The cars made the distant turn and revved back up the hill, racing for the Point again, engines screaming in the night. And they were close to each other, too close, Erin thought, way too close for where they were and how the road narrowed and—
Erin saw the accident happen in slow motion, the move so stupid, so completely insane that she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even think. Kevin had somehow decided he could pull ahead of Zander by going up onto the embankment, and he angled his Mustang toward the side of the road and floored it. Only the car hit an outcropping of jagged rock halfway up the steep hill, and the Mustang went completely airborne for a few sickening seconds before landing impossibly hard on its side. It skidded across the road with a roar of grinding metal and bashed into the opposite embankment, the impact knocking it back down onto its wheels.
Zander’s car was already screeching to a halt and skidding around, but Erin’s entire field of vision was filled with Kevin’s crushed Mustang and the smoke billowing out of it. Kevin wasn’t moving inside, and his windows were shattered, the airbag clearly deployed. She had to do something, she had to act! Her heart thudding wildly, Erin pounded her fingers on the phone screen and then there was someone there, a woman asking her what was wrong. Erin began shouting into the phone, saying there was an accident, a horrible accident, that there’d been a crash and people were hurt and they needed to send someone right now, right now, right now!
She broke off the call and raced forward, not knowing what else to do. Zander had reached the vehicle and had pulled the car door open, and now he was inside where Kevin lay—saying something, doing something, she didn’t know what. But when he pulled Kevin out of the Mustang, Erin stopped short, her hands flying to her mouth. Kevin’s face was a ravaged mess of blood and gore, his hair white from the powder released by the exploding airbag that hadn’t been enough to completely break his forward motion. He staggered against Zander, who was talking fast. “You’re good, man, you’re good. We’ll get you cleaned up, we’ll get your car fixed up, it’s all gonna be okay.”
Cleaned up? Was he insane? Kevin needed a hospital! But Zander was calm, confident, just like he always was, though now his hands were moving with quick, efficient jerks, flicking in front of Kevin’s eyes. “Help is coming!” Erin tried to call out, but she could barely draw breath. There was so much blood and heat, and the Mustang was still smoking from something, and Erin realized that she was screaming and Zander was shouting and the rest of the group were yelling and then, suddenly a sound blared across the Point that sent everyone running, everyone but Zander and Kevin and Erin, who was still so caught up in the horror of what she was seeing that she didn’t have eyes or ears for anything else, not even for the—
Sirens.
—
Erin shook herself back to the present. She pressed her hands against her eyes, as if she could unsee all of that night, from Zander pushing for the race to happen to that call, that stupid call, to Zander getting hauled away from Kevin and blindly striking out at the uniformed men, only to get handcuffed for his troubles. And then Zander had seen her standing there with her cellphone, and he’d put it all together, his eyes filling with rage and horror, and such soul-shattering shock that she could ever—that anyone could ever, but especially her, his girlfriend, the one who supposedly loved him—that she could ever betray him so completely and unutterably.
And of course she hadn’t understood, hadn’t realized that an arrest for a boy who was on his way to West Point was pretty much the beginning of the end of a dream that had been crafted for Zander when he’d still been in the cradle.
She’d figured that out later, of course, but by then it was too late. By then she’d lost her chance to explain her side of the story, her fear and outrage, her need to take control because people were hurt, people were in danger, and no one was willing to stop long enough to make sure they were safe.
And even that sounded stupid now. But it had seemed so big, so important that night to make her point. She hadn’t wanted Zander to get arrested. She hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. She’d just wanted everything to stop. She’d just wanted somebody to stop, for once in her life, to stop and listen to reason and not just do the first outrageous, impossible thing that came into their minds, and—
“Honey, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Dani was leaning forward now, her hands on the table. Erin looked up, realizing she’d stopped talking at some point, her eyes now blurry with tears she refused to shed. “What in fuck’s name did this guy do to you after you made that call?” Dani asked. “Did he hit you?”
