Cross had opened the door.
That had been, in retrospect, a miscalculation on his part or maybe not a miscalculation exactly, but an optimistic assumption that the Peerless Assassin standing in his hallway had come to negotiate rather than collect. He'd read Locke as a professional and let him in accordingly.
Professionals could still disagree about outcomes.
The moment Locke stepped inside, Wesley lunged.
He'd been bound to the chair, but the rope wasn't tight enough, Cross had tied it quickly, with the intention of having a conversation, not a custody situation. Wesley got his hands free first, headbutted Cross hard enough to draw blood, and made for the stairs.
Cross caught his nose with both hands. Blood on his fingers.
Locke closed the door behind him and watched Wesley's footsteps disappear toward the second floor.
"Don't move," Cross said, from behind the kitchen wall, the sound of a magazine sliding home.
"I wasn't planning to." Locke leaned against the entryway pillar and waited.
The shot came from the kitchen, aimed, curved, professional. Locke deflected it without stepping away from the pillar, the two rounds meeting in the hallway with a sharp clang that left both spent casings on the floor.
Cross went quiet for a moment.
"You know the technique," he said.
"I learned it recently."
Another pause. Upstairs, the sound of Wesley hitting a window frame - once, twice, not breaking through. Bulletproof glass. Locke had noticed it on the way in.
"I have no interest in your operation," Cross said. "I just want my son."
"I know." Locke looked at the ceiling, tracking Wesley's movement by sound. "That's not the problem."
"Then what is?"
"He's on my list."
Cross didn't respond to that immediately. Locke heard the sound of him repositioning in the kitchen, which was either tactical or the arm wound making itself felt.
"He was deceived," Cross said, finally. "He didn't know what he was walking into."
"I know that too."
Locke checked his watch. George Stacy was going to be having a very long night and would either come to Starlight Tower tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. Either way, Locke needed a clean story and a clean exit before then. He did not have unlimited time for this.
He looked toward the stairs.
"Wesley." His voice carried up without effort. "Come down. I'm going to count to three."
Upstairs, the window-hitting stopped.
"If you're not down by one, Fox is dead."
"He already killed Fox!" Cross called from the kitchen.
"I have not." Locke kept his voice level. "She's in the trunk. But she won't be comfortable for much longer."
He didn't have Fox in any trunk. Fox was dead on a street in lower Manhattan with a police jacket over her and forensics on the way. But Wesley didn't know that, and Wesley, the original profile had been right about this, was still the person who'd walked into the Fraternity three weeks ago, still running on connections and feelings he hadn't examined yet.
"Three."
Silence upstairs.
"Two."
A creak on the landing.
"One."
"Wait-"
"Don't come down!"
Wesley came down.
He was moving carefully, one hand on the railing, and when he got to the bottom and saw Locke standing there unruffled with the gun loose in his right hand, something shifted in his face, the particular recalibration of someone who had just spent twenty minutes trying to escape a situation and has arrived back exactly where they started.
Locke picked up Cross's sidearm from where it had been sitting on the floor and kicked it gently toward Wesley's feet.
"He killed your father," Locke said. "You've wanted to do something about that since the night Mr. X died. Here's your chance."
Wesley stared at the gun.
Cross came out of the kitchen. He was bleeding from two places - the earlier arm wound and something new from whatever the collision with the wall had done and his face had the expression of a man who had thought he had a plan and was watching it dissolve.
He looked at Wesley. His son. Who was wearing the suit that had belonged to the man Wesley thought was his father.
"Do it," Cross said quietly. He let his weapon lower, barrel toward the floor. "I never should have left you."
Wesley's hand closed around the gun.
He looked at Cross, really looked at him, the way you look at someone when the story you've been telling yourself doesn't quite fit the face in front of you.
Locke waited.
He'd seen this kind of moment before. The Fraternity had built Wesley as a tool for one purpose and then handed him a gun and pointed him at Cross, which was efficient but not careful, it had left Wesley with emotions he'd never processed and a mission that had kept him from having to. Take the mission away and what was left was a twenty-four-year-old who'd just been told that everything he knew was wrong and his real father was the man bleeding in front of him.
Wesley was not going to shoot Cross.
Locke had known it before he kicked the gun over.
"Fox isn't in any trunk," Wesley said. It wasn't quite a question.
"No," Locke said.
Wesley looked at him. "She's dead."
"Yes."
A beat.
"You killed her."
"Yes."
Wesley's jaw tightened. He looked down at the gun in his hand. He looked at Cross. He looked back at Locke, and what was in his eyes now wasn't grief exactly, it was something messier, something that didn't have a name yet.
He raised the gun.
Locke moved first.
It was not a long movement, barely a shift of weight, his right hand coming up and the shot he fired was precise in the way that shots at this range could be precise, no margin required.
Wesley didn't see it coming. He was still in the motion of raising his weapon when he was already falling, and the sound he made when he hit the floor was the sound of someone who had run out of time before they'd finished understanding the situation.
Cross looked at his son on the floor.
He didn't say anything. He closed his eyes.
Locke gave him a moment. Not out of sentimentality, out of the acknowledgment that this was a real thing that had just happened, and the person it had happened to deserved a second before what came next.
"Cross Carlos," Locke said.
Cross opened his eyes.
"You started this when you threw Mr. Y out of a plane over Manhattan," Locke said. "That put my name in front of Sloane. Everything after that was a direct consequence."
Cross looked at him steadily. He didn't argue the logic. He was too good an operative for that.
"I'm not going to pretend this is justice," Locke said. "It's accounting."
Cross gave him one small, precise nod, the acknowledgment of a professional who understood exactly what that meant.
Bang.
The apartment was quiet.
[Mission: My Fate Is Mine to Command - Complete]
[Reward: Achievement Points ×2,000 / Potential Points ×2,000]
[Mission: Destiny Is Mine - Hostile Faction Eliminations +2 (Cross, Wesley)]
[Achievement Points ×400 / Potential Points ×400]
Locke stood in the quiet apartment for a moment and let the numbers settle.
4,700 Achievement Points. 6,700 Potential Points.
Not enough for anything transformative yet. But the Textile Factory was still on Monday. And Monday was less than thirty-six hours away.
He walked out, left the door closed behind him, and found the borrowed sedan where he'd left it.
He needed to get back to Starlight Tower. He needed a story for George. And he needed a few hours of sleep before the week started again.
The night had been eventful.
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.