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

by Dale Mayer

  Sure enough, he came up with something that looked suspicious—if you took away the mustache and the five-o’clock shadow and made the hair blond. Quickly he took a snapshot and copied the file, then sent it to Ice with a message, asking her to check it out, saying the subject in the photo had flown into Perth that morning.

  While she was doing her thing, he got up and poured himself another cup of coffee and snagged one of the very large cookies from the tray. They had used this hotel a lot when they needed it. But it was quiet, unknown, and served to look after a different sector of the population. They needed places like this, but they weren’t the only ones. That meant that other people had uses for it too. God help us.

  Just as he got halfway through the cup of coffee, Ice phoned him. “That’s him,” she said.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “He’s traveling under a passport in the name of John Green.”

  He snorted. “Jeez, that’s as bad as John Smith.”

  “No, that’s actually better,” she said, “but not by much. And I think I have him on a different database.”

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “Interpol.”

  His back stiffened at that. “Who is he?”

  “Hang on,” she said, her voice excited.

  “It’d be nice to actually get some progress here,” Ryland said.

  “He’s known out of England,” she said, “as John Manchester.”

  “That sounds like another alias.”

  “Believe it or not, that’s the name he was born under, but he’s gone by John Green, John Smith, John Brown.”

  “Quite the imagination,” he said sarcastically.

  “No.”

  “What do you have on John Manchester?”

  “Suspected of the attempted assassination of a cabinet minister,” she said. “Twelve years ago.”

  “Shit, they haven’t found him since then?”

  “He hasn’t surfaced since then and is suspected of working over in Africa. Bingo.”

  “Well, that puts him in the right location to have something come up with Bullard, but the question is this—was he hired by someone else or is he doing this on his own?”

  “That’ll be your job to find out,” she said. “I suspect when you do find him, it’ll be just one piece of a larger puzzle.”

  “Shit,” he said. “That’s not what I want to hear.”

  “No,” she said, “but it does make sense.”

  “If you say so.” He hung up quickly and tagged his team with the update.

  Eton phoned him. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked.

  “I suspect,” Ryland said, “that somebody has hired him on. He’s a pro and known for doing a lot of high-profile cases.” He was reading from the files that Ice had sent him. “Looks like a pretty interesting guy actually.”

  “Meaning?”

  “In another situation,” he said, “we would probably hire him ourselves.”

  “That’s not making me feel any better,” Eton snapped.

  “Nope, but just think about it. Right now, it’s all good.”

  “So, says you.”

  “Yep, so says me.” He hung up.

  Just then, he heard, “Ryland?”

  He got up and walked over slowly, grimacing. The pain pills had kicked in, but he was stiff and sore from sitting at the table for too long. His body desperately needed a week or two of rest, but no way that would happen right now, so he needed to just shut it out for the meantime. With Cain now awake, it was his turn to rest. He sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up her hand, and said, “Sorry, did I wake you?”

  She yawned, looked around, and asked, “What time is it?”

  He checked his cell phone. “It’s about two in the morning. It’s almost time for me to get some sleep.”

  “You’ve been up all this time?” she asked, as her eyes widened. “You need to get some rest.”

  “I’ll get it,” he promised.

  She snorted. “Like hell. You seem to think you’re invincible.”

  “Not really, I do know I need to get rest,” he said. “It’s just that some things have to happen in their own time.”

  “Bullshit.” She laughed, then turned over and said, “Get some sleep.” He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Why do you keep kissing me anyway?” she muttered.

  “Because I like it,” he said cheerfully. Then he got up, walked to the other bed on the far side of the room, and said, “I’ll sleep over here.”

  She pounded the bed beside her. “Sleep here instead. I’ll feel better.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She smiled, nodded, and said, “Absolutely.”

  He stretched out on the bed beside her, and he pulled the blanket up over him. “Go to sleep then,” he said.

  “You first,” she said, but her voice was sleepy, drowsy sleepy.

  And he just smiled, reached over, hooked an arm around her ribs, and said, “Now sleep.”

  She gave a big yawn, curled up against his chest, and said, “Okay.”

