The Bequest

by Hope Anika

  Will turned away, but retained the Glock. His security blanket, his talisman. The only thing left that he trusted.

  He took another drag from his cigarette and sank into one of the chairs next to the table. His lung wheezed in protest, not yet fully healed, another thing he ignored. Another form of punishment. This, too, was something he recognized during those brief moments of cognizance, that as much hate as he held for those who had betrayed him, he hated himself more, knew he deserved the worst of fates for his failures. But now was not the time for that; it would come later.

  After.

  Light yawned through the curtains, but he didn’t open them. He preferred the darkness, where he could fade into the shadows and simply be. Where his scars were hidden, and the only evidence of his ruin was the pain that throbbed in his hip, the damaged nerves that leapt and twisted in his arm, the rattle of his damaged lung. Where he could pretend, if only for a moment, that he had ceased to exist. Finally.

  But the world would not let him fade, and as his cell phone suddenly lit, flooding the darkness with brilliant white light, he understood he would have to fight for that, too.

  He reached for his phone, checked the number, and the adrenaline which had finally begun to subside surged through him like a geyser. He ground out his cigarette and answered it. “Blackheart.”

  “They cut you loose.”

  No. He’d cut himself loose. “It was time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Not of anything. Not anymore. “What have you got?”

  Red Morrow hesitated, and Will’s hand fisted, the singular point of tension he would allow himself. Red, Rye’s twin brother, whose hunger for blood beat as strong as his own. Red the “hacktivist,” who had taken a path opposite his partisan twin, a man wanted by no less than four of the world’s largest governments for the disclosure of classified documents—including the one for whom Will had nearly bled out.

  Red’s collective of international, loosely organized hackers the Unnamed spent their days unmasking purported atrocity and injustice and plastering it across the worldwide web. Their mission statement was short and succinct: no bad deed goes unpunished. Every superpower on earth hated their guts.

  Communicating with Red could raze Will’s entire military career, but since he’d gone AWOL from Bethesda three days ago, he figured there wasn’t anything left of that career to destroy. The service was singularly brutal toward its defectors, regardless of their intent. Of their damage. No, he would be painted with one broad, yellow stroke: deserter. And everything his team had died for, everything he’d killed for, would be expunged as though it had never existed.

  As though he had never existed.

  Walking away had gone deeply against everything Will stood for. Severing that tie had felt like hacking off a limb. Every second spent in boot camp hell, every mission he’d carried out, every life he’d saved, every fellow soldier he’d buried…gone. The foundation on which he’d built his life, his integrity, his worth, nothing but rubble. His entire definition, erased. Replaced.

  By nothing good.

  Surely his grandfather was spinning in his grave. Jake Blackstone had raised him better; You ain’t no quitter, boy. You fought your way into this world, and you earned your place. Now you gotta do somethin’ with it. And although Jake had dreamed of passing his cattle ranch on to his sole living heir, he’d accepted Will’s decision to join the Navy with his typical blunt pragmatism. Man’s gut is the only path worth followin’.

  A veteran himself, Jake had instilled in Will a deep respect for his country and a profound love and appreciation for all that he’d been born into simply by virtue of geography. As far as Jake was concerned, knowing the difference between right and wrong was all the moral fortitude a man needed, and he’d spent every moment of their life together reinforcing that belief. He’d been a hard, complex man, one who was, by turns, both the kindest, most generous person Will had ever known—and the meanest, orneriest son of a bitch to ever walk upright. Will knew he had inherited both traits, although only one of them had crawled out of the desert that night.

  Jake would not approve of his defection. He would expect Will to stay, to fight. He’d believed in structure, in hierarchy and the careful tiers upon which the military was built.

  But there’d been little choice. They wanted Will shelved. They knew how fucked up he was, and they didn’t want him anymore. Worse, they understood that, for him, it wasn’t over. That he had plans, and they didn’t include falling back in line like a good little soldier. Someone with bars on their chest had sent them into slaughter.

  Someone he would find. Expose. Kill.

