by Dale Mayer
“Knowing Bullard, all kinds of things are possible,” he said. “He also would have been a little bit higher up, having gone out at the time he did.”
“The plane just exploded. It broke up as soon as it hit, but it kept going for a while, so the debris field was pretty long.”
Cain pulled out his phone and quickly sent a message.
“What are you doing?” she asked curiously.
“Having them push the debris field search perimeter back a couple miles to the other side of where it first started. If Bullard came down there and had a parachute, it’s quite possible he did survive.”
“But how would he have gotten a parachute if it was blown out before him?”
“There’s all kinds of ways to maneuver in the air,” Ryland said. “If he saw one that he could get to, he could dive toward it. Once he’s got a parachute, then it’s a whole different ball game.”
“True enough,” she said. “Did you actually see another parachute?”
“I didn’t have a chance to see behind me at all,” he said. “What I saw was Garret, and I was trying to keep my eye on him, so I could get to him. Although I was injured from the blast, I wasn’t nearly as bad as he was.”
“Right,” she said, thinking about it. “I just can’t imagine, what that was like, when you both were badly injured.”
“I wasn’t really injured yet at that point,” he said. “So I was trying to get as close up to Garret as I could, just in case.”
“Right, it was the landing that destroyed you.”
“Some of it was probably from the plane, but I don’t remember any of it. Maybe shock hid that part.” He looked down at the long line of stitches on his forearm. “Like this. I have no idea how this happened.”
“When a situation like that occurs,” Cain said, “you react. You don’t have a chance to think. You don’t have a chance to do anything but move. So it gets to be fairly chaotic, and your only mind-set is to get through the motions of what you need to do in order to survive. In this case, I presume you angled as close as you could to Garret.”
“I did. He was hanging in his chute, but I wasn’t sure if he was just dazed or what because, when I found him in the water, he was conscious enough to be struggling.”
“The cold water probably hit him and woke him up,” she said.
“Woke him up and knocked him out,” Ryland said, with a shrug. “I just hope there aren’t any serious brain injuries.”
“Now what about in Hawaii?” Cain asked.
“You’ll need to check the airport cameras,” he said.
“We already did,” he said. “We saw two men close to the plane. One fueling the plane and another one talking to him. Wore mechanic’s overalls. We have images of you, Bullard, and Garret getting off and going back on again. We’re not seeing anybody else around the plane.”
“I’ve been racking my brain since I woke up here,” he said. “Trying to figure out where and when somebody could have planted a device. What about in Houston?”
“We’re still looking for better video feeds of the plane. It’s not great there.”
“It’s a massive space, and we weren’t allowed to park too close to the hangar because it was overcrowded.”
“Always,” Cain said. “That airport is not exactly easy in, easy out.”
“But it’s the only other option, isn’t it?” she asked him.
“Well, if we rule out Bullard committing suicide, and Garret and Ryland here doing a suicide-murder mission, then yes,” Cain said. “We didn’t see any cause for alarm in Hawaii, and that was a short stop. But the plane was in Houston for what? Four days?” He turned to look at Ryland.
Ryland nodded. “Five nights, four days,” he said. “We got in the night before, close to midnight.”
“Right. I remember that,” he said. “I was here in Australia, and we sent another group back to Africa.”
“How is the rest of the team?”
“Shocked,” he said. “Everybody has high hopes for Bullard, as we all know how tough he is, but we also know that not everybody can dodge a bullet every time.”
“He’s beyond the nine lives of a cat too,” Ryland said.
“Well past,” he said, “but we’re not going there yet.”
“Good,” Tabi said, with added force to her word. “I’ve seen people come through all kinds of circumstances. And just when you think it’s already too late, they pull out, and they do just fine. Then I’ve seen what looked like the biggest, strongest men, who, all of a sudden, die. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
“We’ve all seen cases where, against all odds, somebody has survived something they had no business surviving,” Ryland said. He looked at Cain. “Where did you start?”
“Our viable threats folder,” he said almost absentmindedly. “We’re tracking down sixty-two men right now.”
She whistled. “You’ve got that many enemies?”
“Way more than that,” Ryland said, with a snort. “But those are the ones they’ve determined to be viable in this instance.”
“How do you come off as being still viable or not?”
“Well, that’s where the problem comes in,” he said. “Everybody else on the team is working the computers right now, trying to locate these sixty-two men and see who’s involved in what.”
“But still, if they hired somebody?”
“They might have hired somebody, but, chances are, it’ll be one of their team. All these suspects are either teams or solos.”
“Solos?”
“Men who have a personal grudge against Bullard, men who may have lost their entire teams, men who may have done time and escaped or are still in prison.”
“Jesus,” she said, and she shook her head. “That’s unbelievable.”
“It’s the work we do,” Ryland said. “Remember? We chase down the bad guys.”
“Sure,” she said. “At least until the bad guys chase you down.”
“Good point,” Cain said with a smile. He looked at her. “What are your plans?”
