In the Company of Killers, Bryan Christy [love story books to read .txt] 📗

said. Klay didn’t like it. He didn’t like sitting with his back to the room, and he didn’t like this stranger. Most unsettling of all, he didn’t know why. His father used to have a saying for people who rubbed him the wrong way, “I don’t like that guy. I got to get to know him better.” Klay sat down.

“Sir?” Arno said to Klay.

“Wonder what he’ll have,” the stranger said.

“Sorry,” Klay said. “Who are you?”

The man raised a glass to his lips, chuckling, and sipped his drink.

Eady put a hand on Klay’s sleeve. “We’ll get to that in a minute, Tom.” He arched an eyebrow. Arno was waiting.

“I’ll have a bourbon.”

“Vance and I are sampling a fine Japanese single malt,” the stranger said.

“Bourbon works for me,” Klay said. “Booker’s if you have it.”

The stranger looked at Klay over the rim of his glass. “This Yamazaki’s worth twice that Kentucky mash, and I’m footing the bill.”

“Double then,” Klay said.

Arno nodded.

Klay waited.

It was nearly midnight. They were the club’s only guests. The room’s silence was broken only by the sound of scratching clocks. There were clocks throughout the club, on walls, on top of tables and shelves. More than one corner held a grandfather clock. Eady’s fingers strummed the armrest of his leather wingback chair. The stranger leaned forward, took two olives from a dish, and popped them into his mouth. Wedding ring, single-button cuffs, Bulova watch. He fished the pits from his mouth and added them to a small pile on a cocktail napkin. Agency, Klay concluded.

“Ah! Here we are,” the stranger said, accepting two scotches and Klay’s bourbon from a silver tray Arno held.

“Thank you, Arno,” Eady said. “We’ll be about an hour.”

The guest shook his head. “Less,” he said, and tossed a cocktail stick onto Arno’s tray.

Less? Nothing took less to say than what Klay wanted to hear: “It’s over.” “We’re done.” Klay looked the man over. Maybe he should get to know this guy better after all.

Arno scooped up the olive pits with a napkin. “Yes, Mr. Eady.”

“You got any real food, Arno?” the stranger said. “Some wings or something?”

Eady closed his eyes and pursed his lips in both apology and permission for Arno to exit.

“Okay, okay,” the man said. “No food then.”

“So,” Eady began.

The man’s left hand shot up, and Eady fell silent. The man held it in the air and together they listened to the hiss of Arno’s hand descending the stair rail. When the hiss stopped and what sounded like the bottom step creaked, the stranger lowered his hand, picked up his drink, and offered a toast. “Name is Will Barrow. Joke if you like. Cheers!”

Klay sat without touching his drink.

“What’s the matter?” Barrow said, raising an eyebrow.

“I like to know what I’m toasting,” Klay said.

“Not what I hear.”

“I’m sorry?”

“From what I understand you’ll drink to your breakfast.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you don’t always meet your deadline because a story’s gone cold. It means I can smell it on your breath, Mr. Klay, and you haven’t had your first sip. It makes you vulnerable. Same way sending money to a family of stick-poor Indonesians makes you vulnerable.”

Klay resisted the urge to turn to Eady. His payments to Adri’s family had been the secret within his secret. Eady had shared it with this man.

“Logistics, Tom,” Eady interjected. “Necessary. Now that I’m gone, I wanted you to meet Mr. Barrow. Mr. Barrow is—”

“I know who he is.”

“Maybe,” Barrow said. “Maybe not. Are you going to drink that?”

Klay looked at the brown liquid in his glass. “A drink’s about the company.”

“The company,” Barrow echoed. He leaned back, pulled an ankle onto his knee, then laced his fingers behind his head, and stared at Klay.

“Tom,” Eady said. “I’d have preferred to introduce this proposal to you myself, one-on-one, the way we’ve always communicated. But . . . well . . . my situation has forced me to accelerate things. Sitting behind a camera most of my life made me a patient man. Too patient it turns out. I’m having to learn to change that. What I have to say is something I hope you will accept and understand and, whatever your decision, that you will keep it confidential. Among us. Here.”

Eady was babbling. Eady didn’t babble.

Klay studied the painting above Eady’s chair. It was a Monet, it turned out. The simple painting consisted of a large black rock shrouded in mist. What made it powerful was Monet’s decision to emphasize the mist, not the rock. The curtain, not the stage.

“I won’t beat around the bush, Tom. The Sovereign has a long-standing, symbiotic relationship with the Agency because of the work we do as—”

“For Chrissake.” Barrow turned to Klay. “It’s simple. With Vance out, we’re out.”

“I understand,” Klay said.

“No,” Barrow said. “You don’t.”

“I’m fine with it,” Klay said.

“We’re not. We don’t care to be out.”

“We can’t, Tom. Not now,” Eady agreed. “I’ve been in place most of my career. So long I don’t know which came first. I’m proud of my service, and I want—”

“Not interested,” Klay said. “It would be inappropriate for me, for the work, to continue given this material change in circumstance, without you in place, Vance.”

Jesus, Klay thought. It came out sounding like Luca Brasi’s wedding speech.

“Tom—”

Barrow laughed. “Would it be inappropriate? Because I would hate to be goddamn inappropriate when it comes to the work.” Barrow raised his fingers and put air quotes around the word “work.”

“Excuse me?”

Barrow tossed another handful of nuts into his mouth.

Eady said, “Tom, we have a mission for you. It’s more than you’ve done for us in the past. You’d be in a complicated and potentially—”

“Vance,” Barrow interrupted, chewing, “why don’t you and I go around on this again. I’m not sold on this horse.”

“We are out of time, Will. I said I’ll handle this.”

“And I said we have another way into it,” Barrow challenged.

“We have no one positioned the way Tom is, and you know it.”

“You want to go on the record with him, then?” Barrow asked.

Eady looked at Klay. “I do.”

“With this man