Branch grew deathly still.
This was because he had been the lieutenant in charge in the field of the government’s officially unofficial elite cleanup squad, a squad called Rifle Team.
“And?” he clipped when Gerbil said no more.
“No one has touched those files in over three years. I did some digging. There’s a new man in town, this being the replacement to the replacement that Raines handpicked when he retired, the first replacement having been asked to kindly pack up his shit and get the fuck out before he fucked any more shit up. And we’ll just say from some of the shit they uncovered that even I haven’t seen that it’s seeming Raines didn’t have the approval from higher-ups to green-light some of the things you guys did. It’s also seeming the asswipe took some not-so-small amounts of cash for favors, sending the team into action on these missions that not only had no green light, no one knew fuck-all about them, and other things, which I find unsurprising and I’ve told you that’s been my theory since—”
“Gerbil, focus,” Branch bit out. “What does this mean?”
“Right, John. Just to say, they can’t open an investigation because no way the government could expose that shit without huge threats to intelligence, but more, foreign relations. But Raines has gone off radar.”
Cold carved through his stomach.
“What the fuck?” Branch bit out.
“Not from me, brother. Relax,” Gerbil assured. “I know exactly where he is. But retirement stopped bein’ as cushy as it seemed when he was unofficially officially asked to haul his ass into the office to have a few chats.”
“Fuck,” Branch whispered.
“No matter, John. Retirement wasn’t cush anyway, seein’ as he’s scared shitless any day you’re gonna rise from the dead, again, and make him eat a bullet. By the way, did I tell you he got another Rottweiler? Another Rottweiler. Now he has four. Didn’t take much when he bailed but took all four dogs with him. Like a dog can stop you. It was like he fell asleep the day they outlined your training.”
For some reason, this made Gerbil burst into deep, booming laughter.
Branch didn’t find shit funny.
“What’s your read on this?” he asked into Gerbil’s laughter.
Gerbil was still chuckling when he replied lightheartedly, “Welp, way I see it, no governmental investigation, but serious mishandling of government assets and traceable linkage to unofficially official activities in foreign territories that, if discovered, means some relations that are iffy at best might get iffier, those files won’t get redacted. They’ll be destroyed. And another team like Rifle Team will be dispatched to deal with anyone who could be considered a vulnerability. So, seeing as you’re dead, and I’m also dead, even though I enjoyed Christmas with my folks in the Bahamas, thank you for not asking, the only one left is Raines.”
Damn it to hell.
Gerbil kept talking.
“Raines sees the writing on the wall and he’s done living in terror behind his gazillion-dollar alarm system that I set off occasionally for shits and giggles and his four Rottweilers and his seven thousand guns, lying in wait in a puddle of his own piss for you to take him out. He’s disappeared.”
Shit.
Gerbil wasn’t done.
“What I need to know is, do you want me to keep track of him, which isn’t hard but I can’t say our new man in town is finding it as easy as I am, or do you want me to leak his whereabouts so you can strike the task of blowing his head off when you find a free day from your to-do list?”
“Death is relief. It’s the fear that’s the vengeance,” Branch reminded him.
Gerbil fell silent.
“Why didn’t he destroy the files himself?” Branch asked.
“That’d be a good question if he didn’t have someone almost as good as me to bury them. And encode them. Though, even buried and hard to crack, it was still fuckin’ stupid. The problem is, the new man in town might not be able to find Raines, but he’s no dummy and he’s got someone almost almost as good as me who dug them up. And by the way, that someone almost as good as me that worked for Raines is now MIA. My guess, weighted to the bottom of the Potomac.”
Christ.
“Why?” Branch asked. “And why now? If no one knows there’s something to dig up, why are they suddenly digging?”
“Good question.”
“Can you find out?”
“Brother, I can do anything.”
He said no more.
Branch sought patience.
Gerbil was a genius but like all the ones Branch had met, and there’d been a few, he was both ragingly eccentric and not real good with common sense.
When he found his patience, he ordered, “Well then, Gerbil, find out.”
“On it,” Gerbil muttered. “Now, what do you want to do with Raines?”
“Living in fear of a U.S. government kill squad finding him and me coming after him, what do you think I want to do with him?”
“Let him lie in wait in a puddle of his own piss for when he’ll buy a bullet,” Gerbil deduced.
“They don’t call you genius for nothing.”
“Mensa cried the day they thought I died.”
“Every single member or are you talking figuratively?”
“That’s always been you, John. I’m pretty and a mastermind and you’ve only ever just been pretty so you try to make it up by being a smartass.”
Branch found his mouth actually forming a grin.
It felt rusty and wrong so he stopped doing it.
Then he stood halfway to the door to his bedroom and realized he had a decision to make.
Considering he was going to her house that night and cooking dinner, though, he actually didn’t.
“I have something to share,” he said, walking back to the kitchen.
“I’m all ears.”
“There’s a woman.”
Another sucking void of silence.
“It’s very early,” he continued. “And it’s going nowhere. But she’s in my life. No idea how long it will last but want you to keep an eye out for her.”
“John, you’re dead,” Gerbil said quietly.
“I know that, man.”
“No one is looking for you. You can have a woman, brother,” he said quietly. “I keep tellin’ you, you want it, I can give you an entire life.”
“They find Raines, he could give me up.”
“John, you’re dead,” Gerbil repeated. “Raines is living in fear because you came back to life once. They killed you then I killed you and I do it better. He’s got four Rottweilers because he believes in ghosts since he’s seen one. But he sent men to look for you, files, by the way, he also didn’t destroy, but I did, even if they all reported the John Doe cadaver found in that Chicago morgue was irrefutably you. There’s no trace because I left no trace. You’re home free.”
“I’m home free, why is someone uncovering those missions, Gerbil?”
“I’ll find out.”
He would.
And Branch would have to wait.
But right then, he also had to explain.
“When I say Evangeline and I are new, I mean really new. But she’s a good woman and I don’t want my shit to fuck up her life any way that might conceivably happen.”
“You left your shit in a jungle, John.”
Branch didn’t say anything but he wished like fuck that was true.
Gerbil, as was usual, did say something.
“Evangeline is a pretty name.”
“Last name Brooks. Phoenix address. And if you can’t find her, I’ll give you her address.”
“If I can’t find her, puh,” Gerbil scoffed.
Right, now he was acting stupid.
“Just, you know, tag her files or whatever voodoo you do to make sure no one’s getting up in her shit.”
“Consider her covered.”
“Thanks, man,” Branch muttered, opening his fridge and deciding it was high time to throw out the moldy block of cheese that was the only thing, except for a crusted-lip ketchup bottle, that was in it.