Ryland’s Reach (Bullard's Battle Book 1)

by Dale Mayer

  He pulled out his phone. “I did feel it vibrate, but we were a little busy,” he said with a smile. He quickly read the message and frowned. “What the hell?”

  “Yes, it means that, whoever is after you, actually went to where my boat was moored after finding out about it, presumably from the news, what with your plane going down and my boat sinking,” she snapped. “Then he tracked down my girlfriend in Sydney, making her think she was having a hot date, then left her high and dry after getting the information he wanted.”

  “So then he flew to Perth and hired the guy we were talking to tonight,” he said. “He was hired to mess up your apartment but not to leave the message. That was his own improvisation.”

  “Somebody actually paid him to break in and ruin my stuff?” she asked in outrage. “How the hell does that even make sense?”

  “I think it was just a warning. But he did say something about looking for me.”

  “Great,” she said. “That sounds absolutely lovely.” She raised her hands in frustration, hopped out from under the blanket, and walked to the window.

  Cain said, “We’re pretty sure he didn’t follow us back.”

  She looked at him. “Pretty sure? Please tell me that you’re completely sure.”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re completely sure.”

  “This is just ridiculous.” She walked back to the bed and sagged down. “What now?”

  “We need to find out who was behind blowing up the airplane.”

  “Well, I thought you were looking for old enemies.”

  “Yes, and that’s also why it’s important that we talk to your friend. Does she happen to have a photo of him?”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Oh, my God,” she said, as she picked up her phone and called Maureen. When her friend answered, sleepy and groggy on the other end, she asked, “Maureen, do you have a photo of the guy who you told me about?”

  “A photo?” She thought about it and said, “You know, I might. I took a couple pictures because I planned to send them to you, when I told you all about my hot date.”

  “Well, get off the phone and check,” she said. “If you have it, just send it.” As soon as she got off the phone, she waited anxiously, and, when her phone buzzed, she looked down and smiled triumphantly. “Look!” she exclaimed, as she held up her phone.

  Ryland looked at it and said, “Well, I don’t know him.” He had a mustache and a bit of a five-o’clock shadow, swarthy skin, and dark black hair. He looked at it again, turned to Cain, and asked, “Do you recognize him?”

  Cain walked over, shook his head, and said, “It’s a disguise.”

  “What do you mean, a disguise?” Tabi said, studying the man. “I guess the mustache could be put on.”

  “And the five-o’clock shadow really throws things off too,” Cain explained. “He’s wearing sunglasses, and I highly doubt that’s his hair color, if it’s even his own hair.”

  She frowned. “But surely the cheekbones, the nose, and chin are good markers?”

  “We’ll see,” he said. “We have somebody we can send this to.” Cain nodded at Ryland.

  “Would you forward the photo to me, please?” Ryland asked. When she did so, he quickly sent the message to Ice and explained what he needed.

  When the phone rang moments later, it was Ice. “I’ll get back to you, but it will probably take about four hours. It depends on how long it takes to go through the databases.”

  “Send me what you can, when you can,” Ryland said.

  “Have you had any update on Garret?” Ice asked.

  “Yes,” and he explained what they were doing to keep the brain swelling down.

  “That’s good news,” she said. “Any ideas or any help from the Houston videos?”

  “I feel like something was there, in the back of my memory,” he said. “Honestly I just can’t pull it out. But I feel like somebody was there, talking to Bullard, after we got onto the plane, as he was getting on.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but we found no feeds on that side of the plane.”

  “But do we have a feed of anybody around there?”

  “Not likely. If that’s the case,” she said, “we can go interview them at the airport and see if they can put anyone else around the plane.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said. “I’m sending it to you.” He quickly forwarded the feed.

  She checked it and sent him confirmation that she had it.

  He looked at Cain. “They’ll check and see if they can find who was working on the plane, then go talk to them.”

  “Good idea, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be a no.”

  “But maybe this local guy’s photo and ID? Maybe it’s enough to get more on him.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but I highly doubt it. Remember that part about being a pro?”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t hire a pro with him.”

  “Nope, but he didn’t have anything helpful either, did he?”

  Ryland reached across, picked up her hand, and said, “Look. I know it sounds like we don’t have leads, but we will. We’ll keep digging. And I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “I don’t think that’s in your control,” she said quietly. She looked at the two men and said, “I need to go to sleep now. Are you okay if I stay here on this side?”

  “Of course,” Ryland said, and his tone turned just as formal as hers.

  She pushed the trolley out of the way and curled up a little tighter.

  “Don’t you want to get under the covers?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I don’t.”

  And she resolutely rolled over, turned her back to them, and closed her eyes.

  *

  Ryland slowly straightened, moved the trolley outside to the hallway, and, when he returned, he exchanged a glance with Cain.

  “You can shower first, if you want,” Cain said.

  “You go ahead,” Ryland said absentmindedly. “I’ll take first watch, and I’ll get a shower when you’re done.”

  “Good enough.” Within ten minutes, Cain was back out and getting ready for bed.