  If that meant the sacrifice of all he’d worked for, who he was, so be it. It was far less a price than his men had paid. And that, Jake would understand. Still, Will was glad his grandfather was dead. His own shame was enough. Jake’s would have been the final nail.

  “Paris was a bust,” Red said finally. “She definitely knew what she was doing. But I found something when I tracked her calls. Frankly, it was too easy, and I don’t trust it, but right now, it’s all I’ve got.”

  In the space of a heartbeat, Will was moving, pulling on his clothing, shrugging into his shoulder holster. “What?”

  “Seven weeks ago she contacted an estate attorney in Milwaukee.”

  “So?”

  “So she had him draw up a will—which leads me to believe she knew she’d been made. That, my friend, is what we call a clue.”

  Will only snorted. “Your point?”

  “In the will she named a guardian for her minor child.”

  Will froze. “She had a kid? How the hell did you miss that?”

  “I didn’t. There’s no record of him. I’m still looking for his birth certificate; she must have had him in Timbuk-fucking-to.”

  “Christ.”

  “I uploaded the guardian’s name and background. Most intriguing.”

  Will’s heart shuddered; he fought for breath. Clenched his fist again.

  Tracking the theft of the crates to counter-intelligence hadn’t taken long. The realization had come to him with sickening, piercing clarity as he’d dragged himself slowly through the sand, watering the barren, rocky desert with his blood. What he’d seen, who he’d seen. But it had taken three weeks staring at a water-stained hospital ceiling to put his brain in order, to reach past the meds and the pain, to separate memory from the ghosts and screams and phantom gunfire, to remember what he already knew.

  Fucking spooks.

  They would have had the intel. The means to intercept. Access to the airspace. And the chilling lack of moral and spiritual clarity required to butcher an entire SEAL team and commit the highest treason.

  When Red called him the fourth week and vowed retribution for Rye’s death, all Will had to do was point him in the right direction, and pull the trigger. Red had done the rest—because even the spooks could be hacked. And they’d unearthed their first name: CIA Officer Georgia Humboldt.

  “She’s booked on a ten a.m. flight out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, tomorrow morning.”

  Will pinched the bridge of his nose. Grit his teeth. Made himself count every ragged, uneven breath as he struggled to rein himself in. “Who?”

  “The guardian.”

  He blinked. His head pulsed like a heavy metal tribute. “Wyoming?”

  “Random, I know. But she’s our link.”

  “What’s her connection?”

  “Read the file.”

  “Just fucking tell me.”

  “Easy, brother. You sure you’re up for this?”

  Will would have laughed, if he’d known how. “Tell me.”

  “No,” Red said, quiet. Final. “You need to read it.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me.”

  He said nothing. He trusted no one, not even Red. But he wasn’t going to argue; it was a goddamn waste of time. “Fine.” He grabbed his keys and his pack. “Text me her flight number and description.”
>
  “There’s a picture in the file. You’ll know her when you see her.”

  Chapter Three

  Have u lost ur &*$@!! mind?

  Cheyenne scowled down at the tiny letters on her touch screen. She hated texting. Well, she hated communicating. Texting just made it all the more loathsome.

  Chuck’s food is in pantry, she responded, snarling softly when the autocorrect turned pantry into panty.

  “Yeah, because that’s where I keep the dog food. In my panties,” she muttered.

  The elderly woman who sat beside her in row 12 of SkyWest flight 2311 offered a raised brow.

  Don’t forget treats, she continued, typing carefully. Angus will feed Dexter & Harry.

  Whoosh! And off it went. That, however, would not be the end of it. Because Whitney was currently on meltdown. Sirens-blaring, send out the troops, alert the media, freak-the-hell-out meltdown.

  The hysteria was partly Cheyenne’s fault—she supposed she really shouldn’t have left the news that she was going to Wisconsin to pick up a kid on voicemail—but most of it was just Whitney and her penchant for drama. Everything was an Event.

  U can’t do this! CRAZY!

  Well, there was no arguing with that—at least the whole “crazy” part. As for what she could and couldn’t do—

  Can too. AM. Chill out, woman. Will be fine.

