Expired Hero

by Lisa Phillips

  “So he was one of the founders. And also a Russian sleeper agent from the sixties.”

  “If he’s been here that long and no one knew, then he’s good. I don’t think anyone even suspected, right?”

  “I guess.” Zander blew out a breath. “And he knew who West is, could’ve probably ID’d him. Now he’s dead, and so is that lead.”

  Stuart hopped off the hospital bed. “Where is she?”

  Zander said nothing.

  Stuart had seen her last right before he’d hit the ground and lost consciousness. Kaylee had been taken by Edmond and his men, guys with as much training as he or Zander had. Maybe more, if the fact they’d lost their fight with Edmond meant anything at all. Now Edmond had Kaylee and a copy of the flash drive. And Stuart and Brad had been left behind.

  “Tell me.”

  Zander said, “We don’t know. But we’re looking.”

  Stuart shoved his feet into his shoes and shot a glance over his shoulder.

  “We’re working on it. What we know so far is that she was put on a plane and it took off. We are currently tracking them.”

  “Why are they taking her in?”

  “And not you?”

  “Look, regardless of what you think, I’m not trying to figure out why they don’t think I’m special,” he said. “That’s not what this is. I just want to know why she’s so important to them if they got the flash drive, the very thing they came here for.”

  “Did they?”

  Stuart shrugged, even though that made the deep gunshot wound in his side tug on his stitches. “A copy of it.”

  “And what would Kaylee bring to that equation.”

  Stuart tried to think. The pain meds were working well enough except for the lingering ache. He didn’t want to puzzle this out. He wanted to get out there, start knocking down doors, and start shooting everyone he recognized as being part of their group—including Trina. She hadn’t been kidnapped. She’d signed on voluntarily.

  Kaylee was pretty much the only innocent victim in all of this. Her involvement was supposed to have been done already. Long before anyone showed up with a gun—and a helicopter—looking for the package Brad had sent.

  Brad.

  “Let’s go.”

  Zander opened the door. “Where?”

  Stuart nearly walked right into the men in the hall, two of the three guys on Zander’s team. “A whole protection detail of professionals? I’m touched.”

  One snorted. The other said, “Where to?”

  Even though he’d asked Zander, Stuart was the one who said, “I’m going to talk to Brad. I need to know what I’ve been missing this whole time.”

  They followed him, a trio. Three points making up the tip of a blade behind him. Despite their extraordinary power and skills, they hadn’t saved Kaylee any more than Stuart had. That alone stopped his spiraling thoughts that he hadn’t done enough to stop Edmond from taking her.

  Stuart stepped onto the elevator and leaned against the wall.

  “We’re going to get her back.”

  He closed his eyes to avoid the scrutiny in Zander’s gaze. “Not soon enough.”

  One of the other guys asked, “What will they do to her in the meantime?”

  “The plane will go to a holding facility. She’ll be kept there a few days, less if they know we’re in pursuit. After that there are several options. They have two facilities in Europe, one in Canada, and another in Thailand. Depends on where she’s taken.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Stuart glanced at the younger man. Sinewy, built like a warrior.

  “I mean, wherever she is, we go get her, right?” He shrugged. “She ain’t gonna be on Mars.”

  “True.”

  Zander said, “This organization. Who are they?”

  “Privatized war.”

  “So, mercenaries,” one of the other guys said.

  Stuart shrugged. The elevator slid up to the second floor. “They pretend they’re legit. Sanctioned. But in the end, it’s just dirty work governments don’t want to rubber stamp, so they farm it out.”

  “You were military?”

  Stuart shook his head. “Never. They pulled me out of a life I didn’t like, bumming around Poland and stealing from people who didn’t care. Running from the ones who did. My first mission, they tossed me in a French prison. Told me to kill a guy in the showers because the spray washes away the evidence.”

  “And the rest is history, as they say?”

  “Let me guess,” Stuart said. “You’re the poet of the team?”

  “Well, I guess that would depend on whether or not you’re a poet, and you’re gunning for my job. Wouldn’t it?”

  “Not even close.”

  All of them shifted. Stuart didn’t know if it was because he might want a job, or because they were all super uptight about people not wanting to join them. Either way, he didn’t have time to figure out what the answer was.

  The elevator doors opened, and they repeated their walking in formation, all the way to where the fourth man on their team, and Dean, stood in the hall.

  “He awake?”

  Dean spun around. “You’re gonna question him?”

  “I need to know what Brad knows.”

  “And if I tell you he’s in no condition to talk?”

  Stuart moved past him and yanked down on the door handle. He strode in Brad’s room, where the machines beeped their steady rhythm while the light of early morning streamed in the windows. That gunfight had been in the middle of the night. Still, how long had he been unconscious? Long enough they’d hauled him here to the hospital. He’d woken up with stitches and warm, soothing medicine in him. It had been so many years since he had taken any kind of narcotics, the effect was disorienting.

  But he wasn’t going to let that stop him from getting answers from Brad.

  Finding Kaylee.

  Putting all this to rights.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  The men crowded in the room until the testosterone level had a nurse at the door asking Zander if everything was okay. One of his guys smiled a frat boy grin at her, and the two walked back out.

