Operation Midnight

by Justine Davis

Cutter apparently sensed the danger as well, because once again he ran a crazy, zigzag pattern across the open space to get to Quinn.

  A shot rang out from somewhere near the barn. Cutter yelped and went down.

  Hayley screamed.

  Cutter struggled to get up, drawing another shot. This time she saw where it came from. It was the human-size door in the big sliding barn door nearest her. In the crouching kind of run she’d seen Quinn use, she made it to the old, rusted-out tractor. She braced herself against the rotted seat. Gauged the angle from there to where Cutter lay, figured he had to be on the side to her right. She fired three rounds in rapid succession, spacing them from knee height to head height on that side. The spread of shot was a good seven feet by three.

  For an instant she held her breath. She heard what sounded like a piece of metal hit the ground, followed by a faint thud. Just the sound she’d have expected from a dropped weapon and a wounded man falling. Maybe dead, she wasn’t sure she cared, not looking over at where Cutter lay, helpless, maybe dying....

  She took a step toward her dog. A loud pinging sound echoed from the tractor. A bullet; somebody had obviously spotted her. Not surprising after all the noise she’d made.

  But she had to get to Cutter. He wasn’t dead, he just needed help, he couldn’t be dead, not Cutter. He was too alive, too vital, too clever.

  The moment she moved again another shot hit the tractor, this time shearing off a piece of metal that sliced at her cheek. She was effectively pinned down.

  “Cutter!” she screamed, watching, telling herself she really had seen the dog move in response.

  And then, out of the swirling smoke of the burning tower, came Quinn. He dropped the last ten feet as if it were nothing. He crouched, spun to his left. Fired several rounds at the far side of the barn, where the shots at her had come from. In the same smooth motion he grabbed something from his vest pocket and straightened, then lobbed it with amazing accuracy toward the same spot.

  The explosion made her jump, even though she’d known it was coming. That corner of the barn blew inward, fire and smoke billowing.

  And Quinn ran straight for Cutter. She heard more shots, from farther out, someone who must have been clear of the barn. Quinn jerked once, but kept going. In seconds he had scooped up the dog from the dirt.

  He was helpless now, Hayley realized, with his arms full of dog. And, she saw with a sick feeling, he was hurt himself; a dark stream was flowing rapidly from his left shoulder. She had to cover their retreat. She stepped out from behind the tractor, firing toward the corner of the barn to where those last rounds had come from. Quinn passed her, Cutter cradled in his arms.

  She kept firing, with each shot taking a step backward, toward the cabin. She emptied the shotgun, took the chance to swiftly reload three more shells, then fired again, although now it was for show and noise more than effectiveness at this distance.

  “Get inside!”

  She heard Quinn’s yell, but her blood was up and she wasn’t quite through with the pigs who had hurt her dog. She fired her last two shells. Then she heard the rapid, steady fire of a big rifle, coming from behind her, and knew Quinn was back in the fight. Only then did she do as he’d ordered.

  “About time,” Quinn said.

  She was about to snap at him when she realized the words hadn’t been directed at her. Then she heard a new, glorious sound. A helicopter. If not the same one, then a twin, shiny, black, unmarked and lethal looking.

  And this one was wearing teeth, large-caliber rounds chewing up all in its path.

  And in the distance, a faint line of light marked the coming of sunrise.

  It was over.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Take it easy with him! He’s been as much a part of this fight as any of us.”

  Hayley heard Quinn’s order, snapped across the room from where Rafer, who had led the new team in, was applying a tidy field dressing on his upper left arm. She wanted to go to him, to embarrass him in front of everyone with a huge hug for those words, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t move until she knew Cutter was going to be all right. She petted him steadily in reassurance.

  “Yes, sir,” Teague said as he ran his hands over the dog lying on the couch where Quinn had put him when they’d staggered inside just as the cavalry had arrived. “I’ve stood enough guard shifts with him to know he’s one of us.”

  Surprisingly, Quinn’s wound filled her with an entirely different emotion; he’d gotten it saving her dog, he’d risked his life—and taken a bullet—doing it. But he’d kept coming, never wavering, his goal the dog, and getting him out of the line of fire. Any lingering doubts she had about the man had vanished with that act.

  She waited, her thoughts so occupied by the two injured males in the room that she was only barely aware of the change in atmosphere, the new quiet and calm that had settled in. It truly was over. And so quickly she was still a little stunned; the ubiquitous and all-knowing Charlie had apparently had backup on standby from the moment they’d gone dark.

  “I think he’ll be okay,” Teague said as he cleaned the ugly-looking furrow, while Cutter bore it stoically, as if he understood that despite the pain Teague was helping him. “It looks like it’s as much a graze as anything to me. There’ll be a vet standing by when we land.”

  “Thanks, Teague,” she said.

  “Thank Quinn, he ordered it.”

  She sucked in a breath as Rafer came up behind her shoulder. “He stays cool, uninvolved because he has to,” he said to her softly, and she knew he wasn’t talking about Teague. “If he gave his heart to every case, it would kill him. It’s not that he doesn’t care, he cares too much.”

  She looked sideways at the lean, rangy sniper. “I see that now.”

