it’s all about the action, the adventure, the travel. Nobody tells you that when everyone’s doing their jobs the way they’re supposed to—when you’re being proactive—things are usually pretty quiet. There’s plenty of criticism when something goes wrong, but not enough praise when everything goes right.”

“Amen to that.”

Moretti bodychecks the bar and cracks the door open in a burst of sunshine. Townes walks out beneath the awning into the midday warmth. Although it sounds as though they are surrounded by the trills and warbles of dozens of species of birds, Van knows that most of what they hear is dynamically composed by the avian surveillance drones that are in constant rotation throughout campus, recharging themselves and exchanging data with a covert forest of next-gen signal intercept towers disguised as overly symmetrical evergreens. The synthetic sounds of a CIA summer.

“You still haven’t told me what you want,” Van says.

Moretti appears wounded. “What makes you think I want something?”

“The coffee. The flattery. The fact that you never come around anymore unless there’s something you need.”

“I know,” Moretti says. “And I’m sorry about that. This thing I’m working on—it’s killing me. But it shouldn’t be much longer. And I will bring you in on it. I promise.”

“Like you brought me in on the whole LHC thing?”

“Believe me, I did you a favor with that,” Moretti says. “The Epoch Index has been a pain in my ass from the second it landed on my desk. But this new thing’s completely different. You’ll see. In the meantime, I’m actually here to do you a favor.”

Townes sees Quinn Mitchell seated on a nearby bench forking something into her mouth from semi-opaque Tupperware. Her only companion is a can of Diet Coke, centered on the one slat flat enough that it won’t tip over.

“And what might that be?”

“I’m here to take an analyst off your hands.”

“Ahhh,” Townes intones. “Now it all makes sense. Vultures circling to pick at the remains.”

Moretti pulls a dubious face. “These are hardly remains,” he says. “From what I can tell, you somehow managed to keep the best of your team intact.”

“Who do you want?”

“Her.”

Van wasn’t even aware of Moretti having noticed Quinn. Fucking spooks. With anyone else, Townes would have probably sealed the deal right then and there—maybe negotiated a little extra budget or some newer hardware if she was feeling especially shrewd. But Quinn was different.

“What do you want with Mitchell?”

“What do you think I want? I want the best.”

“I get that,” Van says. “But why?”

“You heard of the Elite Assassin?”

It takes Townes a moment to recalibrate. If her memory of recent daily briefings serves, the topic of conversation has casually meandered from internal resource reallocation to bizarre and exotic international serial killers.

“Yeah,” she tells Moretti uncertainly. “I heard of him.”

“Interpol’s got nothing, and they’re asking us for an analyst.”

“And why do we care about Interpol all of a sudden?”

“The director’s got this new mandate around banking favors. Says that’s how shit gets done in the private sector.”

“How the hell would he know how shit gets done in the private sector? He’s been a government employee his entire life. That man was born with coffee on his breath and khakis on his ass.”

“Read a book, I guess.”

“Anyway,” Van continues, “by banking a favor with Interpol, you mean you’re banking a favor with the director, right?”

“Not just me. You too. And Mitchell. See? Everyone wins.”

Townes watches Quinn sip her Diet Coke and place it back on the slat. She wonders whether the senior analyst has any idea that she’s currently being surveilled—that the two of them are standing there casually mapping out her future—and ultimately decides that she does not.

“You know what she’s been through, right?”

“I do.”

“And you think it’s a good idea for her to go from writing queries in a cubicle to chasing a serial killer?”

“What I think,” Moretti says, “is that she can catch this guy. And I think she needs a win. You know I have nothing but respect for your task force. I do. But you said it yourself back there: the whole thing was kind of a victory by omission. I’m offering her a real victory. An explicit victory. I’m offering her a chance to save lives—to catch a flesh-and-blood bad guy. I’m offering her this because of what she’s been through.”

Townes wonders how often Quinn eats alone. She wishes now that she’d made more of an effort to connect with her—that she’d invited Quinn out to lunch every now and then, or even over for dinner. She’d meant to, but there was always too much to do. Always an excuse to eat at her desk. The feeling that it wasn’t her place. Too many reasons not to have the difficult conversations she knew Quinn needed to have. And now Van realizes that she was almost certainly not alone in her approach—that the rest of the task force probably followed the same pattern: all intention and no action. There must be some part of us that honestly believes tragedy is contagious.

“Why do they call him that?” Townes asks. “The Elite Assassin?”

“You know how he brands his victims?”

“Yeah,” Van says. “Serial numbers, right?”

“Not serial numbers. Serial numbers are sequential. These are completely random four-digit numbers. But