  He listened to her deep breathing as it slowed into a steady rhythm. With his arm wrapped around her and his head tucked up on top of hers, there was an idyllic quality to being here together. He closed his eyes and let his mind start to drift. In the other room he heard Cain getting up.

  When he walked into their room, he asked, “Is there still hot coffee?”

  “Only if it’s in a thermos,” he joked. “Check that heated thermal pot,” he said, “but it’s old. So you might want to order new.”

  “Sleep,” Cain said. “I’m a big boy.”

  “I left you notes over there,” he said. “Quite a bit of an update. I ID’d the guy through the flight records. Ice sent over the files, so you’ll want to give it a read.”

  “We got him now,” Cain said with excitement.

  “Well, at least we know who he is. Catching him? Now that will be tomorrow’s trick. I need to get some sleep before that happens.”

  “Go ahead and sleep,” he said. “I’ll read through this, and we’ll catch up in the morning.”

  “Will do,” Ryland answered, then closed his eyes and sank into the depths of sleep.

  Chapter 11

  Tabi woke up, feeling the heat all around her, like she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She yawned and stretched, surprised when her arms and legs came up against a warm body. She opened her eyes to find Ryland curled up against her. In fact, she was curled up, and he was curled up all around her. Under the same blanket with her. She lay here, quiet for a long moment, trying to remember what happened.

  She did remember speaking to him and telling him to come to bed, and apparently he’d followed orders. She snuggled back and smiled. Careful of his injured arms, he tucked her up closer. As she opened her eyes, she saw that Cain worked in the corner by the window on a laptop. Obviously they’d switched shifts somewhere in the night. She was good with that because, damn it, Ryland was injured, and he shouldn’t be working at all. But he was stubborn, and it was clear he wouldn’t listen to her. It would take something a whole lot more serious to knock him down. And, if he weren’t careful, that would happen.

  She waited for a long moment, but finally her bladder demanded that she get up. She didn’t want to, but she had no alternative. She shifted from under Ryland’s arms, gently patting his hand when he tried to pull her closer. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she whispered. He murmured something unintelligible and released his arm.

  She slid out from underneath him, smiled at Cain, and walked to the bathroom. There she looked at the shower longingly, used the facilities, washed her face, and stepped out. As she walked back to the bed, Ryland had sprawled out, taking up her space completely. She headed to the table where Cain was. “You’re on watch, huh?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Ryland needs more sleep than he’ll willingly take, so I’m trying to give him extra.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’
s eight or so already,” he said with a smile.

  “Good,” she said. “Maybe he’ll sleep a while longer.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was thinking about a shower.”

  He nodded with approval. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take your time, and, when you’re out, we’ll order up coffee and some breakfast.”

  “Coffee sounds great,” she said, as she tiptoed past Ryland, grabbed her small bag, and headed for the bathroom. There, overjoyed at the opportunity, she stripped down and stepped in for a long, luxuriously hot shower. She shampooed her hair twice and scrubbed down the rest of her. Just something about seeing her apartment torn up gave her a horrible, dirty, and violated feeling, almost something that crept through her skin into her soul.

  Finally scrubbed clean, she stepped out with one towel wrapped around her body and another twisted around her hair. She pulled out some clothing, looking to see just what she had available. Dried off and fully dressed, she pulled on socks and her slip-on canvas shoes, then stepped out into the main room. She hung up one wet towel on the back of the door, but left the towel on her head. She walked to Cain, while towel-drying her hair. “Ryland’s still sleeping, I see.”

  “Good,” Cain said. “I just put the order in for breakfast.”

  “And we’ll eat it without him?”

  Cain gave a light bark of laughter. “Well, we could try,” he said. “Although I don’t suspect that will work very well.”

  “Nope, I don’t suspect it will at all.”

  She walked back and hung up the second towel and then joined him again. “So was it an easy night?”

  He looked up at her and chuckled at her joke. Then smiled and said, “You have no idea, do you?”

  She frowned and asked, “What happened? Where are we?”

  “Well, last night we ordered coffee for Ryland, and, when it came, it was delivered by a gunman.”