“What? No!” Erin shook her head, hard, the shock at what Dani was suggesting sending a jolt down her spine. “No, it was nothing like that. He really didn’t do anything but yell that night. But he was right, Dani. What I did…” She shook her head again, finally able to give the words life. “I didn’t understand it at first, but I basically ended his life.”
“Shut up,” Dani said, her eyes going so wide that Erin could sense the sarcasm coming long before it passed her housemate’s lips. “Death by cellphone? Like, he’s an Army Ranger zombie now?”
“I’m serious, Dani,” Erin snapped. “I made the call that got Zander arrested. You can’t get into West Point if you’ve been arrested, or if you can, Zander’s father either didn’t have that kind of pull or refused to exercise it. And Zander knew that immediately, the night this all happened. I didn’t understand at first, and by the time I did, it was all over.” Erin drew in a shuddering breath. “So Zander ended up enlisting the very next day. I think Gran Ginny told me that, actually, days later. God knows I never went out to the cape again after that night.”
“And you never spoke to him again,” Dani said.
“Not really,” Erin muttered. There had been one time, yes. And hadn’t that been an epic fail.
But Dani wasn’t done yet. “So that was it for you guys. Four years in the military, and neither one of you unbent enough to admit that you were wrong and ask for forgiveness?”
Erin scowled at her. “Since when do you ask for forgiveness?”
“I don’t.” Dani shrugged. “But I’m not you. Making things right is important to you, and if your Zander’s as Boy-Scouty as he sounds, it’s important to him, too. But not so important, apparently, for either of you, that you’d actually give up anything for it.”
Erin’s frown deepened. “Aren’t you supposed to be helping here?”
“Nope.” Dani grinned at her. “But I’m about to. He’s coming over tonight, isn’t he? You want me to find somewhere else to sleep?”
“What? No.” Erin’s eyes widened. “Dani, it’s not like that. It’s food and conversation, nothing more. I’m not even expecting him until six or whatever. I figured I’d just paint upstairs until dinner is done, then come down and get everything together. But we’re just going to talk, seriously. I’m not turning the entire brownstone into some sort of love nest.”
“Why not?” Dani asked. “He’s home, what, for just a couple weeks? Why not make things right while he’s still in town?”
“Because he hates me, maybe? That seems like a pretty good reason.”
“Oh, give it up.” Dani shook her head. “I mean, yeah, you guys aren’t likely to fall back into each other’s arms permanently, if enlisting versus being an officer is still that big of a deal to him. I get that. But you guys dated for what, two years?” She continued at Erin’s nod. “And I assume it was pretty good other than the part where you had the shit scared out of you and you called the cops?” Erin nodded again. “Well, there you go. Focus on the good stuff. Give yourself permission to get him out of your system for good. He probably wants the same thing, if he’s going to all the trouble to come over here tonight.”
Erin winced. Zander had said almost the exact same words. Get it out of their systems. “I guess,” she said. “But either way. He’ll be gone by eleven o’clock tonight or whatever. The coast will absolutely be clear by then.”
“Sure it will,”
Dani said. She pushed out her chair. “So I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She grinned. “Or afternoon. Whatever.”
Chapter 7
Zander squinted into the bright, late-morning sunlight of the remote parking lot, scanning the half-dozen cars. He checked his GPS coordinates again. This is where he was supposed to be, a training and equipment demonstration at a state forest that he should have reached in about forty minutes, if he’d actually been going the speed limit. As it was, he was early, but it still felt like the team had moved on without him.
He’d driven down the marked roads and passed the Closed signs at the park entrance, just as he’d been instructed, amused but not all that surprised. He figured Jackson had something interesting to show off, to drag him all the way out here. He’d gotten the text that morning and figured what the hell. The post-funeral bleakness had settled over the house in the early dawn, and he didn’t need much of a reason to bail. All the wheels he’d set in motion over Erin’s little bombshell would still be churning for a while, so he had time.
