Kaylee pulled in a slow breath. The truth was far more complicated than that. “He was supposed to have contacted me by now.”
“What does he do?”
“I don’t know. Its black ops, or clandestine, or something.” Or she’d read too many spy thrillers lately. “I’m really worried. I wondered if you knew anyone that you could call, and then maybe mention his name. See if someone knows what happened to him, or where he is? Maybe he’s hurt or in trouble.” She shivered just thinking about Brad being in danger. Or injured, unable to escape. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”
“It’s okay, Kaylee. Give me his name and I’ll ask around. I know a few people with connections in that world. They can find out if your brother is all right,” Dean said. “But one of those people I know is Stuart.”
Dean wanted her to talk to him?
“Oh, well… I wouldn’t want to bother him. He seems to have a lot—” She had to clear her throat. “—going on.”
The skin around Dean’s eyes flexed. She knew he was a therapist, licensed to help people through their trauma. Hopefully he assisted Stuart in that way. She didn’t want to be judgmental or anything, but it seemed like he maybe could use professional help. That, of course, would take plenty of time and meant Dean wouldn’t need to worry about her in the meantime. No one needed to worry about her.
She was fine.
Dean lifted his chin. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Bradley Caldwell.”
He opened his mouth but paused a second before he asked, “Military?”
What was that pause about? Did he know her brother, or recognize his name?
Kaylee’s eyes filled with sudden tears she couldn’t blink away. “Is he dead?”
“What? No.” Dean touched her shoulder. “I don’t know your brother.”
It took her a minute to compose herself, while she glanced aside and stared at the trees. “He’s not military, but it’s some kind of agency and it’s international.”
The idea her brother might be CIA had crossed her mind many times before. Usually after reading one of those spy novels. The only problem was that he didn’t appear to be affiliated with any one group in particular. He floated around like a transient, living out of the camper that was strapped on the bed of his truck and taking odd jobs when he wasn’t off somewhere on a “mission.” When he was gone, he was all over the place. He’d come back tanned or suffering from the aftereffects of hypothermia. One time he’d had some tropical skin infection, and he’d had to be quarantined.
Then there were the injuries.
It almost seemed like he was some kind of mercenary. A gun for hire. Maybe a thief, or arms dealer.
Maybe he was a criminal, wanted all over the world, and she would end up exposing him.
She’d considered going to the storage unit where he left his truck and camper, but that would be an invasion of his privacy. The package he’d sent her months ago was enough of a clue that something was going on.
Was he okay?
“I just want to know if he’s all right.” She blinked away more tears. “He’s never been gone this long before, not without contacting me somehow.”
Brad knew how she felt about being left with no word of whether he was dead or alive. One time he’d sent a postcard. She’d had voicemails and packages. Even an email. Never the same thing twice and never from the same account or name.
That was how she knew something had to have happened to him.
Dean’s eyes softened. “I think you should consider talking to Stuart. He may have the time to spare. If you’d like someone to try and look for your brother.”
She saw in her mind, the second Stuart had reacted. Through the opening between the diner and the kitchen, she’d seen his arm swing out. Faster than she’d ever seen anyone move. Like a trained fighting machine. A killer.
“I know you’re busy.” She took a step back and almost stumbled off the front stoop. “Sorry to bother you. Just…don’t worry about me. Okay?”
Kaylee didn’t wait around for an answer. If Stuart was the person she needed to help find her brother, then maybe Brad didn’t need to be found.
Was that the kind of man her brother also was? She didn’t like to think about that kind of violence. Not after what she’d seen with her own eyes eight years ago. The memory was blurred now—except when she dreamed it.
Kaylee flicked back the kickstand and set off, letting her helmet dangle from the handlebars while she pedaled back toward town with tears streaming down her face.
Brad, what did you get yourself into?
He’d always been rough. Not unkind, but far more capable of wading into a mess where a bully picked on someone, or where there were two dogs fighting. He’d broken up plenty of altercations when they were kids. Kaylee had been scared of everything, even before the night their parents were killed.
And every day since.
She pedaled fast and when she reached the main road, she stopped to put on her helmet. Biking might be safer than driving a car, but that didn’t mean she could go without head protection.
Two people honked, and she lifted her hand to wave at both. Small town life suited her just fine. So long as everyone did what they were supposed to. Kaylee didn’t need any surprises, she just wanted things to be the same as they always were. Definitely no scary and attractive, dark-haired men with too much scruff on their face erupting and whacking another man.
What was that about anyway?
Were the police looking for him?
Kaylee wondered if she should ask Conroy. Her boss was the chief of police, but she’d never asked him about an actual case before. Could she do it now or would he question the fact she was changing things up? Getting personal. Involved.
The idea she might need to face her fears was all well and good, but it wasn’t like they were unfounded. She had every right to be afraid. Then she would read her Bible. Or go to Maggie’s weekly Bible study in the common room at Hope Mansion where she lived. After some songs, and being “encouraged by the Word” or however they put it, she had to admit she would feel better.
