Fighting For Valor

by Patricia D. Eddy

  “Really?”

  Dax pulls his folded cane from his pocket, tosses it in the air, and catches it easily. “Everyone underestimates the blind man. Plus, I’m faster. Always have been.” Taking a few steps towards me, he reaches out and clasps my forearm, his palm over the new tattoo. “Point is, after Ry got back from Russia with Wren and they were about to move out here, I told him to call me. Maybe we could salvage something of our friendship. And when he did? I ignored him.”

  “The two of you always were the stubbornest sons of bitches on the planet.” The short, rough laugh isn’t much, but it feels good. Almost normal. But the feeling only lasts a few seconds before I blink and see the terror in Cara’s eyes.

  Dax rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head. “You’re giving us a run for our money.” After a beat, he continues. “Look, I’m not trying to stop you. But you’re not alone now, Rip. You have friends. Family. We can help.”

  “Dax, I don’t remember half of what Faruk made me do. It’s blank. Ry’s memory tricks? I knew ‘em all. Still do. I remember every minute after we landed back in the States. But before? It’s this dark hole that’s going to pull me down so deep, I might not come out again. I’m pretty damn sure all those secrets are locked in my head because they’re so awful, I can’t face them.”

  I blow out a breath. Despite how scared I am, admitting my fears to Dax turns the massive weight on my shoulders into something lighter. Something I can almost carry. “I can’t delve into all that shit in the middle of Ry’s apartment. I need to find Charlie, and I need to do this next part alone.”

  With a nod, Dax extends his hand. When I take it, he pulls me in for a quick clap on the back, and I hold on. “Just promise me one thing, Rip.”

  I know what he’s going to say, and I head him off. “I won’t go after them alone. The minute I have what I need, I’ll be back. I promise.”

  At the top of the stairs, I hear his reply. “Come back safe, Rip. That’s an order.”

  Cara

  I can’t stop shaking. My arms ache, and I have to keep moving my fingers so they don’t go numb. It’s like a sauna in here, the sun beating against the walls, seeping through painted-over windows—the only light in here other than a bare-bulb lamp plugged into an extension cord.

  But the worst part of where I am? The smells. This building feels huge, and it’s definitely been abandoned for years. As Jessup dragged me out of the trunk of his car, up some stairs, and into this massive space, I saw a dead bird, at least three live rats, and something big…a raccoon or coyote or something, half-decomposed in the corner of the room.

  The floor’s coated with dirt, leaves, and God knows what else. The air’s so thick, it makes it almost impossible to breathe, and at some point, Jessup took off his necktie, doubled it over, and used it to gag me. That awful cologne he wears? The tie’s saturated with it, so much I can taste it.

  I keep retching, and the only reason I haven’t choked to death is that I don’t have anything but a small amount of bile in my stomach. So far, I’ve been able to spit it out around the gag.

  The incessant drum beat of my heart is getting faster and faster. I don’t know what time it is or how long I’ve been here, but my meds didn’t have time to kick in before I threw up the first time when Jessup grabbed me.

  Think.

  My captors left the room a few minutes ago, and I rest my temple against the angled metal bar. It’s slightly cooler than the surrounding air, and it eases the pounding in my head. I can’t get out of the handcuffs. This is some kind of material chute that exits the ceiling maybe fifty feet away and then disappears into the wall above my head. No gaps.

  As soon as Ripper gives Jessup and Parr what they want, they’ll kill me. I have to find some way out of here. Under the stench, there’s a hint of seawater, and I think I can hear it lapping against the shore. But I could be five minutes or a couple of hours away from Pike Place. I passed out seconds after I saw Charlie wriggle through the gap in the fence.

  A door bangs, and I suck in a sharp breath through my mouth, then immediately regret it. My stomach turns, and I struggle not to retch.

  No. Not Jessup. Not again.

  I can’t handle any more of his disgusting cologne. But as I blink rapidly and try to focus, I find a small measure of relief. Parr. As he approaches, I curl inward, trying to make myself as small as possible, though the way I’m bound leaves me little ability to move.