  Which is what Cheyenne had decided at 3:47 that morning. If she could just keep moving forward—and not look back—everything would be kosher. The Kid was ten. That left less than a decade until he belonged to himself.

  Eight to ten years—max. She could do that.

  Need to think about this! Is NOT Chuck!

  “Duh,” Cheyenne said.

  But she understood. She knew The Kid wasn’t the same as Chuck or Dexter or Harry. She knew he needed far more from her than they did. Better than anyone. That was the thing about Whitney—she failed to realize that everything she pointed out was something Cheyenne had already considered. Because in spite of Cheyenne’s tendency to act on impulse, she wasn’t careless, or thoughtless, or stupid.

  She was prepared to do everything she could for Rafferty Humboldt. To embody the example she’d been given, and that would have to be good enough.

  DECIDED. Whoosh!

  Of course she had doubts. She’d sprung from crazy, been raised by apathy, graduated with honors in the transference of rage, and was—generally speaking—jaded, skeptical, and hopelessly annoyed by her fellow man. But she was also smart, perceptive, compassionate and loyal. Her knowledge was valuable. Worth teaching. And deep down, only one question drove her: who would she be now if she’d never been saved?

  No one good or decent. Of that, she had no doubt.

  Because Hank MacLean had saved her. Without him she would have never known love. Trust. Her own value. That knowing him had come with devastating loss as well was just another life experience to be borne. She would not trade the day he’d discovered her jacking his pick-up truck for anything on earth, even if it hurt to remember.

  No, this was right, what she was doing. Hank would approve.

  Why r u doing this? Don’t understand!

  Why did people think she needed their understanding? Their approval?

  “Get over yourself,” she said.

  The woman at her side smiled, but since she was thumbing through a Ladies Home Journal, Cheyenne wasn’t sure if it was because of her own random self-talk or the magazine.

  YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

  Was it too much to ask for a little belief? Sure, she had a few issues, but she wasn’t a freaking psychopath. A sociopath—which was what The Kid’s mother had been. Seriously, how much worse could she do?

  But Cheyenne wasn’t going to argue. She never did. It was a goddamn waste of time.

  Enough. Gotta fly (har!) Talk 2 u soon.

  Whoosh!

  “Everyone has an opinion,” murmured the woman beside her. An accent shaped her words, something Slavic and guttural that spoke of a land far removed from the one in which they sat. “There was a time, sharing was considered rude. Now it is considered a right.”

  “So much for evolution,” Cheyenne replied. She slid her phone away, sat back and tucked her “seat belt” discretely beneath her fleece. Hell if she was buckling the damn thing; it’s not like it would save her if the flying boat she was on went down. Or exploded. Or lost cabin pressure. Or—

  “I hate to fly,” the woman continued conversationally. Her voice was rough and deep and spoke of a lifelong love affair with tobacco products. “I would rather eat dirt.”

  Cheyenne was not adept at small talk, so avoidance was her MO when it came to the general public and their inclination to yammer. But when the woman turned to look at her, the faded blue gaze that flitted over the waxy patch of scarred flesh that marred Cheyenne’s left cheek didn’t linger. Her eyelids didn’t flicker, her smile didn’t falter. She didn’t even flinch.

  Impressive. And unusual. Almost everyone looked away, as if it was somehow catching. Which prompted Cheyenne to respond, “This is my first time. Today is the popping of my aeronautical cherry.”

  A small smile turned the woman’s mouth. “A bumpy, unpleasant ride that will leave you slightly nauseated. Is appropriate comparison.”

  If she only knew. “I thought the plane would be bigger.”

  “This leg is always small plane. No beverage.” The woman scowled. “Cheap bastards.”

  “Less for more. Everyone’s doing it now.”

  “Bah, is nothing new. Screwing people has always been in vogue.” The woman offered her hand. “I am Olga.”

  Cheyenne hesitated a moment before accepting it. She rarely shook people’s hands—her scars were one thing to look at, another to feel—but it seemed rude to refuse. “Cheyenne.”