  Ryland headed in, knowing that his buddy would be awake for at least long enough for him to have a shower. As he stepped under the hot water, he felt the sting of hundreds of small injuries, adding up together into a mother lode of pain. But he stilled his agony and waited until the heat of the water helped ease his aching body.

  When he came out, he would take more painkillers, but, right now, this hot shower was what he needed. By the time he was done and dressed, he felt better but also worse, knowing the painkillers would need twenty minutes to kick in. He stepped out and walked to the small table, wishing out loud that he had kept some of the coffee.

  “Order some coffee, if you want,” Cain said from the bed.

  “I was thinking I would,” he said.

  “I’m hungry again too.”

  “You know what the answer is then,” he said, as he quickly pulled out his phone and sent the request.

  When it came ten minutes later, he walked to the door and said to Cain, “I’m just having coffee.”

  “Good enough,” he answered, and his voice sounded sleepy.

  Ryland opened the door, grabbed the trolley, smiled at the waiter, and pulled it inside. As he went to close the door, he froze as he heard the unmistakable sound of a safety flipped off as the silencer on the gun appeared around the door. But he was already reacting, although his reaction time was a little on the slow side. If he hadn’t dodged behind the door, those first two bullets would have come right at him.

  Cain bolted from the bed, and Ryland already had grabbed the gunman by the wrist, slamming the door, his arm against the doorjamb. Ryland kept pounding the door against the gunman’s hand, until he heard bones crack. The gun dropped, and he pulled the waiter in, dropping him to the floor with a hard kick to the gut, and a fist to the jaw knocked him out. Then Ryland dragged him inside and closed the
door firmly.

  Cain walked closer and said, “Wow, I guess that didn’t go so well.”

  “No,” he said. “When I came out of the shower, I left my gun at the door.”

  “Well, it looks like we’re all good and clear, and she’s still asleep,” Cain said.

  Ryland looked to see Tabi still sound asleep, her chest rising and falling with a slow steady rhythm. “Amazing that she can even sleep at all,” he said.

  “It is, isn’t it? But apparently she can sleep through anything,” Cain said, with a chuckle.

  “What will we do with him?”

  “Well, we need answers, but she won’t take it very kindly.”

  Ryland smiled. “Yeah, that’s the truth.”

  “Okay, so let’s get another room right beside us,” Cain suggested.

  With that ordered, he waited until he got a phone confirmation. With instructions to leave the key under their door, he waited until he heard the envelope and then retrieved the key. He picked it up and stepped out into the hallway with his gun in his hand and quickly walked to the door adjacent to them. He opened up that room and then opened up the connecting door between the two.

  With that done, he locked the main hallway doors on both sides, dragged the unconscious gunman into the second room and closed it, so Tabi wouldn’t hear them. He picked up the guy and tossed him on the bed. Grabbing the ice bucket from the counter, he walked into the bathroom and filled it with cold water, then threw it on him.

  The man came awake with a roar, and instantly Ryland hit him again.

  He went down, sobbing with pain.

  “Scream again,” he said, “and I’ll just knock you out and throw more ice water on you, until you get the message.”

  The gunman lay on the bed, shuddering. He held his hand against his chest. “You broke my wrist.”

  “You tried to kill me,” Ryland said calmly. “I really don’t give a shit what happens to your wrist. I’ll break the other one too, if you don’t start giving me answers.”

  “I was offered ten thousand to take you both out,” he said.

  “Wow, that’s cheap,” Cain said. “That’s kind of insulting really. It should have been at least ten thousand for each of us.”

  “Ten thousand extra if I took her out too.”

  “Wow, we’re only five thousand, and she’s ten?” Cain said. The two men looked at each other in mock outrage. “That’s bullshit. That’s what that is,” he said. “We should have been that much too.”

  “For you, it’s a joke,” the man said. “For me, I need the money.”

  “A lot of people need the money,” Ryland said. “That doesn’t mean they turn in their jobs and lose the lifestyle they had. One that had to have been a whole lot easier than a lot of others.”

  “Sure, the job’s okay, but all I see is you guys coming and going, and people like you always have money,” he said. “I want to be a little more like that.”

  “Oh, so you just decided you’ll be a gunman?”

  “Well, you’ve got to be doing something right,” he said, “because you got money. This place is not cheap.”

  “It isn’t,” he said, “but we’re also part of a very large team that handles national security all over the world. Why the hell should we be knocked down because some little pissant like you wants to step up in the world without doing the work?”

  The guy just looked at him. “You’re not criminals?”

  “No,” Ryland bit off. “We’re not.”

  “He said that you were, that you were stealing from banks.”

  “Well, we’re not,” he said, though he tucked away that information. “I don’t even know why the hell you would listen to some bullshit like that.”

  “Because I believed it,” he said. “I wanted to believe it though,” he added sadly.

  “How did he pay you?”

  “Cash, ten thousand up-front in my apartment.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “I thought I saw him coming into the hotel one day, when I was just trying to leave. I was going out the front door. I think he was trying to come in.”

  “Did you hold it open for him?”

  At that, the gunman stared. “Well, yeah,” he said.