  “Can’t have you dying yet,” Parr says. He sets a bottle of water next to me, then grabs my hair and turns my head so he can untie the gag. I make it a point to spit more bile on his shoes, and he grumbles something that might be “bitch.” But then he twists the top off the bottle and holds it to my lips. “Drink.”

  Anything to get the taste of Jessup’s cologne out of my mouth. I suck down half the bottle before he pulls it away. Panting, taking short, shallow breaths, I peer up at him and whisper, “Please. I need my meds. They’re in my bag. My heart…”

  His eyes widen for a split second. “We tossed your bag. You’re going to have to calm down on your own.”

  “Doesn’t…work like…that, asshole.” The dark, disgusting space starts to spin around me, and I can’t hold my head up any longer. Even if Parr uncuffed me right now, I couldn’t run. I don’t think I could even stand.

  He crouches so we’re almost level, and his voice softens—just a little. “We need you alive until Richards gets our money. I don’t have your meds. Tell me what else to do.”

  My mind races, thoughts flying so fast, I can’t pluck a single one from the garbage heap of my brain. And then it hits me. “Music. There’s an app…on my phone. BrainRadioWaves. Helps…”

  “I’m not that stupid, Caroline. Richards could track your phone’s GPS. No way. It stays off until the deadline.”

  My tears lend a shimmer to the dirty, industrial space, and for a moment, it’s almost pretty. Think, Cara!

  All I want to do is feel normal. Stop my racing heart, my frantic thoughts. But I can’t. I’ve failed. Everything I tried to do. Leland’s probably dead—they wouldn’t tell me. Ripper’s going to die. Or go to prison, and that would kill him. And Charlie…

  A gentle melody floats over the air, and I blink hard to dash away the tears. Parr holds his own phone up, the BrainRadioWaves app on screen. “This the right one?”

  I nod, so grateful for this single act of kindness, I don’t even protest when he ties the disgusting gag around my head again. Setting the phone a good twenty feet away—too far for me to have any hope of reaching it, he gives me one last glance as he stalks out of the room. “It’s almost one, by the way. Ten hours left.”

  Ten hours. I only have ten more hours to live.

  Ripper

  I should have asked Ryker for the keys to his truck. Not that I’ve driven in more than six years. But it’s supposed to be like riding a bike. Instead, I take off at a run for my apartment. The three miles pass in agonizing slowness. If we live through this, I’m going to start running again. Hardcore.

  We.

  The thought isn’t lost on me. Cara’s mine. Just as much as Charlie—but in a very different way. I need both of them back. Unharmed. Otherwise, I might as well give up.

  Taking the stairs to my apartment two at a time, I’m so out of breath, I have to lean against the wall to enter my code. But once I’m inside, Cara’s scent lingers. I can’t stay here. Not after they shot up the windows. Bulletproof or not, they know where I live, but they also need me alive for the next ten hours.

  Grabbing my ruck, I pack up my laptop and power supply, then add a black t-shirt, a pair of black pants, and my shitkickers. I’m getting her back, no matter what, and once it’s dark, I need to be able to blend in.

  I’m almost out the door when I see the shirt she wore to bed folded on top of the pillow. I strip out of my own shirt and replace it with the one she borrowed. Now her scent is all around me, and I can focus again.

  I need privacy. Maybe Cara’s apartme
nt? It’s not like those two assholes are going to go there looking for her. No. Too risky. A hotel room would do. As I push through the front door of the building, I freeze.

  “You didn’t really think he was going to let you do this alone, did you?” West asks. He leans against the passenger door of a fully restored 1954 F-150 Ford pickup.

  “Yeah. I kinda did. I was pretty fucking clear.”

  West holds up his hands. “I’m not here to get in your way. Think of me as your chauffeur. Your very well-trained chauffeur. Who’s armed.” He nods towards his hip and I take stock of his outfit.

  “Seriously? Never pictured you for a Hawaiian shirt kind of guy.”

