Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  This was exactly why veterans don’t talk about the war. How can anyone understand decisions made under fire, or turns taken when it feels like there’s no other way to go? Only someone who’s been in the cauldron knows that truth has many sides.

  An abyss yawned between us. The gulf that always existed between the military and civilians. A lot of people on both sides of the fence were trying to close that gap. After all, trauma isn’t owned by veterans. Neither is an ability to understand war. But it’s a hard argument to make with the troops. Even within the military community there is a pecking order akin to whose dick was the biggest: You see combat? How many tours? You get blown up? How many times?

  Now here I was with Cohen, as if we were a microcosm of that old divide between the warrior class and those whose nearest approach to war was playing Call of Duty. Cohen had seen his share of ugly. But not war ugly.

  Still, I had hope. Ask any astronomer, and they’ll agree that significant things happen with the close approach of two bodies. Tides. Menses cycles. Social madness in all its forms.

  Love.

  “I know about the pages you stole from Jazmine’s file,” Cohen said.

  Or maybe not.

  The blood left my face. My hand slid off Clyde’s head, and he nosed my palm, worried.

  “I know you put them back,” Cohen went on. “But it was hard for me to understand.”

  During the first full investigation Cohen and I worked together, I’d found references in a case file to a man I’d grown up with, Gentry Lasko, a man who was like a brother to me. He was listed as a possible suspect in a cold case. In a panic, I’d stolen the pages out of the case binder, wanting to give him a chance to tell his story before the police went to him. In my world, family did for family before they did for anyone else.

  I’d felt horrible about it. But I’d done it anyway.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Since just before we wrapped up the case. I went to talk to your friend. I believed him when he said he hadn’t touched Jazmine. And we had our killer, so I let it go.” His gray eyes were hard. “But I had to work at it.”

  I stayed silent. A hundred excuses came to mind, but I didn’t offer any of them. How Cohen chose to see me was his decision alone.

  “You want to say anything?” he pressed.

  “You have the facts.”

  “You aren’t making this easy.”

  “It isn’t an easy thing.”

  He sighed and shook himself. After a moment, he pushed up the sleeves of his pullover and rested his elbows on his thighs, switching modes.

  “Let’s put culpability aside for the moment,” he said. “Who gave the order to destroy the bodies?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “And you think this person is silencing everyone involved. And he started with Jeremy Kane.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s also after you.”

  “They’ll come for me soon enough.”

  “They?” Cohen’s face went pale. “Jesus, Sydney.”

  I noticed for the first time that the whites of his eyes were shot through with red, and he’d missed a patch while shaving. He’d been working overtime, the way he always did when on a case.

  And now I’d dropped this in his lap like tossing a grenade.

  He glanced around his home. This privileged, sheltered place with its marble countertops and floor-to-ceiling windows, the leather furniture and wide-planked floors and Sub-Zero refrigerator. The ghetto-hip basketball hoop where he practiced his hook shot in a living room large enough to park a Cessna. He knuckled his eyes, and when he dropped his hands, he looked like a man who’d found that his house had been plucked from Kansas and dropped in Oz’s war zone. And the witch was fresh out of ruby slippers.

  His eyes came back to mine. “This man hurt you in Mexico?”

  “One of his men did. Yes.”

  “How can you just . . . you’re so calm.”

  “I have no choice. You’re involved now, and this is about your life as much as mine.” I wanted nothing more than to touch him. But I didn’t move. “I have to stay calm.”

  He cleared his throat. “What about your CO? What does he think? He must know who gave the order.”

  “He died not long after that night. Mortar attack. I thought it was bad luck. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Okay.” He palmed a fist, rapping his knuckles. “You said one person gave your CO the order. Who is this ‘they’ you’re talking about?”

  “I think one man is behind it. I call him the Alpha. But he’s got plenty of help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out, too. But I have reason to believe they’re black-ops people.”

  He scraped his fingers through his hair. “You mean something like the NSA? Or the CIA?”

  “Like that. Yes.” Clyde was watching me with worried eyes, and I placed my hand back on his head. “I don’t know. That’s part of the problem.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Cohen’s voice was artificially brisk. “Tell me what you’re thinking. What do you intend to do?”

  “If I can determine exactly what happened over there and who was behind it, then I can take it to the authorities. And then I will grind these guys into the dirt.”

  “Won’t that be risky for you if the whole story comes out?”

  “I could still be court-martialed. You should know that. But that’s the least of my worries right now. My plan is to start with Jeremy Kane’s murder. Finding his killer should get me a lead to the Alpha.”

  Cohen narrowed his eyes. This was his territory.

  “How so?” he asked. “All the evidence points to a homeless man.”

  “A homeless man whom all of the Denver PD can’t find? Who just disappears into thin air?”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s pretty much my case in a nutshell.” I looked away. “I need to know you won’t try to stop me.”

  He was silent for a long time. A trumpet solo heralded Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” Cohen stood and went into the kitchen, then returned a moment later with two glasses, each holding two fingers of amber liquid. He handed one of the glasses to me.

  “Last of the Ardbeg,” he said, clinking his glass to mine.

