Page 101 of Bombshell

I guess our alliance is over. It’s possibly the shortest-lived one in history. I’m not surprised. Noah sees everything in black and white. He always will. I can’t expect him to understand gray.

“I’d like to report a crime,” I say, dipping a hand into my other jacket pocket and drawing out a neatly-folded manilla envelope. I slide it across the table to Noah, who makes an annoyed grimace while opening it. He removes a small, digital audio recorder.

“What’s this?”

“It seems one of the local businessmen got the wrong idea about our friend Luca. Can you believe he asked Luca to kill his wife?”

Noah looks like he can believe it. Probably since he’s privy to Luca’s FBI dossier. Still, he has to listen in order to figure out where to take the conversation. But he hates having to catch up, and he despises me watching him do it.

He clicks the play/pause button, and an audio recording of this evening’s comms starts playing. Noah glowers as he listens to our banter until the moment Randolph agrees to a price of $50,000.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he says, tossing the recorder down on the table in disgust.

“You’re always looking for bad guys. I got you one gift-wrapped,” I say, leaning back comfortably in my chair. “Consider it a thank you present for helping me get Sutton back.”

“That’s all this is? You don’t expect me to just take this and walk away, do you?”

“Not really. But you probably should.”

His whole body flexes, his massive, linebacker frame straining against the seams of his suit. I probably shouldn’t bait him so much—but I can’t help myself when he makes it so easy.

“You haven’t changed. You’d rather step in shit than back away,” he says, pocketing the recorder.

“Someone has to do the dirty work,” I say, savoring the look of outrage this produces. “We can’t all sit around polishing our idealistic attitudes.”

“You really don’t think you’re in the wrong, do you? You never have. Not then. Not now.”

“What would you know about hard choices? You almost got Luca, Jack and I killed. You were dead fucking wrong about what was going on in Afghanistan, and a lot of people died.”

“I didn’t kill them. I didn’t steal guns. Someone has to draw the line in the sand—”

“And you expect to draw that line for everyone else?” I ask.

“You’re a piece of shit, Sterling. You were a piece of shit when I met you, and you’re a piece of shit now. All the people in your life—they’ll end up paying for your mistakes,” he says, jabbing at me with his index finger. “You know it’s true.”

I stand, forcing myself to button my suit jacket, telling myself to walk away, even as my hand curls into a fist.

“I know you want to take a swing at me, Ford,” Noah says, reading me like a book. “Go ahead and try.”

“So you can arrest me? I’m not that stupid.”

“You think I care about that?” He gets up, edging closer to me until we’re chest to chest, and makes a show of pulling his FBI badge out of the interior of his suit pocket before tossing it on the table. “I need to make sure you understand me perfectly. When I nail you—and I will—it won’t be for picking a fight. That’s too cheap for you. I’m going to crucify you. I’m going to make you regret every bad decision you ever made. One day soon, you’re going to look up from the smoking crater that is your life, and you’ll see me standing there, wearing this same smug grin.”

I can’t help myself. I shift my weight backwards as if I’m going to throw an overhand right, but tuck my forearm in at the last minute, slipping inside his guard and striking the side of his head with my elbow.

The blow does almost nothing—aside from piss him off. He just shakes his head sharply, like a bear trying to figure out who dared to throw something at him.

Noah takes two choppy steps forward, his arms raised like a boxer’s, but instead of throwing a punch, he feints. I step backward, bringing my own guard up, but Noah’s faster. He hooks a leg just behind my foot, and charges his shoulder into my chest as hard as he can. I fly backwards, crashing into the table next to us.

Every conversation around us stops, and most of the people there gasp in surprise. People stand and begin to back away, some of them even straddling the low barrier used to mark the footprint of the cafe seating, trying to get away from the melee.

“C’mon, Ford,” Noah gloats. “This is too easy!”

I flip onto my feet straight from the flat of my back, grabbing one of the wooden bistro chairs next to me and swinging it at Noah. He can’t escape—our space is too confined to get out of the way. He does the next best thing, though, which is to distribute the blow across the broad frame of his back. Still, the force of it drops him to one knee, and he has to use both hands to avoid smashing into the pavement.

“Had enough, Porter?” That blow had to hurt—but he’s a tough son of a bitch. I know he’s not done.

He answers with a vicious uppercut, a move I see so late I unbalance myself trying to avoid it. He launches forward like a sprinter exploding from the blocks, planting his shoulder in my stomach and bearing me to the ground.