  His eyes hold little humor as he shakes his head. “You know a better way to hide a sidearm when it’s hot as fuck in Seattle? Trust me. This was my best option. Even if Cam nearly laughed herself right off her chair when she saw me.”

  As much as I want to tell him to go home, I don’t have a vehicle. And outside of the five mile perimeter around my apartment where I walk every day, I don’t know my way around the outskirts of the city. “Fine. The call came ninety minutes after Cara bolted. So, they’re probably not right in the downtown core. But Charlie might be. Head towards Green Lake. That’s where I walked him yesterday.”

  I slide into the passenger seat and open the laptop as West turns the engine over. Five minutes later, I’ve pulled up the data on Charlie’s tracking chip. “Shit. Never mind. Pike Place. Now.”

  West slams on the brakes, executes a quick three-point turn, and ten minutes later, starts down the hill towards the busiest public market in the country. The chip’s GPS isn’t the most accurate, but we’re close. “Let me out, then circle the block a couple of times,” I say as I reach for the door handle.

  “You’re not going to rabbit on me, are you, soldier?” He keeps his tone light, but when I meet his gaze, his icy blue eyes tell me he’s not going to take any shit. A car behind us honks, and West sticks his arm out the window to motion them to go around.

  “I was wrong.” Squeezing my eyes shut for a long second, I see Cara’s face and hear the tremble in her voice. “I can’t do this alone. But, there’s a lot of baggage between me and Ry and Dax. He was right to send you. I’ll be back.”

  West’s nod is all I need to hop out and jog down the hill to the market.

  Too many people.

  My heart starts pounding so hard, I can hear it, even over the din of the crowd, and I wipe my damp palms on my jeans.

  Stay focused. Charlie and Cara need you.

  I weave among the stalls, scanning all around me. Back out to the street, down to the corner, and my panic rises even higher until three loud barks have me whirling around.

  Charlie bounds towards me, and I crouch down to wrap my arms around him. “Good boy. So good. You tried to help her, didn’t you?” He licks my cheek, then yips at me, grabs the hem of my t-shirt in his mouth, and starts to back away slowly.

  “Charlie, let go.” He does, but keeps backing up, yipping at me the whole way. “Fuck. You want me to follow you? Okay. Go.”

  The second I give him permission, he takes off, and I have to run to keep up. Back through the market to a set of stairs, all the way down, to the right, and then he wriggles through an opening in an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence and sits.

  “Really?” I’m about ready to tell him to come back to me when I notice what he’s sitting in front of. Vomit. And next to him…red smears. Blood. I’m up and over the fence in thirty seconds, and land in a crouch. The strap from Cara’s bag lies against the wall, and as soon as I pick it up, Charlie barks again and takes off.

  “If you know where she is, you’re getting nothing but steak for the rest of your life,” I mutter as I follow him. This place is a maze. Up a ramp and then to another set of stairs that lead all the way down to the street—at least three floors. He stops at a garbage can, barks at me, and paws at the metal.

  “You want me to stick my hand in there?” Still, Charlie hasn’t steered me wrong yet, so I grab the rain-proof lid and twist, hard. The metal clatters to the ground, and the first thing I see is Cara’s bag. “Steak might be overkill, but you’re definitely getting all the hamburger you can eat,” I say as I pull out the bag and check the contents.

  Wallet, pill case, notebook, pen, battery pack, tissues, and water bottle. All intact.

  Charlie whines, grabs the corner of the bag, and pulls gently. “Go on. I’ll follow you, buddy.” We come to a stop at a parking lot, and he goes right to a dark spot on the pavement. More blood. “They were here, huh? Is this where they took Cara?”

  I swear this dog understands English. I wrap my arm around his solid body and bury my face in his neck. “We’re going to find her. I promise.”

  Half an hour later, West pulls up to Hidden Agenda’s warehouse. I texted Ry the address of the parking lot, and Inara’s guy, Royce, is helping Wren by checking the traffic cameras all around the area.

  “What do you need from me?” West asks as I plug in my laptop at the conference table.