  We drank. The scotch burned.

  He went to the nearest window and gave me his back. “I have to go to LA for a trial. The crime was committed in California, but we caught the guy here. I was going to leave Clyde with your grandmother since I fly out in the morning.”

  “How long?”

  “At least a few days.”

  Relief flooded through me. “That’s good.”

  “It sucks. But I don’t have a choice.” His voice was tight. “Come with me.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “I know you won’t. I’ll tell Gorman that Kane was a friend of yours and ask him to share what he learns.”

  “Thank you.”

  He tossed down the rest of the whiskey and without looking at me walked around the couch toward the bedroom. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Just like that?”

  He stopped. His shoulders were a wall. “I have to think about this, Sydney. I’m grateful that you finally shared things with me. And I don’t want to punish you for letting me in. It’s what I’ve been asking for ever since we met. But it’s a lot. I need time to chew it over.”

  “You’re not even in the room with me right now,” I said.

  “Maybe not. But the real problem is that you have never been in the room. You never even left the doorway.”

  Since Cohen and I had been together, I’d wanted to make our relationship normal. Create a bond that wasn’t hobbled by my past. A “how was your day at the office, dear?” kind of relationship.

  But he was right. I was way too skittish to walk all the way into the room.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s not what you did in Iraq. As a co
p, I know we’re all just trying to do our best. And I know that sometimes it’s impossible in the moment to perfectly draw that line between right and wrong. I get that.”

  My pulse throbbed in my temple. “What, then?”

  “It’s how you handled it with me. You’ve buried yourself so far behind your walls that even when both our lives were in danger, you wouldn’t let me in. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on. And now . . . now I don’t know if I can trust you to have my back.”

  A needle slid into my heart. “I thought I could handle it on my own.”

  “That’s exactly the problem. You think you have to handle everything by yourself. You should have included me, Sydney. Dammit.” He turned to face me. Anger and pain and hurt swam in his eyes, eddies in a dark current. His entire body slumped, as if gravity had finally gotten a grip on him. “Can you try not to die while I’m gone?”

  My eyes filled. “Marines are hard to kill.”

  “Apparently, not always.”

  Because I had no words, I tried to put everything in my eyes. Love, apology, strength. Maybe Cohen saw it. Maybe not.

  “I love you,” he said. “But I don’t know what that means anymore. Because I don’t really know who you are.”

  He turned and walked into our bedroom, taking my heart with him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Hard shouldn’t scare you. Lay yourself open to the bone if you have to and take out what’s weak.

  —Effie “Grams” Parnell. Private conversation.

  Cohen didn’t stir when I came into the bedroom.

  I undressed and slid in beside him. He lay with his back to me, and I lifted my hand, intending to touch him. To try and break down the barrier of flesh and bone he’d erected as firmly as a stonemason’s wall. But in the end, I was too much of a coward. I rolled away and stared into the dark until sleep finally granted me the company Cohen would not.

  I woke the next morning to the sound of him showering. When he came back into the bedroom, I feigned sleep while he grabbed a few things from the closet. A minute later, the garage door went up and then down, and as quietly as that, Cohen was gone.

  For a few days, or forever.

  I shot him a text, asking him to let me know when he’d landed. Then I tossed back the covers and hauled myself to a sitting position. Clyde came back from following Cohen and locked his eyes on mine, his brow furrowed but his tail wagging.

  You’re late, he was saying. He butted my knees. Time to get our game on.

  “Ooh rah,” I agreed without much heart. I set aside my pain to deal with later, preferably in the dark and with a bottle of scotch. “Let’s go get the bastards.”

  As Clyde and I left the gated community of Cherry Hills in my ancient Land Cruiser, I watched for a tail. It had to be there. But if so, the guy was too slick for me to spot. I spent fifteen minutes winding through backstreets without noticing anything, and finally accelerated onto I-25 and got sucked into the clot of morning traffic creeping north. On a good day, my beloved old truck topped out at fifty; this morning, that was ten miles an hour faster than the traffic.

  I took the exit for I-70 and headed east toward Limon, away from my destination. I exited at Washington Street and took a few turns before I pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store. Still nothing. Finally, convinced we were alone, I returned west on Forty-Eighth. Once I was on the far side of the freeway, I made better time on the side roads.

  Grams lived with my honorary aunt, Ellen Ann Lasko, in Denver’s Royer district, a low-rent scab on the face of the gentrification occurring all around. Royer had been settled in the early 1900s as a housing district for employees of a smelting and refining company. These days, most of the people in Royer worked for the railroad. Or had until gasoline got cheap in the eighties, and the railroads downsized. Now the neighborhood boasted more long-haul truckers than railroaders, along with plenty of the unemployed. Rumor had it that railroads were about to get popular again. Maybe there would be a shift in who was using food stamps at the local supermarket.

  I used to come to Royer often, hoping to score dinner from Ellen Ann and guidance from Nik. But all that had changed after Nik and I worked a case together the previous winter and things ended badly. I’d hardly been back here since Nik died and Grams moved in with Ellen Ann. Visiting my onetime home away from home had become too painful. Plus, I’d been fearful of drawing the Alpha’s attention here.