Now he scanned the nondescript collection of cars and trucks, resting his gaze again on the only vehicle that gave him pause, a military truck positioned nose out, apparently so that its contents could be unloaded under the cover of the overhanging trees. It wasn’t an excessively large vehicle, but it looked like it meant business. What did Jackson have going here?
Stowing his phone, Zander walked up to the trailhead, the path the entire group had taken, if the tracks and broken brush were any indication. Clearly no one was worried about being followed, so he didn’t hesitate, either. Jackson was expecting him, and Zander wasn’t in the mood for bullshit.
He was up to his ears in that already.
His calls out to buddies—and more to the point, the buddies of buddies—had already yielded some information about Erin’s little planned clusterfuck. Slow day, he figured, and guys were itching for something to do. But every scrap of intel that had come in simply strengthened Zander’s resolve to keep Erin the hell away from Nuevo Laredo. The border town was nice enough in the nice-enough sections, but it got ugly real fast. She’d said her parents had been abducted there, but even that didn’t make a lot of sense. The place just wasn’t a touristy hangout. Or a hop-over-the-border-for-fun kind of hangout, either. It wasn’t really a hangout for anyone, unless you were looking for sex or drugs or some very sketchy combination of the two.
And yet, that’s where her parents had waltzed in unawares, pissing off the locals so much that they got themselves taken? Even for a bunch of bored Mexicans, that was lot of effort to go to over two dumb-ass Americans, no matter how much money their daughter supposedly had. What was he missing here?
It got worse, too. The border crossing was pretty tightly controlled within the city, with just a few bridges linking Laredo, Texas, with Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. But Erin looked like the quintessential American girl. She could get into Mexico pretty easily, even with her cushions stuffed full of cash. If anything went wrong, though, she was looking at a world of hurt. And getting back into the good ol’ U.S. of A was always harder than getting out.
A strange commotion ahead of Zander brought his head up, all of his senses on full alert. He was at the edge of a sort of clearing now, the grass beat to shit, a roil of wheel tracks and footprints baked into the hard earth beneath the dry grass, past the shadows of the forest. He stood and watched as the noise built, not really hidden by the trees, but not out in the open, either. It sounded sort of like someone was running toward him through the forest, from the other side of the clearing, but there were no trailheads there, just trees and thick bushes that were now thrashing around even as Zander realized whatever was heading toward him had four feet, not two.
Then it cleared the trees, advancing into the open field and whipping its head around once, twice, before pinning its metallic eyes on Zander in the half cover of trees, and emitting a sharp, high-frequency chatter. It was just a matter of training that Zander didn’t jump completely out of his skin, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d just been busted.
By an honest-to-God robot dog.
He’d heard about these things, knew they were in production, but he hadn’t been on the kind of missions that put these babies to use—or his command hadn’t had the kind of budget. Small, four-legged units that could scout for mines, or carry weapons and provisions over desert terrain and never tire. Nothing too crazy yet, nothing like Terminator.
But this damn dog in front of him sure looked impressive enough. It was maybe four feet tall and just as long, with bizarre multi-jointed legs that were now planted wide while its head—Clearly some sort of transmitter, maybe equipped with a camera. That’d be smart—remained fixed on Zander’s position. The chatter had to be some sort of secondary alert system, he figured. The main alert could be transmitted electronically, silently. And transmitted to…
He didn’t have long to wait.
A small knot of guys poured out of the trees behind the robot, their heads covered in tight helmets that curved just a touch into their line of vision, grins on their faces like they were just out for a morning of paintball. They carried no weapons, but Zander stayed put anyway, appreciating the exercise for what it was. He was the target, and the oversize metal dog in the center of the clearing had been programmed to let them know he’d arrived. Well, mission accomplished.
Glenn Jackson stepped out from behind another knot of trees about twenty feet from Zander. He was grinning, too, and he waved Zander out.
“You like our latest toy?” he asked, as Zander approached the robot and watched it maneuver to keep him in view.