  “You do know that nobody is allowed to enter this building without the security required to get in, right?” Ryland asked, shaking his head.

  “And I assumed he had it.”

  “Well, you assumed wrong,” Ryland snapped.

  “Or,” Cain said, “he uses this hotel too.”

  “Wouldn’t that be fun,” Ryland said.

  “So do you think he just followed you home one day?” Cain asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never dealt with him before, business or personal. So I assume so.”

  “Makes sense. He finds out you work here, follows you home, offers you extra money, which is obviously a big incentive because he did his research on you ahead of time. So now what happens to you, now that you failed the mission?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t get the other half?”

  “Oh, I suspect it’s a lot worse than that,” Ryland said. “Let me go back a bit to the last guy he hired, to trash the woman’s apartment. They shot him.”

  “What do you mean, they shot him?” he asked, bolting upright and wincing with pain. He lifted his broken hand, then cried out again and said, “I can’t even work now.”

  “I’m not sure that’ll be a big issue for you,” Cain said, “because you’ll be dead soon too.” He looked at Ryland and said, “I’ll stay here with him. You go in and look after her.”

  Ryland nodded. “What do you want to do with him?”

  “I say we let him go,” he said. “Once we’ve got all the information we need, that is. They might not kill him today or tomorrow. Likely in the next month though. Can’t afford not to get the intel now.”

  “I don’t have any other information to give you,” he said.

  “Was it your idea to come to the apartment when we ordered something?”

  “Well, it made sense. It’s not like I’d get past these steel doors any other way,” he said.

  “Right, that makes sense, doesn’t it? So he already knew that we were here.”

  “He may have gone looking for me, but he already knew all about you.”

  “That’s very interesting too,” he said.

  “Can I go now?”

  He looked at Cain and shrugged. “I say we let him go.”

  “Sure, let him go. We’ll see what he comes up with next.”

  At that, they stepped back and opened up the hallway door.

  “Go, before I change my mind,” Ryland said.

  The gunman got up off the bed and bolted. And they let him. And half of him wished him well. The other half hoped he died immediately.

  Ryland looked at Cain and asked, “Did you get a photo of him, by any chance?”

  “Several,” Cain said. “You know? This big boss man guy’s been ahead of us, every step of the way.”

  “I know,” Ryland said in frustration. “Every damn step.” He turned back to the other room and said, “And we just paid for a second room, for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Cain said. “I’ll sleep in here.” And he threw himself down on the bed and said, “Go in there, and look after your ladylove.”

  “Hardly my ladylove,” Ryland said.

  “Oh, I see sparks,” Cain said. “Just keep the lovey-dovey stuff to a minimum, will you?” Pulling the blankets up over him, he rolled away, saying, “You’re on first watch, so get at it.”

  Ryland walked back to the other room, leaving the adjoining door slightly open. At least he had some coffee and treats. He walked in and saw Tabi still asleep. Pushing the trolley against the table, he sat down and brought everybody up to date. He had the phone image that Cain had sent him of their recent attacker, so he sent that to the rest of the team and then on to Ice.

  Eton phoned immediately. “You were attacked in that hote
l?” His voice was hard and incredulous.

  “Not only attacked but the pro knew we were here, and he’d picked up one of the staff.”

  “I’ll have something to say to the management about that.”

  “Well, the gunman did suggest that the guy who hired him may use the place too.”

  “Shit,” he said. “Is no place safe anymore?”

  “Nope,” he said. “No place is safe.”

  “So now they’re just trying to kill you outright?”

  “Seems like it. Apparently it’s important to someone that I drop dead.”

  “Cain okay?”

  “We’re both okay,” he said. “Unfortunately having to deal with all that isn’t helping our investigation very much, and we’re not getting anywhere.”

  “Maybe not, but hopefully we’ll get to the end of this pretty damn fast.”

  “Did you guys come up with anything?”

  “Still no sign of the father. He’s gone to ground. We’re paying for rumors, and, so far, it’s like he’s on an agenda. So he’s staying on our hot list but no sign of where he is.”

  “He has a pretty big network behind him too, doesn’t he?”

  “Very,” he said.

  “Okay, keep at it. I’m on watch. I’ll grab some coffee and see what else I can come up with. We got an angle to research. Ice is doing facial recognition on the gunman visiting Tabi’s girlfriend. She already sent me passenger lists. So I want to check flights in and out from Sydney to Perth and see if we can find something.” He hesitated, then added, “Ice also said she contacted Bullard’s half brother to let him know. He’s pretty upset. Said he told Bullard to get out of the business while he still could.”

  “Good,” Eton said. “But him warning Bullard would have been water off a duck’s back. Bullard lived and breathed his company.”

  “You’ll know if we come up with anything.”

  And, with that, Eton hung up.

  Ryland quickly searched through the passenger flight lists to Perth, looking for anybody who had come through in the last two days. There were 242 of them. He narrowed that down to single males under forty. That dropped the relevant passengers down to forty-two. Feeling a whole lot more positive on that, Ryland started a search, going through social media and another through the DMV sites for driver’s licenses, looking at photos.