“It was my fault,” he insisted, running a hand over his face and shaking his head.
“No,” she assured him. “That’s ridiculous.” She knew a little of what’d transpired on that wind-swept mountain. Her brother had given her the basics after Steven’s funeral. And as much as she’d prayed for the day when she’d see Jake the Snake brought low, she never wanted it to happen this way, with guilt and blame tearing him apart. “It was a vote. Fair and square. Steven made his own decisions that day,” she insisted, hoping her tone convinced him, because she was having a really tough time resisting the urge to reach across the small distance separating their lawn chairs to lay a hand of comfort on his muscular shoulder. She knew from experience, once she started touching Jake, it was almost impossible to stop. “Steven was a grown man who—”
He lifted his eyes to her face then. And they were so green, so tormented. “Did Boss ever tell you about the Marine barracks bombing?”
“Uh…no,” she shook her head, surprised and disoriented by the lightning-fast change of topic. “He…he never said anything about it.”
He nodded and went back to folding and refolding the beer label he’d finally managed to pull from the sweating bottle. Then he glanced up and made yet another visual pass around the courtyard. Yes, he may claim there was no cause for worry, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still on high alert.
She supposed there was some comfort in that. Of course, the small relief she garnered from knowing he would hop-to at a moment’s notice quickly dissolved when the silence between them stretched until it was a sharp, tangible thing.
When she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she cleared her throat and quietly asked, “Were you guys…um, were you stationed there when it happened?”
She remembered watching the footage of the horrendous event on the news. The scenes of carnage and destruction had been enough to have even the most stalwart constitutions running for the nearest toilet. At the time, she’d been beside herself with worry, wondering if her brother and all the men she’d come to think of as family were lying somewhere in that smoldering rubble.
Then Frank had called, joking around like usual, never breathing a word about the bombing, and she’d assumed Bravo Platoon was stationed elsewhere in Afghanistan.
“Do you, um, do you mind if we turn our chairs around?” Jake suddenly blurted, catching her off-guard yet again.
What the heck? This conversation felt more like a verbal scavenger hunt, one where she was missing the clues.
“Uh, sure, I guess” she said, pushing up from her Adirondack chair and watching in confusion as he hastily turned it, along with his own, away from the fire.
“I want my eyes to adjust to the dark, and I also want to keep watch on that corner,” he explained with a jerk of his chin toward the corner in question.
O-kay. Her pulse, which hadn’t been steady all night, tripped over itself.
“What’s over there?” she breathed, trying to see something in all that pervasive blackness.
“Nothing that I can see, and that’s the whole problem.”
Huh?
“Okay,” he said, retaking his seat and grabbing his beer, “where was I?”
She wasn’t sure anymore. Her head was spinning.
“Oh, you asked if we were stationed there when the barrack’s bombing occurred, and the quick and simple answer is yes.”
She dropped down into her seat as a wave of dizziness and nausea overcame her. The realization of how close she’d come to losing them all trumped every other thought.
So close. Too close…
“We were housed down the block from the marines. You see, SEALs and jarheads tend not to mix effectively when it comes to housing situations considering we’re an unruly, rough-and-ready bunch by nature, and Marine’s are a spit-and-shine, follow-the-rules group by training. You’ve sorta got yourself an oil and water situation there.” He grinned then and, even scared out of her mind, sick over the thought of nearly losing her brother and all the boys of Bravo Platoon, she had to mentally scold herself to keep from falling prey to his particular brand of allure as she watched his dimples deepen.
And, yes, considering the danger of her situation and the dreadfulness of their current topic of conversation, she fully grasped how ludicrous that was.
Of course, Jake always had the ability to muddle her thoughts, charming cad that he was.
“But that’s not to say we didn’t eat in the same mess hall with those dudes or have some brews around the same campfires,” he continued, his smile disappearing as his eyes grew shadowed, the memories obviously painful. “During that month, all us frogmen in Bravo Platoon got to know those leathernecks pretty good.”
“I’ve heard it said soldiers in war make friends really quickly,” she remarked quietly. “The shared experience and all that.”
“Yeah.” He nodded and turned away, his expression filled with anguish.
Her heart, the one she had to keep reminding herself to harden against him, proved true to character and softened around the edges.
He was quiet then, and only the gently hiss and crackle of the fire at their backs broached the stillness of the courtyard. After she’d allowed him some time to gather his thoughts and herself and her idiotic bleeding heart some time to beat back the urge to reach out and touch him, she ventured, “So were you guys…were you on base that day?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “We were.”
She knew what was coming next, and she steeled herself to hear it. As much as she’d love to plug her fingers in her ears and sing ob-la-di, ob-la-da, she squashed the urge to get up and pretend their conversation never happened. Instead, she pulled Franklin closer to her chest, taking comfort in his presence and his soft, little boy snores as she waited for the horror she sensed was about to fall from Jake’s lips.
One thing she’d learned being the sister of soldier: when a fighting man wanted to talk, you let him. No questions. No interruptions. No matter what was going on around you.
And even after everything that’d happened between them, after all the terrible things he’d said and done, she couldn’t force herself to turn away from him now, in his moment of need, though she sensed whatever he was about to say might ultimately cause her defenses to crack.