It started on the back of her neck. The way it always did.
A tiny itch. The urge to turn around and make sure there was no one behind her. Kaylee heard the rumble of a diesel engine, probably a half-ton truck. Some local, clowning around in their gas guzzler just to pick up milk from the store or whatever.
Kaylee pedaled faster. She was almost to the street where she needed to turn, the road that would take her back to Hope Mansion where she lived with a group of other women. The perfect, safe, place for her to be. Everyone knew Maggie had a shotgun.
But first, Kaylee had to make it there in one piece.
Someone was following her.
Three
“How much of that did you hear?”
Stuart didn’t wonder how Dean knew he was there. His friend shut the front door and turned in time to watch Stuart finish the water bottle he’d filled before he started his workout. Now his long-sleeve, sweat-wicking shirt was drenched, his hair plastered to his forehead.
Dean studied him, eyebrows raised.
Stuart shrugged. “My guess? All of it.”
“Wanna tell me what your problem is with her?”
“Who says I have a problem?”
Dean shot him a look and moved through the house to their expansive kitchen. He got a juice from the fridge and twisted off the cap. “Had any thoughts about dinner?”
“It’s leftover night.” Stuart didn’t have time to cook. “Zander and the boys are busy building a new breach house and Ted is working late.”
Once a week, at least, they tried to all sit down and eat together. To foster some kind of “fellowship,” as Dean called it. When the team was out of town, which was most of the time, they checked in if and when they could. The times they were here, they were always working on one thing or another. Like building a new set-up for their breach house, so they could practice kicking doors down.
“Good. Then we have a few minutes. We can go talk.”
Water overflowed the bottle and onto his hand. Stuart shut off the faucet. “I don’t need to talk about what happened earlier. I was jumpy anyway, and now I’m fine.” He twisted the lid on his water bottle even though water from his hand continued to drip onto his sneakers.
Dean didn’t look convinced.
“Don’t you have things to do? A girlfriend to take care of, a therapy facility to build?”
“Among other things.” Dean folded his arms. “If it’s close to the surface, you might remember something else.”
Stuart didn’t want to admit his friend was right, but he also had no basis to argue. As he trailed back through the house to the basement stairs, he conceded the point—to himself—that it was close to the surface. He strode past the huge dining room that had been repurposed into a recreation room for the seven of them to hang out. It was where they’d put the used pool table Stuart found at one of those online buy/sell sites. He jogged down the stairs to the lower level where they’d set up a room that was a near replica of Stuart’s worst nightmare.
And Dean wondered why he didn’t want to come down here?
His back was tight from the punishing workout he’d used to burn off the stress and lingering adrenaline from reacting when that drop of hot oil stung his cheek.
He didn’t realize there was still more in him until he strode across the closet-sized room and punched the wood panel on the far wall. His hand didn’t even dent it. Stuart hissed. He’d probably broken bones in his hand.
“I’d ask if you feel better now, but…” Dean didn’t finish.
Stuart turned, pressed his back to the wall and slid to the floor. Knees to his chest he looked around, then closed his eyes. He didn’t want the chair this time. Or the blindfold. A couple of times, Dean had tied him up and even drugged him the same way his kidnappers had. All of it part of emersion therapy to try and help him remember the details of what happened—the pieces of the puzzle his mind had tried to bury.
It was perfectly safe, but the reproduction of this room and the circumstances of his torment were good enough that it didn’t take long for his mind to transport him right back there. It even smelled the same.
Brad gasped. “Stu…don’t let them kill me. Promise me… Promise me you’ll do it before they do.”
Stuart pulled in a long breath and blew it out slowly. Maybe he didn’t want to remember.
We were betrayed. That’s how they caught us. They knew we were coming.”
“Betrayed.”
Dean said nothing in response. He didn’t speak a whole lot, mostly just a comment or question if Stuart’s thoughts needed to be led in a certain direction. One they didn’t want to go.
“We were betrayed.”
Dean’s voice was soft. “Who set you up?”
“He knew.” When Stuart opened his eyes, he saw Dean’s eyebrow rise. Stuart said, “Brad knew who set us up. I remember him mentioning Kaylee. Clearly she’s involved somehow.”
“So you came here, where she lives, so you can watch her.”
Stuart shrugged one shoulder. “She hasn’t made a move yet, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t up to her neck in it. Maybe that’s why she came here. She’s trying to feel out how much I know.”
Why was Dean so sure she wasn’t involved? Brad would never have mentioned her if she wasn’t.
Dean leaned against the wall. Usually he brought a notebook in lieu of a voice recorder. Stuart didn’t want any audio recordings of their sessions but didn’t mind his friend writing down notes. Dean said, “If she knew Brad had been captured, why come and ask me to look for him? She’d already know he’d been sold out. Taken by those men.”
“She knows something.”
“Why not just go ask her?”
Stuart shook his head. “I have more surveillance to do.”
“Like what? You’ve been creepin’ on her life for weeks. Sooner or later she’s going to see you snooping around.”