“I’ll go home, have a hot shower, try to relax a little bit, and then figure out what to do with the rest of my five days off,” she said.
“Perfect,” Cain said. And his fingers tapped the table, almost as if he were impatient about something.
She looked at his fingers, looked at Cain, and shook her head. “Something is bothering you about me, but I don’t know what.”
Ryland reached across, grabbed her hand, and said, “Don’t be defensive,” he said. “Cain is wondering if you’re in danger.”
She stared at him, and her jaw dropped. “Danger?” she squeaked. “Why would I be in danger?”
“Because you rescued us, then you spent time with us. Since we’re still alive, somebody may be worried about what we might have said to you.”
“But what have you said to me?” she said. “It’s not like I know anything.”
“No, that’s quite true,” Cain said. “However, someone who may be worried about whether these guys survived would also be worried about what they know. Unfortunately, to the bad guys, you are now a loose thread. So they’ll take care of you because, honestly, that’s just what these guys do.” Cain watched as Tabi retreated against her chair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t really do anything to make that part easier.”
“It makes no sense,” she said. “I’m the good guy here.”
“So am I,” Ryland said.
Cain snorted. “And me, if you want to go down that pathway. The problem with that line of thinking is that the bad guys don’t care. They never do.”
Chapter 6
Tabi stared at the men in shock. “No, no, no,” she said. “You have to be wrong. I was enjoying my holiday out on my boat and picked you up and took you to the naval ship. Nothing else there.”
“By now, whoever tried to kill these men has already found out that these two are alive and that one was talking on a cell phone and that you went to vis
it him,” Cain said. He shot her a direct look, his eyes more smoky gray than anything but ringed in thick dark lashes. “Didn’t you?”
She frowned, slowly nodded, and said, “Of course I did. My phone was used to connect you two.” Her gaze went back and forth from one to the other.
Cain nodded. “Exactly. So, whoever did this has already found out that you spent time with Ryland.”
“But that doesn’t mean Ryland was talking.”
“No, but it does mean that the culprits have already connected with military personnel on that ship, and they already know that you two spent time together and contacted someone via cell phone.”
“Does that mean somebody on the ship is bad?”
“Good and bad, it’s a very hard distinction here,” Cain said. “It could have been a simple question, passing in the mess hall or in the hallway. Whether the one guy survived, and would they make it? Somebody from the medical unit could have just mentioned in a conversation that one guy is up and talking, and the other one is not.”
She sagged in her seat, as she stared at him, her mouth gaping. “Dear God,” she said faintly. She stopped for a long moment, as she thought about it, and realized how it could be construed. “But doesn’t that mean that everybody on that ship is in danger?”
“Possibly,” he said, “but not likely. Doctors don’t typically spend much time talking with patients. It would be whoever is back and forth, particularly in a scenario like this, because having rescued them, obviously you’ll care about their future.”
“Well, I cared about their immediate treatment.”
“Also nobody can be sure whether you were injured or not,” he said. “So that would be one of the other questions.”
“Wow,” she said. “I’m not sure I like the world you live in.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “But it is where we all live, and there’s really no way around it.”
“So how much danger are we talking about?”
He thought about it and shook his head. “The immediate danger is of more concern,” he said. “I’ll say it’s probably a 60/40 chance.”
“Wow,” she said. “Not even 50/50?”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m erring on the side of caution.”
“Well, in that case, could you just make it 100 percent that I’m not in danger?”
“Well, I could,” he said, “but is that really what you want to hear?”
“What I want,” she said, “was for none of this to have happened.”
“That’s a given,” he said. “I’d like to have Bullard here with us, giving us shit for talking to you about this at all. But that isn’t exactly happening either.”
At the reminder of their missing friend, she felt terrible. “Making me feel guilty because I’m not your missing friend won’t help,” she announced.
Ryland laughed. “I really do like the fact that you fight back,” he said, chuckling.
She glared at him. “I wouldn’t have been nice to you if I’d realized you would cause me this kind of headache,” she snapped. But she didn’t mean it. And, of course, he knew it. She groaned and said, “What am I supposed to do? I mean, I have five more days off, and then I return to work.”
“I don’t know that five days is enough,” Cain said.
“It damn well better be,” she said.
Ryland said, “Realistically it could take a couple weeks.”
“I’m not taking a couple weeks off work,” she snapped. “Unlike some people, I have to work a regular job for a living.”
“We do too,” Ryland said, with a smile. “It’s just that our line of work ends up putting people into your line of work.”
“That seriously sucks too,” she said, “because my line of work is already swamped.”
Both men gave clipped nods. But they didn’t say anything more, and she studied them for a long moment.
“There’s this odd sense of waiting that’s around you,” she said. Ryland looked at her in surprise. She shrugged. “It’s as if you’re waiting for something, and you’re almost like a rubber band, pulled back as tight as it can go. Then, as soon as something happens, whatever it is you’re waiting for,” she said, with a wave of her hand, “you’ll spring forth, like an arrow from a bow.”
