Chapter 109: Two Men in A Hallway

Damien's POV

I found him in the kitchen.

Or rather, he found me there.

I had come down the back stairs after closing the safe room door, moving quietly, keeping close to the wall the way Bode had told me to move inside the house if this situation ever happened, and I had gone into the kitchen to find Chidi and instead found the back door standing slightly open and Chidi nowhere in sight.

That told me something had happened that I didn't have full information about yet.

I stood very still for a moment, listening.

The house was not quiet. There were sounds from outside, Bode's people, movement, controlled activity. But inside, on this floor, there was a particular quality of stillness that was different from the stillness of an empty room.

I turned around slowly.

Lucas Ward was standing in the kitchen doorway.

He was thinner than the photographs and older looking, and there was something about his face that I had not fully expected, a quality of complete calm that was more unsettling than anger would have been. Angry men were readable. You could track an angry man's intentions in his face. This man's face gave away nothing except the fact that he had already decided everything that was going to happen and had made his peace with it.

He had a gun.

Held loosely at his side, not pointed at me, not raised, just there, present, a fact in the room the way everything else in the room was a fact.

We looked at each other.

I had thought about this moment before. Not obsessively, not with the kind of detailed planning that Bode went in for, but in the way you thought about things late at night when the house was quiet and the fear that lived underneath the ordinary days surfaced for a while before you pushed it back down.

I had thought about what I would feel if I was ever in the same room as this man.

What I actually felt was simpler than I expected.

Clarity.

"Damien Montgomery," Lucas said. His voice was exactly what I would have predicted. Measured. Unhurried. The voice of someone who believed they were the most reasonable person present.

"Lucas," I said.

He looked around the kitchen slowly, taking it in the way someone looked at a place they had been studying from the outside for a long time and were finally seeing from the inside.

"Nice house," he said.

"Thank you," I said, because keeping the conversation going was the only job I had right now. Bode's people were outside. Detective Ade's team was minutes away from breaching the perimeter. Every second I kept this man talking was a second that closed the gap between where they were and where I needed them to be.

"You restored it yourself?" he asked.

"Most of it," I said.

"She always loved this house," he said. "Even when it was falling apart. She used to talk about her father's house."

"I know," I said.

He looked at me then. Really looked, the way men looked at each other when they were trying to read something specific.

"You love her," he said. Not a question.

"Yes," I said.

"I loved her too," he said. "In my way."

"I know you believed that," I said carefully.

Something shifted slightly in his expression. Not anger. Just a small adjustment, like a man resetting something internally.

"You think I didn't," he said.

"I think what you felt for her was real to you," I said. "I also think it had very little to do with who she actually was and a great deal to do with what you wanted her to be."

He was quiet for a moment.

I kept my breathing even. Kept my hands visible and still at my sides. Kept my eyes on his face and my awareness on the gun that was still loose at his side, still not raised, and I needed it to stay exactly there for as long as possible.

"She told you that," he said.

"She didn't have to," I said. "I've spent years understanding who she is. You never quite got there."

"And you did," he said, with something close to bitterness but not quite reaching it.

"I got closer," I said honestly. "Every day I get a little closer. That's what it looks like when you actually love someone instead of owning them."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"You're trying to keep me talking," he said.

"Yes," I said. There was no point denying it. He was not a stupid man. He had never been a stupid man. That had always been part of what made him dangerous.

"While your people get into position," he said.

"Yes," I said again.

He actually smiled at that. Small. Brief. Something in it that was almost like respect.

"At least you're honest," he said.

"I've always been honest," I said. "It's one of the things Lara and I have in common."

He looked away from me then, just for a moment, his eyes moving to the window above the kitchen sink, the one that faced the garden. The garden where his plan had been interrupted. Where things had not gone the way he intended.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"Somewhere you won't reach her," I said.

He looked back at me.

"The safe room," he said.

I didn't confirm or deny it. It didn't matter either way.

"Is she afraid?" he asked.

"No," I said, and I believed it completely. Lara was many things in this moment but afraid in the way he wanted her to be afraid was not one of them. I knew my wife. "She's waiting."

"For what?"

"For this to be over," I said. "For all of it to finally be over so she can get back to her life."

Something moved across his face then that I couldn't fully name. Not pain exactly. More like the particular expression of someone who had just been shown the distance between where they were and where they had believed they were, and the distance was larger than they had thought.

"I didn't mean for it to go this far," he said quietly.

"Yes you did," I said, not unkindly. Just honestly. "Every step of it was a choice. You chose every single one."

He was quiet.

Somewhere outside I heard something. The particular sound of movement that was trained and coordinated and getting closer.

Lucas heard it too.

His hand tightened slightly on the gun.

"It's over," I said quietly. "You know that. Whatever you came here to do, it's over. Let this end without anyone getting hurt."

He looked at me.

For a moment, just a moment, something in his face wavered.

Then footsteps in the hallway.

And everything happened at once.