  “Problem is, he’s forgotten how to let himself off the leash. Maybe you could teach him that.”

  Before she could think of a thing to say to that, the man had turned and gone.

  Once Teague was done, Cutter began to gingerly get to his feet. Hayley tried to coax him to lie back down, but Quinn was there now, on his own feet, and stopped her.

  “Best to let him, if he can.”

  Slowly she stood up, and watched as Quinn, now in a one-sleeved shirt and a tightly bandaged arm that matched Cutter’s side, crouched down to the dog’s level, laid a hand on his head and looked him straight in the eyes.

  “You’re a good man, Cutter Cole.”

  The whimsy of him giving the dog her last name made her smile. It seemed to please Cutter inordinately; his thick plume of a tail began to wag.

  “My two wounded warriors,” she said softly, barely aware of saying it aloud.

  Quinn straightened, looked at her. She braced, waiting for him to chew her out for leaving the cabin. And then it hit her. It really was over. She was no longer an unintended hostage.

  “Yes,” she said abruptly. “I came outside.”

  “You did,” Quinn said, without heat.

  “You’re not my father, to order me. Or my husband, to suggest. Or even my boyfriend, to request.”

  “I could work on that,” he said, his voice still startlingly mild. “Except for the father part, of course.”

  She gaped at him. He looked suddenly unsettled, as if he hadn’t meant to say that.

  “You did what you thought you had to,” he said, briskly now. “And as it turned out, it was a good thing you did. I didn’t think they had enough men left to come at us effectively from two flanks.”

  Mollified, even pleased, she said, “There were only the two in back.”

  “And you took out one and sent the other scrambling.”

  “Cutter showed me where they were.”

  Quinn glanced down and smiled. The dog was sitting now, dead center between them, looking from one to the other as each spoke. “Good man,” he said again, and the dog gave him his best doggy grin. Quinn laughed. And again it transformed his face. It took her a moment to think of something safe to say.

  “V
icente is safe?” she asked.

  “He is. As is his family. We pulled them out three hours ago.”

  “Good. He’s a brave man.”

  “Yes.”

  “As are you.”

  “I have a good team.”

  “Not one of whom was here when you risked your life to save Cutter.”

  “He’d earned it. I meant what I said, he was as much a part of this fight as we were.”

  “But he’s still just a dog.”

  “I’m no more sure of that than you are.”

  She blinked; she hadn’t expected that.

  “We’re ready, sir,” Teague said.

  This time when she boarded the sleek, black helicopter, Hayley did it willingly. And this time, she was the one on the floor with Cutter, while Quinn sat and watched them both.

  They lifted off into the dawn sky.

  “Who are you? Will you tell me now?”

  “Hayley—”

  “I think we’ve earned that, Cutter and I.”

  He studied her for a long, silent moment. They were in an office on the top floor of an unmarked, three-story building in a clearing hidden by a thick forest of evergreens. It felt more like home to her than the barren, rolling land they’d left, but the presence of an apparent office building out in this rural area, with a helipad and a large warehouse the only other structures, seemed odd.

  Quinn turned to Rafer and Teague, who seemed to be carefully not looking at them. “Rafe, let Charlie know what needs to be replaced and fixed at the cabin. Teague, go lock down the chopper.”

  The two men exchanged a look Hayley thought a little pointed, but they left without comment. Liam, Teague had told her, was closeted with Vicente, still taking down the details of his long, bloody story.

  Quinn turned back to her. He gestured at the couch on the far wall, a resigned expression on his face.

  She wondered why it was so hard, now that it was over, to just explain. But she sat, ready to settle in for a long story, if that’s what it was. Cutter was safely in the care of a kind-eyed vet who had gone all soft at the dog’s story; Hayley had trusted him instantly. And had smiled inwardly at the way Quinn had automatically leaned down and lifted the dog gently onto the examining table, and more at how he’d stroked the dog’s head and assured him that he’d be okay, and that they’d be back to pick him up in a few hours.

  For an instant she’d even thought the dog had pulled back a little, as if he wanted to look at the two of them together. Then he made a whuffing sound that she’d swear held a note of satisfaction, and lay down to await the vet’s ministrations.

  Normally, Hayley would have stayed at the vet’s, but she had too many questions that demanded answers, and she wasn’t about to let Quinn out of her sight until she had them. Now, he sat down beside her.

  “Who are you?” she asked again when he didn’t speak.

  “We’re a private foundation. We work on referral only.”

  She’d meant who was he, personally, but she figured they’d get there, and she wanted to know this, too. She wanted to know everything. And she was past worrying about what that meant.

  “Protecting witnesses?”

  “Not usually. This was a special case, because Vicente insisted on us. Mostly it’s other things.”

  “Like the kidnap victim you saved.”

  “That was actually unusual, too, but yes.”

  “What else?”

  He let out a compressed breath. “We take on jobs nobody else will. For people who have nowhere else to turn, or who have been let down by the people supposedly there to help.”

  “Like the police?”

  “Sometimes…although it’s usually not the cops, but the brass who have things mucked up. Or some politician who’s decided what’s politically expedient. And we’re strictly domestic, unless a case has elements elsewhere, like the kidnapping that brought us to Vicente’s attention.”