  Dean moved close to Stuart’s side. “Dude. He’s not well.”

  “Brad.” Stuart waited until his friend gave him his full attention. Even though Brad’s eyes were glassy, he knew his friend could hear him. Understand what he would say. Be able to give him answers.

  Please. There was no one else to plead with. Stuart had come to the end of all his knowledge and all his strength. He had nothing left. Don’t let anything happen to her before I can get to her. Help me make it quickly.

  He leaned against his friend’s bedside, hoping compassion would rule this day. But given how they’d been trained, maybe that was a futile hope. “We’re tracking the plane, but I need answers. You know they took Kaylee?”

  Brad nodded, not giving away any emotion on his face. Were the medicines he was on withholding his emotions from coming to the surface? “If they have her, then it’s done.” He turned away.

  Stuart moved closer. “You sent her the package. This is your doing.”

  “We were betrayed. I wanted out before that happened. Now that it has? I don’t want one more single thing to do with them. It’s over.”

  “You just walk away? When they have your sister?”

  A muscle ticked in Brad’s jaw. “You’re going after her, right?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “With or without my help. You’ll get her back.”

  Stuart appreciated his friend’s trust in him. But he wasn’t convinced it was a good thing when it meant Brad was essentially quitting and leaving Kaylee to them. “If I walked away too, would you fight for her?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I know you, and I know that look on her face. She talked about you. Thought I couldn’t hear her.” Brad swallowed. “You’ll get her. Because she loves you.”

  “Tell me why they took her and the flash drive, but left you an
d me.”

  Brad’s lips pressed in a thin line.

  A heavy feeling rested on Stuart’s shoulders. “What did you do?”

  Dean shifted beside him. He understood. Did that mean he wouldn’t be so inclined to hold Stuart back now? Dean cared about Kaylee. The whole town did. If Stuart put out a call for skilled help getting her back, who would come?

  Likely more people than he’d have guessed. After all, they cared about her.

  But Stuart was the one in love with her.

  A tremor of pure hope rolled through him. Used to denying that feeling his whole life, he immediately dismissed it. Or started to. Stuart stopped himself. Thinking differently about himself, and about his future, was going to take practice.

  Can I have everything I want?

  It looked impossible. But he knew a God who could accomplish what Stuart could hardly dream.

  “I figured it out. Why my parents were killed, why I was conscripted.” Brad sucked in a breath that shuddered through him. “They wanted out too, and it cost them their lives.”

  “Both your parents were in?”

  “They tried to hide Kaylee. They knew she’d be looked at as an asset. I tried to make a name for myself so that they’d leave her alone because then maybe they wouldn’t need another. Meanwhile, my parents lived under the radar. Kept her safe. When they decided they wanted out, they were both shot in front of her. The asset assigned to it was supposed to kill Kaylee, too. But he left her alive. He couldn’t kill a woman.”

  Brad gasped and then continued, “I was tasked to kill him. I told her when it was done so she would run, but she never did. She stayed in Last Chance. So I spent the next few years doing what I’d done before. Being so valuable to them that they didn’t need her.” He shook his head. “But when I’d finally had it and wanted out, I knew it would take something big for them to let me go.”

  “Like a trade.” Stuart folded his arms to keep from reaching over and strangling this man who was supposed to have been his friend. Kaylee’s brother. “Only, you and I were set up.”

  “I’d already sent her the information, just in case. When they grabbed me outside the compound, I was at the end of myself. I couldn’t go back there. I had to get out. So I told them they could have the information...and her. She has all the skills. She just needs training.”

  “So you sold her out.”

  “I did this job for long enough. It’s her turn now.”

  Stuart wanted to be sick. “Your parents never wanted this for her.”

  “But they had no problem with me doing it.”

  “Is that true, or did they find out too late?”

  Brad pressed his lips together.

  “So, this is all about legacy? One you corrupted because you didn’t have the guts to finish it yourself. Now you’re leaving your sister out to suffer alone, with no idea how to handle this.”

  Dean shoved him back from the bed. The machines beeped, loud and shrill. “He’s out.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Stuart strode toward the door. “I don’t need him anyway.”

  Thirty-four

  Kaylee lay on the cot. The room was a cell. Bare wood walls, caulk between each panel. She knew the roof was metal because she’d heard the rainfall a few nights ago.

  A tiny slit of a window no bigger than an envelope was high on the wall so she was able to track the rise and subsequent fall of the sun.

  Four days.

  Every time she started to fall asleep, heavy metal music blasted from two speakers above the door. So loud she could still hear it at full blast, even when she had her hands over her ears.

  Her eyes burned, hot and gritty. Her mouth tasted like an overripe banana. She hadn’t had anything to eat, and the only liquid she’d ingested was a discolored brown substance, given to her in a tiny bottle. It had tasted like muddy river water.

  If Stuart can do it, so can I.

  Thinking of him was as painful as it was helpful. Picturing his face in her mind, and the feel of his arms around her. His lips against her forehead. I love you. They’d had a hundred conversations in her head. Things they had never said. Things she would never get to tell him. All that was gone now.