Stuart nearly laughed. “As if. You think I can’t get in and out of her room at Hope Mansion without anyone knowing?”
Maybe that would give him a clue as to who else was interested in her. Someone had cloned her phone so that Stuart couldn’t do it.
He stood. “Good idea.”
“No way, dude—”
Stuart held up one hand, palm out. “I appreciate all your help.”
“You mean like joining Zander’s team to rescue you from that compound? Or are you just breaking up with me as your therapist?”
“I have to find out what she knows.” Stuart didn’t want to talk about the therapy. “I do appreciate it. All of it. Even though I got myself out, and you guys just picked me up on the roadside.”
“If we’d gotten there sooner, we probably would’ve been able to get Brad’s body back.”
“There were too many of them.” And his kidnappers tended to burn the bodies of men who died under their “care.” Which meant, considering Stuart knew Brad was dead, there hadn’t been cause to risk the other men’s lives trying to retrieve a corpse.
Not with the smoke trail rising into the night sky.
“Like I said.”
There was so much regret in Dean’s eyes that it made Stuart feel bad for keeping so much from him. But it was in his nature, in the man they’d forged from what remained of him when they picked him up out of that prison cell in France. Since then, the people he’d worked for had trained him as a deceptive killing machine with no feelings and a hair trigger.
Captivity had done its damage, that was true, but he’d already been honed through everything that happened prior to it. The places they sent him on missions. The things they’d ordered him to do.
A ghost, spreading the nightmare of his life, so that it touched the people he touched. Forever changing everyone around him.
“I need to walk.”
Dean sighed.
“I don’t need your approval.”
“No, you don’t.” A muscle in Dean’s jaw flexed. “Hollis gets it. She figured you were military, like the rest of us, and I didn’t correct her. But she knows all about PTSD, and she said as soon as you’re ready, the job offer will still be open.”
Stuart glanced back. “And when the chef finds out I’ll be working right behind him and his flinging oil?” He swiped a finger across his cheek where the spot hit him.
He didn’t like his reaction to a tiny drop of oil painfully stinging his cheek. He’d been shot recently and hadn’t dealt well with that either. Probably he’d be overly sensitive to pain for the rest of his life. There wasn’t likely anything he could do about that, except continue working with Dean to process everything that had happened.
Only, if he never told Dean the rest of the story, how would that even work. He’d left out the whole end of the tale—the part he’d remembered.
The part where he held the knife.
And pushed it into Brad’s chest.
Stuart’s whole body shuddered. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Talk to her,” Dean called out.
Stuart trotted up the stairs to the ground floor, shaking off the lingering tension. He felt like working out all over again. But even if he tried to exhaust himself into unconsciousness, he still doubted he would sleep.
Promise me you’ll do it before they do.
Was that what happened? He’d known down to his soul that Brad was dead. Enough they’d left and not started an unwinnable war to get his body back. Stuart hadn’t been prepared to get any of them killed, and he hadn’t been in any shape to even help.
Nor had he been able to remember exactly what happened.
With the drugs they’d given him, and the ways they’d twisted his mind until he didn’t even know who he was, Stuart knew he couldn’t confront Kaylee. I
t could go wrong in so many ways, and if she turned out to be part of him and Brad getting captured, then it would end with her death.
Something Stuart was almost certain he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do.
He walked the woods around town, the mountain paths and through wooded areas no one had trod in decades, until the sun came up. A few weeks ago, a body had been found in a mine up here. Murder from the seventies. People in this town were up to plenty of things the cops didn’t want to know about—a lot he saw when he walked around town—like the murder he’d witnessed. A biker killed behind one of the bars in town.
He was better off sticking to the wilderness that surrounded the town. Maybe he should build a house up here.
But he inevitably circled around to Hope Mansion.
Stuart watched the house from the cover of trees, sitting, leaned up against a trunk. Hope Mansion was bigger than the house he lived in with the guys and housed only women. The place had started as a refuge for women and children who needed safety. Even now, residents who wanted to stay, but who weren’t actively in danger, were accepted by invitation only.
So which was Kaylee?
Maybe she needed to live under the radar, her quiet, narrow life. Only, it seemed like she was waiting around for something.
Or someone.
He checked his phone and saw it was just after eight in the morning. She came out just after ten past, buttoning her coat. He hadn’t realized it was chilly. Probably almost sixty degrees, but when the high reached nearly ninety, it might feel almost cold first thing in the morning to her.
Kaylee swung her leg over her bike and set off to town for work.
Patrick waited another hour, then circled the house to her window. He’d already scoped out the security system and had been impressed with it. Still, Stuart was through the locked window and inside her room in less than two minutes.
Full size bed. Nightstand, dresser and a small closet. A few family photos and a hairbrush that hadn’t been put away.
It took another two minutes to find the hidden camera. Three more were disguised at various points around her room.
Stuart’s heart sank. Whoever had cloned her phone?
Expired Hero Page 2