  “Get Charlie some water? Otherwise…” I stare at the screen, my stomach in knots and a cold sweat breaking out over the back of my neck, “unless you know how to unlock all these memories buried in my fucked up head…”

  “No, but I’ve got my own horrors up here.” West taps his temple as he sets a bowl down for Charlie. Ambling over to the coffee pot, he starts spooning grounds into a filter. “Including more than I’d like about how to do…what Faruk did to you. I’m going to touch base with Ry. You need me, I’m here.”

  West slips outside, and soon the only sounds are Charlie’s quiet breathing, the drip, drip, drip of the coffee brewing, and my fingers on the keys.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ripper

  Fiddling with the earbud, I tap the keyboard to activate comms. “Wren?”

  “Gotcha. What do you need?”

  Dropping my head into my hands, I give up all sense of pride, and go for honesty instead. “I don’t know where to start.”

  It’s been two hours. And the only thing I have to go on is that fourteen character code I added to every single transaction I ever made. I’ve traced fifty of them so far, but every trail leads nowhere.

  “I only found three accounts when I was looking into Faruk’s transactions. One was old account. Someone created it a year or so before you, uh, left Hell.” She clears her throat, and I think I hear her murmur something off comms. “That’s what we used to set you up with everything in Seattle. The account had been earning interest for so long, it had almost two million in it. The second one—that one was created the day after Joey arrived at the compound, and had a balance of sixty thousand dollars. And your code attached to the transfer. When I asked her about her personal finances, she said she had that much at a brokerage account. That ring any bells?”

  “Shit. Yeah. I was going to find a way to get it to her family. Eventually.”

  “I’ll send you everything I have on that transfer. It came from half a dozen different sources. Maybe one of them will lead you somewhere.”

  “Thanks.” I want to ask her if she’s found anything about Cara’s location, but she’d have led with that.

  “Ripper?” Her voice softens. “We’ll find her. Royce identified twenty-five cars traveling on Alaskan Way during the time we think Cara was taken. We’ve eliminated four of them so far. We won’t give up on this. I promise.”

  I promise.

  Ryker told me what those words mean to her. Through the lump in my throat, I thank her again and close comms. Thirty seconds later, Wren’s info flashes up on my screen. I stare at the lines of code, the account numbers, the dates and times, and pull up a calendar.

  “Please,” Joey whispers. “You can’t just make me disappear.”

  But I did. Closing my eyes, I let my fingers rest lightly on the keys.

  Think. It’s all muscle memory.

  I moved money for Faruk every few days. Invested it. Watched the
markets. Codes and passwords start to come back to me. “Paper. I need paper.”

  West is on the climbing wall. I’m not sure the man ever sits still unless he’s on a mission. With no idea where the fuck anything is in this place, I open up Cara’s bag and pull out her notebook. “Sorry, sunshine,” I say quietly as I undo the elastic cord and flip through the pages.

  Afghanistan. Their “friend.” Has contacts everywhere. Runs guns, missiles, drugs, and people.

  J.T. Richards. American. Works for the guy in Afghanistan.

  Jessup and Parr want a bigger cut. They’re going to threaten to tell their superiors about Richards. If they do, the Special Forces will blow the guy off the map.

  Cara’s notes. Everything she overheard the night that changed her life. Turning the pages, I read every line until I come to what happened in Tulsa.

  Jessup found me through the pharmacy. Ordering all three of my prescriptions together was too easy to trace. He grabbed me when I was asleep, dragged me to the balcony, and tried to throw me over. He said he was sorry. Sorry? Really? I don’t even know who this Richards is. Or how to find out. I was so lucky. I should have died, not just broken my arm and ended up with a concussion. Leland

  A few pages later, I find a detailed accounting of every penny she’s spent.

  New identity - Cara Barrett: $1500

  Backup identity - Carrie Barstow: $1500

  Doctor (Leland’s friend): $2000

  Bus ticket to Seattle: $212

  All of it. Her meds. The deposit on her apartment. Rent. Clothing from Goodwill. The occasional bottle of wine. Drinks with someone named Lindsey.