“We were still jocked-up, loaded down with sixty pounds of gear from the mission we’d just come back from when the blast hit us,” he said, glancing over his shoulder to throw the mutilated beer label into the flames. It caught fire instantly and burned bright blue, casting strange, dancing shadows around the courtyard. The effect was particularly eerie given the atmosphere, and her breath hitched in her throat. “It sounded like the world was ending, and everyone on base, including us, immediately beat feet. But we weren’t running away. Hell no. We were all soldiers, so we started running toward the explosion and the fireball billowing into the sky.
“It looked like hell had burst through the Earth’s crust,” he recounted quietly as he settled back into the Adirondack chair, adjusting himself slightly to accommodate the gun in his waistband—oh yeah, she knew her brother had loaded him for bear even though he’d been trying to act all inconspicuous about it.
And great. Now she was chilled to the bone and sweating through her bra all at the same time. What in the world were you thinking coming here? Bringing Franklin? It’d been one thing to pal around with covert operatives and the danger that surrounded them when it was only her. It was another thing entirely to do so now, when she had a child to consider.
She should’ve never doubted her brother’s original decision to keep them far away from the BKI compound…
“I remember the heat,” he continued softly. “It was like nothing I’d ever felt, and it was the first thing to hit us as we rounded the corner and got our first glimpse of what was left of the barracks. That and the smell. The smell was indescribable, like death raised to the power of a thousand.”
Her nostrils flared in sympathy. Thankfully, the only sc
ents captured by her quickly indrawn breath were that of smoking pine logs and warm boy.
“There was nothing but a crater where the barracks had been. A giant, burning, blackened hole that was at least fifteen feet deep. And all around us, we could see the remains of those two hundred hardcore Marines. There were arms and legs and torsos hanging in burning trees, combat boots and cammies blazing and smoking and raining down like ticker tape at a Macy’s Day Parade.”
He paused for a beat, raking in a slow, shaky breath, and she blinked back the tears she hadn’t realized were hovering behind her eyes. Just when she was about to throw caution to the wind and reach out to comfort him, a small sound, a tiny crackle of movement, like a footfall in a bed of dry leaves, sounded in that corner he’d been so concerned about.
She stared into it as Jake silently drew a huge, black pistol from the waistband of his jeans. His demeanor went from simply alert to that of a jungle cat ready to pounce, and her heart hammered in her throat until it was impossible to breathe. But no matter how hard she struggled to adjust her eyes to the stygian darkness, the only thing she could see was…
Nothing. Not one stinking thing. Just inky blackness. Just like he’d said…
She waited, afraid to blink, afraid to move, even though she unconsciously covered Franklin’s head with her hand. Straining her ears, she listened for a repeat of that tiny kernel of noise, that miniscule rustle of sound, but…
Silence.
Except for the chatter of the fire, except for the little snores emanating from between her son’s sweet lips, not a whisper broached the stillness of the courtyard and then…there it was again!
“Get behind me!” Jake hissed as he bolted from his chair, automatically placing himself between her and Franklin and the threat.
***
Shell, wonderful woman that she was, didn’t hesitate to scramble from her chair and grab the waistband at the back of his jeans with one hand while she held her still-sleeping son with the other.
“We’re going to back up, slowly, into that southeast corner,” he whispered from the side of his mouth, steadily aiming his Glock into the darkened northwest corner of the courtyard.
That damned nook was like a black hole, absorbing all light.
Of course, Jake didn’t need his eyes to tell him something was moving there. His ears caught it all. Each rustle sounded like soft-soled footsteps on hard, slate stones. His heart—usually so steady when coming face-to-face with armed militants or standing beneath a sky raining mortars—was threatening to beat right out of his chest. Because the thought of someone he couldn’t see aiming a gun at Shell’s head…dude, that scared the ever-lovin’ shit out of him.
Scared him like he hadn’t been scared in a long, long time…
And why did it have to be that particular spot?
Um, probably because whatever ass-hat was standing there, hidden in those deep shadows, had studied the layout of the place and knew about this one weakness.
At least that’s what he’d have done and, sonofabitch!, that thought certainly didn’t ease any of his tension.
“Come out,” he commanded in a clear, ringing tone as he continued to inch backward, herding Shell and Franklin toward the only place that offered the possibility of escape.
When no one emerged from the blackness, he added, “I’m gonna start filling that corner with hot lead in about half a second if you don’t show yourself!”
And just as his finger began to squeeze the trigger, just as his arm muscles tightened in readiness to both steady the weapon and absorb the kick, a form began to take shape at the exact spot where the north wall merged with factory building.
Slowly at first, and low to the ground, a dark shadow disengaged from the blackness of the corner and slipped inch by inch into the golden circle of light cast by the crackling fire.
“Holy shit,” he hissed at the same time Shell blew out a shaky breath that ruffled the hair on the back of his neck and sent chills down his spine. Then she burst into the kind of laughter brought on by equal parts relief and hysteria.
He swung around to look at her, his stupid heart hammering like he’d been shacked in a closed-out wave. “It’s not funny,” he managed to growl as he shoved the gun back into his waistband, though, in all honesty, it kinda was.