  “What about the military?”

  “That’s a pool we don’t swim in. We don’t do military-contract work, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But you’re all ex-military?”

  “No. Liam, for example, isn’t. It’s not a requirement.”

  “What is?”

  “That you be the best at what you do.”

  “This team of yours here—”

  “Is one of three security teams we can field. We also have a tech team, a couple of investigative teams, a transportation team and a couple of others.”

  Her idea of the size of this operation suddenly shifted. “That’s a lot.”

  “We started out small, but the demand grew.”

  “These…private cases?”

  “We tend to call them lost causes,” he said.

  She liked that idea. “Who runs this foundation? Who started it?”

  “My…family. What’s left of it.”

  “Quinn?”

  “What?”

  “Just start at the beginning. Please.”

  “I’m not sure where that is.” He ran a hand through tousled hair. “We formed the foundation four years ago. But I guess we really started in 1988.”

  “What happened in 1988?”

  He looked at her then, and she had the oddest feeling he was watching for her reaction to what he was about to say.

  “Lockerbie.”

  Her breath caught. “The bombing?” She’d only been a small child when it had happened, but even so she remembered her parents’ horror, the nightmare photographs she’d seen since.

  He nodded. “My parents were on that plane.”

  I was ten.... She just stared at him as his words echoed in her head. Memories swirled, including the later, hideous findings that it was likely some of the passengers had survived the explosion and died on impact. What could she possibly say in response to such horror?

  “I knew I had to become a soldier, to fight back.”

  “And you did. Marines, like Teague and Rafer?”

  He smiled. “No, but I like them anyway. Second Ranger Battalion.”

  That didn’t surprise her; she’d already seen he was a well-trained warrior. “But you left?”

  “I quit,” he said, his voice so grim it sent a chill through her, “the day they let that son of a bitch go.”

  “The bomber,” she breathed, remembering all the controversy a few years ago about backroom deals, talk of a compassionate release for a dying man with mere months to live, who was alive and apparently quite well years later. “You must have been outraged.”

  “Beyond. I knew I’d never again really trust the men in charge after that. The injustice destroyed my faith.”

  Hayley drew back slightly. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re doing.”

  “What?” he asked, and again she had that feeling he was testing her somehow, waiting for her answer.

  “Injustice. That’s why the ‘lost causes.’ You’re doing what should be done but isn’t.”

  He smiled then, so warmly she wondered that she could ever have thought him cold. She felt as if she’d done something wonderful, and she didn’t even know what.

  “We work for people in the right, who haven’t been able to get help anywhere else. Or who can’t afford to fight any longer.”

  The simple words tugged at something deep inside her, reminded her of what it felt like to have a sense of purpose, something she’d lost in her life when her mother died. Something she had missed, without realizing that’s what she was missing.

  “You mean…you do it for nothing?” she asked.

  “The Foxworth Foundation is self-supporting, yes.”

  “How?” She gestured in the general direction of the building that now housed the sleek black helicopter that had started it all. “This can’t be cheap.”

  “We started out with quite a bit of money from our folks, and we have a genius at investment at the financial helm, somebody who keeps it growing and makes the occasional figurative killing.”

  “Sounds l
ike a good person to have around.”

  “She is.”

  “She?”

  “My sister.”

  She blinked. “Your sister?”

  “She was fourteen when they died. We went to live with our only living relative. Mom’s brother. We had money our parents had left us, so we weren’t a burden, but Uncle Paul wasn’t a kid kind of guy. He tried, but it was mostly my sister who raised me.”

  “Obviously she did a fine job.”

  He blinked. “I… You…”

  For the first time he looked utterly flummoxed, and Hayley took no small pleasure in that.

  A sharp knock on the door interrupted her enjoyment.

  “All locked down here, sir. Charlie wants reports ASAP, of course, and asked if it was you who needed the vet.”

  Teague said it with a grin, Quinn reacted with a grimace. “Tell Charlie I appreciate the concern. The reports’ll get there when they get there. You guys are clear.”

  Teague looked from Quinn to Hayley and back. He looked as if he were trying to hide another grin. “What about Hayley?”

  “I’ll get her home.”

  “And are you going to—”

  “Just leave me a vehicle,” Quinn said, an edge creeping into his voice. “Go home. Get some rest. You’ve all earned it.”

  When they’d gone, Hayley made no move to get up. Quinn looked at her warily, as if aware he’d dodged the real intent of her first question.

  “Where’s home for you?” she asked.

  “At the moment, St. Louis.”

  “That’s a ways.”

  “It’s central. When we started, we needed that. But now we’ve got setups like this here—” he gestured around them “—and in three other regions, too. So we can respond more quickly. We’ll be putting team leaders in all of them.”

  She noticed he’d responded with an answer about his work, not his life away from work. If there was such a thing.

  “Is that where your sister lives, too, St. Louis?”

  “Yes. She’s happy there.”

  “But you’re not?”

  He shrugged. “I’m more of a cool-weather guy. Humidity kills.”

  She smiled. “You’d like it here then. Most of the time.”