  There was no reason for him to look at the Lasko residence unless I pointed it out.

  Now, as I pulled to the curb and studied the house, it was Nik Lasko who occupied my thoughts. The sight of his truck in the driveway with its God and Country Will Prevail bumper sticker shafted a hurt into me that went bone deep.

  Nik had been like an uncle. A father, even. Offering advice and encouragement and sometimes disapproval. But he had not been the man I thought he was.

  I knew how he would have handled the Alpha, though. He would have gone in, guns blazing.

  “You have to know what you’re fighting first, Nik,” I whispered.

  I looked away, blinking, and let my gaze land on other homes, ones without the kind of memories that could gut me. When I was calm, I looked back at Nik’s.

  No matter what, home remains home, and even though looking at it hurt, it also satisfied some part of me to take comfort in the familiar porch, the American flag, the white vinyl siding. All the ways in which Nik had made a home for himself and Ellen Ann and their son, Gentry.

  I grabbed my duffel, and Clyde and I got out. When I slammed the truck door, a curtain twitched in the window, then the front door opened. Grams unlatched the screen as we reached the top step.

  “It’s good to see you, Sydney Rose,” she said in a voice as dry as two twigs trying to spark fire. “Thought maybe you’d lost the address.”

  Clyde and I stepped inside, and I embraced her. Her thin, strong arms wrapped around me, and even though she barely reached my shoulder, I felt like a child again, enfolded in her love. The house smelled warmly of lemon, and even out here I heard the kitchen clock drone its slow ticktock, as if time in this house passed differently, without the troubling madness of the outside world.

  Still holding me, Grams said, “Ellen Ann’s out. She’ll be sorry she missed you.”

  “Give her my love when she gets home.”

  “You’re back to Denver a little soon, aren’t you?”

  “Mexico beaches didn’t suit me.”

  She stepped back and sized me up. Her eyebrows winged together.

  “You get that black eye here or down there?”

  “In Mexico. I fell and did a number on myself. Puncture wound near my rib cage. I’d love it if you’d take a look, make sure it’s clean.”

  “Girl, you’ve never been a good liar.” Her eyes went to slits. “You weren’t on vacation.”

  I had a mixed relationship with my grandmother. There was no doubt that she loved me and would fight to the death for me. But there was something wild and unearthly in her. Something elemental that I recoiled from, even as a child. As if a dangerous part of the Appalachian wildness was woven into her like a second skin. Grams was seventy-eight, and she hadn’t aged so much as gone dry, until what was left was bone and sinew and hardened will. There was never hiding anything from her, and now I saw in her dark eyes that she would see through whatever story I tried to concoct.

  “I had things to take care of,” I said.

  “Why Mexico?”

  “I was looking for something.”

  “And you’re going to tell me about it.”

  “Some of it.”

  She snorted. “Well, some will have to do. Come back to the bathroom. Let’s fix whatever’s broken so you can go off and break something else. You never were much for soft landings.”

  When I lifted my shirt, Grams crabbed something about not running with scissors. But she made quick work of the knife injury. A wash, some ointment, and a bandage. She might have been less gentle than I would have wished
, but I didn’t figure I had much call to complain.

  “You got time for coffee?” she asked as she washed her hands.

  I nodded. “We need to talk.”

  In the rooster-themed kitchen with its blue walls and faded linoleum, I sat with Grams at the kitchen table. Clyde stretched out near my feet, ignoring Nik’s Doberman, Harvey, who took up a post at the back door. Grams had already brewed coffee, and now she placed a mug in front of me on the scarred oak table.

  I watched as she pulled a plate of lemon scones from the oven. She set them, wrapped in a tea towel, on the table along with butter and a jar of homemade strawberry jam. We each took a scone and ate, and I closed my eyes as the warm pastry dissolved in my mouth, the bit of jam a sweet counterpoint.

  “I’ve missed these,” I said.

  “You know where to find us.”

  “It’s still hard, coming here.”

  “Hard shouldn’t scare you.”

  I opened my eyes. Grams regarded me with the unsettling gaze of an owl—wise and predatory all at once. Intelligence with bite.

  “Talk to me, Sydney Rose. And don’t give me any bullshit. Whatever secrets you got are as safe with me as with God.”

  I considered that. Nik had told me never to share anything about the war, then turned around and proved to me how fucked up it was to hold everything inside. He’d refused to talk about combat even with other veterans who would understand. But I’d already opened up to Cohen. It came easier the second time.

  “Did you hear about the RTD cop who was killed?” I asked. “Jeremy Kane?”

  “It’s been all over the news.”

  “I think his death might tie in with what I’m doing. Or what I’m trying to do.”

  Grams studied me for a moment, then got up and refilled our coffee mugs, her movements quick and efficient. She set the coffee on the table and resumed her seat.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  So I did. A far more abbreviated version than what I’d shared with Cohen. I told her that bad things had gone down in Iraq and that I’d played an unwitting role in some of those things. That I’d been forced to leave an orphan behind. I told her that now some very bad men were looking for that boy. And that they were after me, too.