“That’s not a bad analogy,” Cain said. “We’re waiting on news of Garret.”
“What difference does it make?” she said. “He’ll get his best care right here.”
“And we’re not leaving, until we know what his status is.”
She understood that, at least partly. “As long as you don’t think that your presence here will get him any better care.”
Cain’s lips twisted, as if there were something to that.
“We don’t take people into emergency and sort them by whoever is waiting around outside,” she said in a quiet tone.
“No, that’s true,” he said, “but the squeaky wheel does get the most care.”
She frowned at that because she certainly had seen many doctors switch patients around just to get rid of somebody troublesome. “Sitting in the cafeteria is hardly being a squeaky wheel.”
Ryland just chuckled. “Just wait until the doctor sees us when we go back.”
She frowned at that and wondered. “Well, it’s been almost an hour.”
“Good enough,” said Cain, as he stood.
She hadn’t realized just how tall he was, until she was sitting here and he was standing. She slowly made her way vertical and said, “I would love to go home.”
“Nothing is keeping you here,” Ryland said. “If you want to go home now, you certainly don’t have to wait on us.”
“It’s not a case of waiting on you, as much as it is trying to figure out if I’m safe,” she muttered. “Did you mean to put the fear in me?”
“We meant for you to take extra care,” Cain said.
“And how am I supposed to fight off someone who blew up a plane?” she asked.
“We don’t expect you to,” he said, “but we do expect you to take care with your personal safety.”
“Taking care is a whole different story,” she said. “I can take as many precautions as I want, and that necessarily won’t improve anything.”
“Understood, but, at the same time, maybe it will,” he said. “If you notice anybody following you, looking at you suspiciously, hanging around—even when you walk into your apartment—if anybody’s in a hallway, loitering, someone you don’t know or don’t recognize,” he said, “you call us.”
She frowned. “Call you on what? So far, Ryland has been using my phone.”
At that, Ryland pulled a phone from his pocket.
She looked at it and said, “When did you get that?”
“Cain brought one for me,” he said and held it so she saw his number.
She pulled hers out and quickly added it. “Fine,” she said. “So I’ll contact you. Then what?”
“Then we’ll do something about it,” Cain said smoothly.
She looked at him sharply, but a knowing smile was in his eyes. She shook her head. “Not likely. You’ll be off doing whatever little revenge mission is on your mind.”
“Not necessarily,” Ryland said. “Obviously we’re going back after answers. We need answers, and there’s only one way to get them, but we won’t forget you. You saved the both of us.”
“Hardly saved,” she said. “I just fished you out of the water.”
“Did you see any other boat around?” he asked. “Garret wouldn’t have hung on too much longer.”
“He was floating,” she said. “You don’t know how much longer he would have made it.”
“I won’t argue the point,” Ryland said, his tone mild, “but we will look after you.”
“Unless I get kidnapped on my way to the car,” she snapped. She settled back and said, “Go on. Just do your thing. I’ll grab a cab and go home.”
“Or you could wait five minutes for us to check on Garret,” Ryland said, as
he stood. “I’ll be a whole lot slower than Cain, and we have a rental that’ll be here by the time we’re done. Then we can drive you home. That way we can at least get the lay of the land and see how safe you are.”
She hated to even understand the implications of what he suggested. “Do you think it’s really necessary?” She knew she’d be a fool to not accept their help if they thought she was seriously in danger, but the whole thing really made no sense to her. “Isn’t it a big stretch for anybody to consider me important in this fight you guys have going on?”
“I guess it depends on how big of a stretch they think it is, right?” Ryland replied. “If somebody had information you desperately wanted, and you could get it by grabbing them and knocking them around until they talked, what would you do?”
She frowned at him. “I hardly have any information that’s important,” she snapped.
“How will they know that until they knock you around a bit?”
She just glared at him and turned to head out of the cafeteria. Cain was a good six paces ahead of her, and Ryland was bringing up the rear. A position she realized was not an accident. She turned as they got to the doorway. “You’re injured,” she said. “You’ll hardly be in a position to fight an attacker off.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said, his voice hardening. “When it comes to self-defense or self-preservation, we do all kinds of things that you don’t think we can do.”
*
Ryland didn’t want to scare Tabi, but, at the same time, he didn’t know exactly what was going on. It had only just occurred to him that she could be in danger. He thought about who knew how they’d survived and what they might have said. That had led him down a dangerous rabbit hole because it was one thing for her to be murdered, shot in cold blood, raising an investigation, but it was another thing entirely for her to die in “an accident.” In that case, nobody would question anything, and she would become just another accident victim. That’s something he couldn’t live with.
She’d gone out of her way to keep him and Garret alive, and that was more important than anything. She’d already shown who and what she was on the inside, and he could do no less than help to support her now, knowing that things could get ugly. He didn’t really want to fill her with fear, but she needed to be aware that some serious danger could be attached to her life at this point.