The Bequest

by Hope Anika

  Her heart squeezed so hard she almost fell out of her chair.

  “Guardian,” she said again.

  “You already said that,” he told her, frowning. “Who are you?”

  A wild laugh caught in her throat. She wasn’t prepared for this in the least, something she only realized when he stared at her as though she had horns. She hadn’t thought about what she would tell him—or not tell him. She hadn’t considered his fear. She hadn’t even once contemplated this moment.

  “I’m a moron,” she announced.

  Head tilted, he studied her, a look of confusion, anxiety, and what might have been hope shaping his features. “Come again?”

  Cheyenne took a deep breath. “My name is Cheyenne Elias, and…I’m your guardian.”

  “Guardian?”

  “A guardian is someone who is entrusted by law to be responsible for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re too young to be responsible for yourself.”

  He snorted at that. Cheyenne could relate.

  “Why you?” he asked.

  A good question, one for which she had no definitive answer. “I don’t know. Your mom and I, we weren’t…close. Not anymore. But a long time ago, we were friends, best friends. We loved each other. Well—I thought we loved each other.” Because you were a moron then, too. “None of which matters, I guess. Bottom line, she named me as your guardian, and I’ve come here to…be that. So if you want to come with me, you can.”

  He only blinked. “Come with you?”

  “To Wyoming. I have a ranch—well, not really a ranch, not by western standards—but I have a nice house, and a tack shed and a barn, and a three-legged dog and a one-eyed cat, and a goat who’s kind of an asshole—damn it. Sorry.”

  “Is this…is it a joke?”

  “Nope.” She tried to smile. “Surprise!”

  His hands clenched, unclenched, clenched again. “Letitia…Letitia didn’t send you?”

  His fear was heavy and thick, and Cheyenne decided she would very much like five minutes alone with this Letitia Jones.

  “No,” she said. “No one sent me. I just came.”

  “But…you and my ma…you wasn’t friends?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  A perfectly legitimate question, and one which deserved an answer. A simple answer. Which was not ‘because your ma was a dirty CIA agent who killed a shitload of SEALs and stole their bombs.’

  “Honestly, I don’t really know. I can’t have kids”—might as well call the Times, what the hell was her problem?—“and maybe that’s part of it. But…I was raised here. In Haven. My mom died in prison, and this place was all I had and…I despised it. When I found out you were here…well. I just…” She shrugged, feeling herself shrink beneath the force of that bi-colored stare, as direct as a laser beam. “I couldn’t leave you here. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “That’s…weird.”

  Another laugh, one that escaped. “Yeah. I know. I’m not what anyone would consider normal…so there is that.” She sobered. “Truth be told, I’m kind of a freak. I don’t play well with others. Sometimes things get out of hand. Sometimes…I punch them.”

  His mouth opened. And then closed.

  “TMI, I know. You’re just a kid. But, seriously, this is the lay of the land…and you deserve to know before you say yes.”

  “You…you punch them?”

  “I know. Bad habit. But only if they’re assholes—shit—sorry.”

  Going to have to work on that.

  “I’m in anger management,” she confessed. “The Judge ordered it so I could ‘deal with my issues.’”

  “What…what did you do?”

  “I jumped a guy. He was smacking his girlfriend around outside Loaf-n-Jug.” Cheyenne met the kid’s gaze, which was both fascinated and horrified. “He totally deserved it, but according to society it was wrong, so I got charged with a misdemeanor. Forty hours of community service and anger management.” She made a face. “Yay.”

  Rafferty said nothing. Then, “You’re kind of nuts.”

  “Yes,” she told him honestly. “But not the kind of nuts your ma was.”

  His eyes widened. He looked down at his scuffed, overflowing shoes, at the seams that strained to contain his feet. Then he shook his head, as if lecturing himself internally, and looked up. “She was…”

  “Scary,” Cheyenne supplied when he faltered.

  Those eerie eyes met hers. “Yeah.”

  “It’s okay, Rafferty—”

  “Rafe,” he interrupted.

  “Rafe,” she said and nodded. “I’m a little crooked, but I’m not broken.” Not yet. “But,” she added, “you have to decide whether or not that’s okay with you. Because I can’t guarantee I’ll change. Not even for you.”

  He seemed to consider that. “What happens if I stay here?”

  An idea which, inexplicably, made panic rear within her. But her voice was calm when she replied, “Foster care.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s what I figured. I gotta decide now?”

  “Yeah.” Which might not have been—strictly speaking—true, but considering the threat…well. No time like the present. “Sorry.”

  Cheyenne’s heart pounded hard in her chest as she waited for him to decide, and she knew—even if he said no—she was going to take him with her. Even if it was against his will. Even if she had to hogtie him.

  He glanced at her again, his eyes lingering on her scar, and she could see the questions building within him—and she understood she would have to answer them at some point—but he didn’t give them voice. Instead, he scratched his head and said, “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

  Cheyenne stared at him, and something painful and hopeful and terrified swelled within her. The tears that burned the backs of her eyes were unexpected and unwelcome; she blinked against them. Emotion. That what she was feeling. Something other than fury.

