Page 95 of Nobody's Hero
‘We have to do some—’
A sound made them turn towards the back of the plane.
It was Nash. She was smiling.
And giggling.
Koenig looked at Draper. ‘You want to go and see if she’ll let us in on the joke?’
Chapter 101
‘You’re laughing,’ Koenig said. ‘Why?’
‘Because you guys are dumbasses,’ Nash replied. ‘That old lady was the key to everything, and you watched her kill herself. I’m laughing at your fuckwittery.’
‘You might want to rethink your predicament,’ Koenig said. ‘The music’s stopped and you’re the only one without a chair now.’
Nash rolled her eyes. ‘I think I’m going to be fine,’ she said.
Koenig knelt. Stared into her eyes. Nash looked right back. She wasn’t trying to alpha him. Wasn’t playing mind games. It was as if she didn’t recognise him as someone worth bothering with. Like he was the ant at her picnic. She might stomp on him; she might not. She certainly wasn’t going to spend time thinking about it. Koenig wondered if she was a psychopath. If, now that her father was dead, she was looking forward to spreading her wings. Like a harpy, not an angel.
‘How old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?’
‘If Stillwell was to be believed, I’m twenty.’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’ve never seen my birth certificate.’
‘You were adopted?’
‘Fostered. Stillwell showed up when I was seven. Up until then, I’d lived in a kids’ home in Albuquerque.’
Koenig nodded. He thought it explained things. Hobbs had wanted an apprentice, and he’d wanted a child to give him cover. He would no longer be the loner people remembered after the cops had arrived; he would be the doting father on a road trip with his daughter. And over time she became someone he could mould into his own image. Similar to how the hitman had moulded the orphan in one of Koenig’s favourite movies,Léon: The Professional.
Koenig had no idea how Hobbs had managed to jump through the fostering hoops. Child protective services were supposed to have safeguard after safeguard to stop vulnerable kids being placed with predatory adults. Then again, he imagined their antenna was more attuned to paedophiles and the perma-angry. He doubted they had an ‘Are you, or have you ever been, a contract killer?’ tick box. But Hobbs was, and the system had failed Nash. Big time.
And now there was a monster to deal with.
‘Do you know who your birth parents were?’ he asked.
‘What part of “I’ve never seen my birth certificate” didn’t you understand?’ she said. She paused a beat, then muttered, ‘Fucking dummy.’
She giggled.
Koenig didn’t respond. He’d been called a lot worse in his SOG days. Draper had called him a lot worse that morning. But he did have to rethink how he approached this. Nash was a killer, almost certainly a psychopath, but she was still, at heart, a damaged kid. Hobbs wouldn’t have been interested in Nash’s childhood development. He probably actively discouraged it. He was only interested in her for what she brought to his business. She was a prop. And yes, over time he’d developed strong paternal instincts, but they’d never been reciprocated. Nash was, and always would be, motivated by one thing: self-interest.
‘I may be an effing dummy,’ Koenig said. ‘But I think you suffer from psychopathy.’
Nash smiled. Like she was looking forward to what he would say next.
Patronising.
‘Thing is, being a psychopath isn’t illegal,’ Koenig said. ‘It isn’t even uncommon. At least one per cent of the population has what is classed as severe psychopathy. One per cent of three hundred and thirty million people. That’s over three million psychopaths in the US alone. Most have jobs and families. They’ve learned to fit in. To laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. To cry when someone dies. They’re law abiding. Lots are successful. Superficial charm and a lack of emotion are assets, not drawbacks, in some jobs. Now, let’s imagine there’s a subset of a subset in the broad umbrella of psychopathy – the one per cent of the one per cent of the one per cent. The kind of psychopath who sees people as cattle, there to be used and discarded.That’s still not illegal.The DA’s office could no more convict you of being a psychopath than it could convict you of being a human being.’
He waited for Nash to respond. Eventually she said, ‘Moo.’
‘Murder, of course,isillegal. And I’m sure when it all comes out in the wash, when the tallies are totalled, the FBI will find that you and Hobbs have killed more people than Jack Reacher. You don’t get to own a loft on the Lower East Side without being extremely good at extremely lucrative work. But even though the pair of you were at the top of the murder-for-hire business, you couldn’t be sure you hadn’t left evidence behind somewhere. Not one hundred per cent. Trace DNA. A partial print. Getting caught on a camera you didn’t know about. Something that would culminate with a no-knock warrant. Indictments. Trials. Life-with-no-parole jail sentences.’