  “A pleasure.” Olga nodded, and her aged denim gaze took in Cheyenne’s black cargo pants, fitted black fleece and YNP ball cap. “You dress like a boy.”

  Cheyenne stared at her. She didn’t know whether to be amused or insulted, but she could appreciate the directness, so she only shrugged. “I like to fly under the radar.”

  “There is flying under the radar, and there is disappearing from sight. You should not hide beneath a man’s hat.” Olga’s eyes flickered to the scar on Cheyenne’s cheek, and it prickled in awareness. “Or is that your purpose?”

  Cheyenne tugged at her seat belt, annoyed. “People are dickheads. Dealing with it gets old.”

  “You let it be your problem when it should be theirs.”

  Cheyenne shook her head. This was exactly why she did not bother to talk to people.

  “In my day, women looked like women,” Olga continued. “We had breasts. Hips. We were not ashamed.”

  “I’m not ashamed,” Cheyenne retorted. “I’m just not a billboard.”

  A grunt. “My son, he is engaged to a girl who wears plastic pants and ugly shoes. Her hair looks like Medusa. Rings in her nose, her lip, in her eyebrow! I just want to rip them all out.”

  A startled laugh caught in Cheyenne’s throat. “Probably better resist that temptation.”

  “Yes,” Olga agreed. “Until the wedding.”

  Which made Cheyenne feel for said future daughter-in-law. “Your son lives in the valley?”

  “He is ski instructor. We send him to three ivy-league schools, and he wants only to play.” A disgusted sound rumbled in Olga’s throat.

  “He’s not alone, you know. This valley is full of that. I think it’s generational.”

  “Is no excuse. You will be in big trouble when you are my age. They will leave you dying in the streets while they go to find pleasure.” Olga looked out the small oval window next to her and squinted against the bright light reflecting off the plane’s wing. Just beyond the wing, a man was pushing a cart of luggage across the tarmac. Behind him, the Grand Tetons rose to stunning grandeur. “Being mama is a thankless job.”

  Well. That was great news.

  “At least he wants you to vi
sit,” Cheyenne pointed out.

  Olga slid her a sideways scowl. “Is not his choice.”

  “Ah.”

  “He lives like American. But he is Russian. He must learn difference.”

  “A vast chasm, I’m sure.”

  “Like the hole in the desert.”

  For a moment, Cheyenne didn’t understand. Then, “The Grand Canyon?”

  “He thinks work should be fun. Is work! Is not meant to be fun.”

  “This is true.”

  The stewardess approached and eyed Cheyenne’s lap.

  “Please fasten your seat belt, ma’am.” She phrased it as a request, but her wide smile was patently false, and her eyes were hard. You’re one of those, aren’t you? “We’ll be taking off shortly.”

  Cheyenne met her gaze and wondered if the Bill of Rights covered aircraft seatbelts. Not that there was much left to the Bill of Rights. And there was probably an Air Marshal on board who would tackle her ass to the ground and cuff her if she refused. Which would be an interesting experiment…if she didn’t really need to get to America’s dairy land and collect an orphan. So she sighed and snapped the belt together.

  “Thank you,” the stewardess murmured. She stared for a long moment at the scar on Cheyenne’s cheek—just long enough for the insult to sink in—before moving on.

  Olga muttered something colorful and dark.

  “Agreed,” Cheyenne told her.

  Around them, people settled into place, and the air stairs were removed. The door slammed shut with a rush of chilly air, and the steady hum of the engines turned into a low roar. A well-modulated, disembodied male voice suddenly crackled around them, welcoming them to the flight, announcing his name (Bob!), his title (Captain!), and then rattled off something about times, altitude and temperatures. Cheyenne didn’t particularly care. As he signed off, the stewardess appeared in front of them and began a show-and-tell about airplane safety.

  Then they began to move backward.

  Cheyenne’s stomach dipped. Since she didn’t particularly believe her body needed to be at 30,000 feet—ever—and since she could totally see herself ending up an airline crash statistic, she wasn’t looking forward to this flight. Or the one from Denver to Milwaukee, which would follow. There was a reason she drove everywhere. But time was of the essence—the Kid was in Haven.