"Your boss." Mike said, "Call him right now. He has something to tell you." Torres's thumb moved across his phone screen before the rest of him had fully processed the instruction which was perhaps the clearest possible evidence of exactly how much authority lived in Mike Callahan's voice when he chose to use it. He dialed. He held the phone to his ear.
He waited. The call connected. Whatever Velasquez said on the other end in the room could hear the tinny sound of it not the words just the fact of speaking took about 20 seconds. Torres listened.
His face went through several things in those 20 seconds. Confusion then recalibration then something that was not quite shame but was adjacent to it and then the specific blankness of a man filing away a fact that he will not be discussing with anyone. He lowered the phone. He looked at Leo.
He looked at Corey. He looked at Mike. "He says we're done here." Torres said. "That's right." Mike said.
"You are." Torres looked at the guns on the counter, the Mossberg and the.38 sitting there cleared and idle. He looked at Declan who had not moved and had not changed. He looked at the broken door frame behind him in the gravel outside in the night beyond it. "Okay." Torres said, just that, one word.
He put his phone in his pocket. He turned around. He walked back through the door frame. The gravel crunched.
The car door opened. The engine started. The headlights came on, swept the room one more time through the empty door frame, and moved back toward the highway. And then the tail lights were just two red points in the dark moving west getting smaller, and then they were gone.