“I know it’s not,” she chuckled, swaying from side-to-side with Franklin, who, somehow, despite everything that’d happened in the last two minutes, was still dead to the world. Jake figured the damn kid might’ve slept through a nuclear blast. “But can you imagine the look on Frank’s face if he came out here to discover we’d mistaken his cat for a killer and filled the poor thing full of holes?”
He glanced down at the cat in question. The thing was butt ugly and, completely oblivious to the chaos it’d created and the closeness with which it’d come to losing one of its nine lives, was winding its rather rotund form around and between Shell’s legs while simultaneously staring up at her with adoring yellow eyes.
He opened his mouth to tell her the stupid cat and Boss would’ve deserved it when, inexplicably and seemingly from nowhere, an entirely different urge overcame him.
He grabbed her, sleeping boy and all, and pulled her to him, sealing their lips in one fell swoop.
***
Vanessa fidgeted, glancing around at the hard faces of the Knights. They were gathered at the conference table on the second floor of the shop, waiting to see what information Rock could get out of the guy who’d been hired to kill them.
Guy who’d been hired to kill them…
Okay, and the whole situation suddenly felt all too real. No longer could she pretend the price on her head was nothing more than an amorphous threat, because the proof that someone was willing to pay good money to see her dead was sitting down in the interrogation room being questioned by Rock.
A sick feeling bubbled in the bottom of her stomach, and the bratwurst she had for dinner was suddenly threatening to give a return performance.
Just when she opened her mouth to break the strained silence, a sharp slap, like someone slamming their hand down on a table, echoed from below.
Wild Bill winced. “So he’s moved on to step two.”
“Huh?” she asked, swallowing the acid that inched up the back of her throat.
Someone’s willing to pay good money to see me dead…
The thought kept spinning through her head until she thought she’d go completely insane and her baked potato decided to jump in line behind the bratwurst.
“The first step in any interrogation is to try to win over the suspect with friendliness,” Angel, the ex-Mossad agent who’d come to work for BKI around the same time she had, said in his raspy voice. “When that doesn’t work, you move on to threats of physical pain and the fear that evokes.”
She turned to Boss. “Will Rock really beat the information out of him?”
“Hell, no,” Boss grumbled, his fingers tightening around the steaming cup of coffee in his hands. “We don’t stoop to the level of our enemies.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Becky threw her hands in the air. “Would everybody stop pulling the whole oogedy-boogedy say-nothing but mean-everything black-ops bullshit here and just tell the poor woman the truth. She’s a Knight now, and she’s gonna find out eventually anyway.”
“What? What am I going to find out?” She nervously glanced around at the group.
Becky made no attempt to hide her exasperation at Boss before turning to enlighten her. “Rock is an expert interrogator. He can get anything out of anyone because he has this crazy ability to get inside of your head.”
What the huh?
“Ozzie says Rock is like Spock,” Becky went on and, oh great, a Star Trek analogy from Ozzie, the king of all things sci-fi. How appropriate. “He can totally rock that whole Vulcan mind meld thing.” Vulcan mind meld. Uh-huh. She said that as if it were a real thing.
The sound of Rock’s cowboy boots clomping up the metal risers stopped all conversation
around the conference table cold.
“So?” Boss asked when Rock topped the last riser.
“So.” He whipped a chair around backward, straddling the seat. When he draped his tattooed forearms over the back, she noticed the hard muscles in his biceps, exposed by the short sleeves of his Green Day T-shirt, twitching fitfully.
He doesn’t like doing it, she realized.
Whatever freaky skill he’d been taught, doing so got him all jammed-up, and not in a good way. Of course, she could totally understand how unsettling it must be to go snooping around in someone’s head looking for weaknesses only to turn around and use those weaknesses against them.
“Shogun,” Rock said as he shook his head and blew out a tired breath, “whose real name is Larry Marrow, doesn’t have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot. The stupid fils de pute thought if he said anythin’ about Johnny and the price on our heads, I’d kill him. No matter how often I told him I wasn’t gonna kill him, that I just wanted him to answer my questions, he didn’t believe me.”
As soon as the name slid from Rock’s lips, Becky whipped out a laptop and started digging up everything on Larry Marrow from his blood type to his favorite baseball team. She’d been taught her computer skills by the best. Namely, Ethan “Ozzie” Sykes, because as well as being the king of all things sci-fi, he was also the Knights resident computer whiz-kid.
“What else?” Boss asked, ignoring the chatter of Becky’s fingers on the keyboard.
Rock sighed and ran a hand over his goatee. She noticed it tremor ever so slightly.
God, and now, like an idiot, she was even more tempted to go all Disney on him. She obviously had a weakness for the whole wounded warrior thing.
“Accordin’ to ol’ Larry,” Rock continued, “all communications between him and Vitiglioni were done through a series of private post office boxes, and Johnny supposedly used an alias. He hadn’t the first clue where to find Johnny. Apparently,” he grimaced, shaking his head, “and you’re gonna love this, but apparently Larry answered one of those crazy cryptic ads in Soldier of Fortune magazine.”
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