  “Cool beans,” she said past the thrush in her throat. She looked at the small, tattered backpack he’d walked into the room holding. “Is that your stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not all of it?”

  He only shrugged.

  “We can go get the rest,” she told him.

  His head was shaking before she’d even finished her sentence. “That’s okay. I don’t need it.”

  Cheyenne saw the fear that flickered in his gaze at the thought of returning to the place that housed his possessions. Letitia Jones. She wanted that five minutes. But that was her desire, not his. And she was going to have to start putting what she wanted on the back burner. He had to come first. She might not have ever had a parent who practiced that—or any parent at all, really—but she knew how it was supposed to be. And that was her bar. Still, she knew what it was to have nothing. No possessions, no home, no sense of place or purpose or belonging.

  “We’re not leaving your things behind,” she said quietly.

  “It just a bunch of junk,” he insisted. “I don’t want it.”

  “Rafe. It will be okay.”

  But he only shook his head again. “It’s not worth it.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Cheyenne stood. “We’ll grab your stuff and then get some food. I could eat a Clydesdale.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Problem?” she asked carefully.

  “That’s it? I can just…go with you?”

  “If you want to, yes.”

  He stared into her eyes with the same unflinching assessment Sasha and Kendall liked to subject her to. Cheyenne froze, fear that he would change his mind suddenly making her blood run cold, but whatever he saw—and she had to wonder—seemed to reassure him, and he went to pick up his pack. He slung it over his shoulder and turned to look at her

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Ghetto. Vandalism and graffiti. Streets littered with g
arbage. Buildings slowly disintegrating to the pavement; broken windows and black bars and burned out cars.

  Will was following Cheyenne. She’d flipped him off when they’d pulled out of the Motel 6 parking lot that morning, but now seemed content to simply ignore him as she led him deeper into the armpit of the city. If he’d thought Haven was in a bad part of town, this shithole proved different.

  Haven—where she’d sat unmoving in her rental car for nearly twenty minutes before finally going in. Haven, a monstrous brick building with barred widows and crumbling mortar; imposing and ugly, depressing as hell. It was as far from the sprawling ranch of Will’s childhood as the moon, and just looking at it pissed him off.

  Behind them, half a block back, another car followed, a sleek black sedan with Illinois plates and tinted windows that took care to stay hidden, but in this area of the city, stuck out like a dead man at a dinner party.

  Will wondered who it contained. There were several contenders: CIA, a jilted buyer, Georgia’s informant, a minion for any of the three… He would confront them, but not yet. Not until Red got back to him about the plate registration, and he had some idea of who he was dealing with. Until then, let them follow. Hell, in this neighborhood, they’d be lucky to escape without being jacked.

  Where are we going, baby?

  Tailing her annoyed the hell out of him. He’d almost pounded on her motel room door and demanded she let him accompany her to pick up the kid, which was asinine considering her reaction to his suggestion that the boy needed to be questioned. Unless he wanted to get brained by that damn baton, he needed to keep his distance.

  For now.

  He would close the space between them soon enough. Because whether she’d been telling him the truth—or whether she’d been playing him like a chump—Cheyenne was the only lead he had, and he was going to stick to her like white on rice. If that thought appealed a little too much, that was too damned bad. There was nothing to be done for it; until this was over, they were stuck with each other.

  But he wouldn’t touch her again. No matter how tempted he might be, she was off limits. Last night had taught him he had no self-control where she was concerned, and the danger inherent in allowing that need free reign was wholly unacceptable—regardless of how good it felt. There was no room for distraction. No room for pleasure. He had a mission beyond retrieval of those weapons, and it didn’t include falling in lust with a woman he couldn’t afford to want. Or have.

  No, last night had been an anomaly. A moment of weakness he would not allow himself to repeat. Everything that had driven him to this point—his determination for justice, the need to punish those responsible, the fear that the weapons would land in the hands of extremists—continued to push him relentlessly forward. Cheyenne’s presence didn’t change that, it only heightened the stakes, and if he let himself indulge, the price of failure would be catastrophic.

  Not only because she and the kid were his sole clues in the clusterfuck Georgia Humboldt had left behind, but also because he was not the only one looking for those weapons—as proven by the black sedan following them.

  Will was their first defense—their only defense—regardless of how capable Cheyenne was with that baton. Or her fists. And no one else was going to die for that cache. He would make certain.

  So he was here to stay—until it was over. Being easy didn’t enter into it.

  Cheyenne turned again, down another ugly street lined with shacks, shanties and tall, narrow projects. There were no trees, too many loitering people, and enough crap in the gutter to fill a stadium.

  Rafferty Humboldt sat beside her, staring out the window. He was short and skinny, with his mother’s mocha skin, and dark hair that hung in his eyes. He and Cheyenne had left Haven side by side, but it was clear from their body language they were strangers, distanced by uncertainty and the unknown. The kid was small, far smaller than Will had expected. Just a boy.

  A goddamn baby. One whose mother had anted him up on an altar of treason and blood.

  Fucking sociopathic bitch, could have sold sweaters to Satan.