  He was dead.

  Her life was over.

  She wasn’t sure, yet, what they wanted from her, but she’d rather get that over with than continue this torturous waiting. Though, wearing her down past this point—to the point she would scream for it to end—would probably be where they would finally intervene.

  Kaylee refused. She stared, bleary-eyed at the caulking on the wall and the knots in the wood and let her mind go blank. The music was too loud for her to think.

  What felt like hours later, it finally shut off.

  She blew out a breath. Hunger had become a weakness. Thirst was a distant memory. When the door flung open for the first time in what seemed like days, she didn’t even blink. She was lying on the bed with her legs bent over the side, her feet nearly flat on the floor.

  “You look like crap.” Edmond hauled her to a seated position and shoved her back against the wall.

  Kaylee wasn’t sure she wouldn’t fall back down to the bed again, the way her lower body was partially still turned.

  Edmond snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Are you even listening to me?”

  She blinked up at him.

  “Great. I guess that’s the best we’re gonna get.” He tapped the screen of a huge phone in his hand, then turned it. “Smile for the camera.”

  The flash erupted in her face.

  Kaylee’s cheek smashed into the bed.

  He tapped and swiped. “And…it’s sent.”

  Seconds later the phone started to ring.

  “Of course he’s calling now,” Edmond muttered. “Yes, sir.” He had the phone to his ear. “She’s not exactly ready. I understand.”

  He tapped the screen and turned it.

  The man on screen had gray hair but a handsome enough face. Tanned skin. “I can see the resemblance.”

  “Yes, sir. She definitely looks like her mother.”

  “Can you hear me, Kaylee?”

  She didn’t move. Maybe she blinked. Kaylee didn’t care if that was true or not, or whether or not they wanted her to speak…she didn’t have the energy to even finish that thought. Stuart. She wanted to go to his funeral. To see him one last time, to touch his face, and to grieve. Even more so because of the memory of their sweet moments. She wanted to experience the loss of what could have been.

  What her life would never be.

  A family like her parents had. Marriage. Children. God, You’ve abandoned me. She wanted to feel His presence. The warmth of His love. But none of that existed here. It was freezing, and she couldn’t remember one single Bible verse, even though she’d tried to bring to mind all the ones she’d memorized. Even just one.

  Any of them would do. She just wanted to hear the words.

  “What is she talking about?”

  “I have no idea, sir,” Edmond said.

  “Get her up.”

  Edmond laid the phone beside her nose and then hauled her to sitting again, this time leaning against the corner of the room at the foot of the bed. She rested her temple against the wall while he got on the phone again and stuck it in her face.

  “Can you hear me, Kaylee?”

  “Yes.” Nothing audible emerged from her mouth. She swallowed and coughed, then swallowed again. None of it helped, but she was able to croak out, “Yes,” finally.

  “Good.” The old man on the screen smiled in a perfunctory display of appreciation. “I’d hoped to be there, but this new position prevents me. So Edmond has taken my place. He will be performing the re-education on my behalf.”

  She flinched.

  He continued, completely ignoring her reaction. Or he just didn’t see it. “When you’re done, there will be a high position in store for you. It was supposed to have gone to your mother, but she decided otherwise. Now that responsibility falls to
you. The privilege of being by my side. Someone I can trust with my innermost secrets and, of course, my desires.”

  Her brain couldn’t process the words, but the look in his eyes was clear enough. He’d wanted her mother. Now his plan was to settle for her.

  Eight years ago, when her mom and dad had been shot in front of her, gunned down, she’d been barely out of high school. Her mom hadn’t wanted this. But he expected her to want it?

  “Kaylee.” His voice cut through her thoughts. “As I was saying, of course you will be rewarded. If you do well there will be money enough to build the life you’ve always dreamed of. Travel. Riches. Parties. You can even do some charity work—after we have the wedding of the season so everyone worthy of our company can attend our event.”

  Beyond the phone, Edmond stared at her. She didn’t dwell too long on the look in his eyes.

  “Of course, all this is after you’ve been made suitable. And after that mess on your face heals. Edmond?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You may have to consult with a plastic surgeon. Just to make sure there’s no permanent disfigurement.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get started with everything right away.”

  “Excellent. You see, Kaylee? Loyalty is always rewarded.”

  “What about Brad?” She didn’t ask about Stuart. She couldn’t even bear to say his name aloud. The feeling she had for him would be there, and then they would know the truth. Edmond would have yet more power over her. He would get in her head and break her down.

  More than he already had.

  “Your brother has made his own arrangements. Now you’re here. It’s time to make the best of it, and that starts with Edmond. Cooperate, Kaylee. There’s no use fighting it. You might as well make your time the most…pleasant.”

  She didn’t believe a single word of what he was saying. Maybe he thought it was true, or he wanted to believe what he was doing was acceptable. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

  “Soon enough we’ll be together.”

  Of course, by that he meant together. She saw as much in his eyes. Kaylee swallowed again, enough to say, “You think I won’t murder you the second you turn your back.”

  “Your mother would have.” He actually chuckled.

  Even Edmond flashed his teeth in a kind of a smile.