“It have weapons on it?”
“Not this one. It couldn’t even pee on you if it wanted to,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Go ahead, you can inspect it.” He continued as Zander stepped up to the machine, the thing cocking an “eye” at him. “Strictly for recon, low-level mule capabilities. We’re testing it as a scout, but it’s not exactly quiet. Still, for tracking purposes, say for an escaped prisoner or scattered tactical unit, or one of our own guys who needs to be found when we don’t care so much about secrecy, it could be useful.” He turned to the team, and one of them stepped up next to Zander, punching keys on the small keyboard attached to the robot’s back as it stood patiently. “Run it the other way for round two, then we’re done here,” Jackson said. “We need to be out of the area by eleven hundred.”
The men nodded, stood at attention, then the first man smacked the robot on a rear panel. The thing took off at a sharp angle into the forest, the men falling in behind.
Jackson gestured to Zander to precede him back down the trail. “I appreciate you coming all the way out here today. I know it’s a long way to go for just a little show-and-tell.”
Zander shrugged. “I figured you’d make it worth my while.”
“And have I?”
He grinned. “You’ve caught my attention. But I think your offer may be misplaced. If that’s your team, I’m not sure what I can do for the few days I’m home that will help all that much. They looked competent enough.”
Jackson nodded. They were walking slowly, heading back toward the cars. “They are competent, yes. But they’re also not a team. The problem with hiring a bunch of highly self-reliant men fresh off of units they know, trust, and care about is re-creating that trust in a new unit. Not such an easy prospect.”
Zander glanced at him. “And also not something doable in a few weeks.”
“This was never about a few weeks, Zander.” Jackson paused for a long moment, then sighed, seeming to make up his mind. His next words were quiet and measured. “Your dad had a heart attack once before, son. Before the one that killed him.”
“What?” Zander stopped, turning to Jackson. He could tell from the man’s face that this revelation was costing Jackson—it had been his secret to keep, and it rang true. Zander’s gut tightened up and a surge of adrenaline shot through his system, but there was no one to fight here but ghosts. Ghost
s he’d never be able to catch. “When?”
“About a year ago. It was a small event. He was with me, actually. He didn’t tell your mother, he didn’t tell anyone who wasn’t ‘need to know.’ We got him to his doctor, had him checked out. He took better care of himself for a while, but not for long.” Jackson’s lips tightened. “It changed him, but not enough. He’d spent too many years being a soldier for a little thing like a faulty heart to slow him down.”
“Sounds about right.” Zander looked forward again and forced his feet to move. Why was Jackson telling him this? Unbidden, thoughts of his father that night four years ago in the police station flashed through his head. The colonel had been white-faced with fury, betrayal, indignation. Had his heart already been a problem then? Zander could feel his pulse jumping in his neck, and tried to tamp his impatience down.
“Zander, I watched your father jeopardize his health for no good reason. He gave everything to the army. His career, his youth, his family. And eventually, his life. Even after he’d left active duty, he volunteered for every exercise, put his body to the test against every new recruit. He accepted nothing less than the rigid discipline his position had required, the constant sacrifices. And he would have done it all over again, given the chance. Because that was his choice.”
“It was a good choice,” Zander said. He could see where this was going. “A choice he freely made, sir. A choice I made as well.”
“But it’s not your only choice,” Jackson continued. “I’ve reviewed your file, as I mentioned. I liked what I saw. I want you to seriously consider leaving the army and working for us. Or, potentially, returning to college—”
“College!” Zander barked out a laugh. “That’s not for me.”
“Maybe not four years ago, but a lot can change in four years. And it could still be an education that’s fully paid for, with the proviso that you choose a course of study that will benefit your work with us, and commit to spending two years after graduation in our employ.” Jackson’s smile was wry. “All about return on investment for us both, you could say. Or, if you choose to pursue your schooling on your own and just need a summer job…we’re also here for that.”
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