  Which shouldn’t have made him want to smile, but did.

  Friend or foe, Cheyenne knew exactly who and what Georgia Humboldt had been. And right or wrong, Will had a hard time seeing her walk hand-in-hand with that kind of evil. He had a feeling she would kick his ass for even thinking it. And she would enjoy it.

  You’d enjoy it, too. Asshole.

  Cheyenne pulled into the gravel drive of one of the debilitated houses that lined the street, a narrow two story Victorian with peeling white paint and a sagging front porch.

  Will parked next to the curb. He watched Cheyenne and Rafe climb from the Subaru and approach the front screen door that hung crookedly on its frame. Cheyenne halted halfway to the door and stared at the house, and Will recognized her stance: feet apart, hands clenched at her hips, shoulders back. She was pissed. She turned to the boy.

  This place is a shithole.

  They were only ten feet away; reading her lips was as easy as reading her expression.

  The boy shrugged. He looked at the house, then back at her. We can leave. We don’t have to—

  No. She shook her head. We’re going to get your stuff.

  But the boy was hesitant, looking around as though he was afraid of who might suddenly appear. Will didn’t blame him. The neighborhood was dangerous as hell and had the fine hair at his nape prickling in unease. He was glad he was armed.

  The boy sighted the Jeep and stared at him. Cheyenne followed his gaze and made a face.

  C’mon. She nudged the kid into motion. Let’s do this.

  They turned and headed toward the door. Rafe shot another look over his shoulder—glancing briefly at the Jeep, and then sweeping the street—before they entered the house and disappeared from view.

  Will watched them go, knowing he should be with them. He wasn’t at all surprised to find that this shithole was the closet where Georgia Humboldt had kept the skeleton that was her son. There was more than one way to go off the grid.

  His phone beeped to life. The number was private, but he recognized it instantly. He thought about not answering, but he had questions, and even if he wouldn’t be getting any answers, he was still going to ask them. “Blackheart.”

  “What the hell are you doing, William?”

  Will supposed he should have appreciated the fact that his former Senior Chief, Ethan Scott, gave a shit, especially given how silent and idle Scott had sat while his men were buried, and the investigation into their deaths was deemed concluded by powers who had no desire for a war between U.S. counter-intelligence and the U.S. Navy. According to the information Red had found, he hadn’t even argued when they’d closed the file—in spite of a dead SEAL team and twenty-four dirty bombs lost on his watch.

  “Is there something I’m supposed to be doing?” Will asked, watching the door Cheyenne and the boy had disappeared through.

  “Healing. Damn it, Will, you weren’t cleared to leave Bethesda.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine. You don’t crawl out of the desert on your hands and knees with three bullets in you and end up fine eleven weeks later.”

  “You cut me loose,” Will reminded him. “I’m no longer your responsibility. What do you want?”

  The man on the other end of the connection snarled softly. “I had no choice! You’ve been through too much—”

  “Others go through more, and you don’t kick them out. Men fight with broken souls and prosthetic limbs, so save your speech. I know why you cut me.”

  “Will—”

  “Have they found them yet?”

  Silence. Then, “You know I can’t discuss that with you.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Will wondered if Ethan knew about Georgia Humboldt, or worse, if he was connected to her. Because only a handful of people had known their location that night—and one of them had been Ethan. Ethan, whom Will had always considered a decent man, if a l
ittle too fond of protocol. Structure was important to Ethan; he planned missions down to the last detail and ran them with an iron fist. He was predictable and unflappable and boring, which made Will doubt his involvement, but since no one was exempt from suspicion, he was still on the list.

  “The spooks,” he continued. “They don’t like to share.”

  It was a calculated risk, a disclosure made simply to shake the tree to see what fell off. He hadn’t shared anything with Ethan beyond what he’d told them in the debriefing he’d gone through at Bethesda, which wasn’t much beyond a simple retelling of events. He certainly hadn’t included any of his suspicions, not once he’d found out they were cutting him loose. They couched it in gratitude—thanks for your service, son—and insisted it had nothing to do with the two dozen dirty bombs that had been ripped out of hand by a treasonous faction within their own counter-intelligence community. Nothing to do with him witnessing that not-so-insignificant event. Nothing to do with those violent episodes the hospital staff had been documenting…or his bum leg, or his ruined arm, or his damaged lung.

  A decade of his life, extinguished. A sooty, smoldering ruin. And they expected him to be grateful.

  When what he felt was murderous.

  So much so that when Red called, Will hadn’t hesitated for an instant to spill it all. What happened, where, when, who he believed it had been. Why. And when Red had brought back a communication between one CIA agent and an anonymous source out of military ops…well. It wasn’t rocket science. Followed by the abbreviated, defunct “investigation” into the mission—killed when counter-intelligence was connected to the bullet they’d pulled out of him—and the obvious reluctance of everyone around him to ask the hard questions…

  They didn’t want to know—or they knew, and didn’t want him to know. Will didn’t really give a shit which. He was his own army; he would do whatever had to be done. No politics involved.

  “What makes you believe counter-intelligence was involved?” Ethan asked quietly. “What did you see that night?”