  She stared at him, her jaw dropping. “Are you telling me that I slept through a gunfight?”

  “Well, he had a gun. We didn’t,” he said, with a laugh. “Ryland took out the gunman and broke his wrist against the door.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “When will that man ever catch a break?”

  “I think he’s gotten lots of good breaks. Like right now—you’re sweet on him, aren’t you?”

  She flushed. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” he said, chuckling. “It’s obvious.”

  She shrugged. “I like him, but I’m not sure there’s anything more to it than that.”

  “Well, there is, but we’ll see,” he said. “Things like this can twist relationships a little bit.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “More than that, I think it just makes you zero in on what’s important. It’s not like I have time to worry about makeup or fashion. It’s more about keeping safe, keeping my energy up, and getting some rest.”

  “Danger like this,” he said, “just takes a relationship down to the basics.”

  “Is there anybody else you can bring in to help?” Tabi asked Cain.

  “Teams upon teams,” Cain said. “I’ve been contacting them all night.”

  “I suppose they’re all across the world?”

  “Yes, but also some are on security teams or independents,” he said, “and that’s just as important. Bullard was highly respected.”

  “No,” she said. “Not by everyone.”

  He shot her a shuttered look and then nodded. “One point to you.”

  “This isn’t about points but about deaths,” she said. “What we have to keep in mind here is that apparently Bullard being shot down hasn’t ended this thing. So who all knew that Garret and Ryland were on the plane that day?”

  “Anybody who needed to know,” he said.

  “From what it sounds like, you guys are all about having the right information, and you’re not alone. Particularly if you’ve reached out to other teams.”

  “I had to,” he said. “It’s part of what I do for Bullard. I have a massive network.”

  “Right,” she said. “So you extended your reach in order to contact as many people as possible. But what if you contacted the wrong one?”

  “I can only presume I did,” Cain said. “I’m pretty sure they already knew that Ryland and Garret survived the crash. Otherwise there would have been no reason to go after you.”

  “That’s something I still don’t understand. Why go after me anyway?” she asked.

  “Only on the thin possibility that Ryland might have been talking to you about something important. And it could have happened if he were unconscious, in a coma, or talking in his sleep, things like that.”

  “It’s not like we were in a position to be chatting, and, after getting them on my boat, then having to be rescued myself, I was hardly in any condition to be learning any secrets.”

  “But see? In our business, condition doesn’t matter. A loose thread is a liability, and they apparently feel they can’t afford that.”

  “Is your team really going after them?”

  “We already are,” he said. “This isn’t about playtime anymore,” he said, his gaze hard. “This is all about getting to the bottom line.”

  “Well, now you have the guy who trashed my apartment—plus the coffee-bearing gunman who’s soon to be dead, and the one who probably shot them both on your radar. How do you find him now?”

  “That’s all in progress,” he said. “Facial recognition is checking all the city cameras, and that will run him down pretty fast. We also have one guy who’s dead in the alley.” At her look he shook his head and said, “Don’t ask.”

  “Is facial recognition even legal?” Did she even want to know about the other dead guy? No.

  “We don’t give a shit if it’s legal or not,” Ryland said, now awake and stiffly moving around the room. “You’ll never be safe if we don’t find him.”

  “If you do find him, then will it be over?” At that, the men exchanged a glance. She nodded slowly. “Not likely, is it?”

  “It’s possible,” Ryland said. “I just don’t have any real way to know that yet.”

  “Well,” she said, “the answer may well be in the back of your head. You’ve already mentioned this father and the two guys who worked for you, who then went back to work for the father again.”

  “Sure, but we—well, we went in after his daughter. It wasn’t our fault she’d already been killed.”

  “Grief has no boundaries,” she said solemnly. “I’ve seen it time and time again. Even though we at the hospital could do nothing at times when the families brought somebody in, it was too late for us or anyone else to deal with it. Yet we were still blamed and called an incompetent medical staff. The families always had something they would cling to, something the hospital did wrong. They’re not necessarily bad people. They’re just looking for an outlet for their anger and pain.”

  “This was a year ago,” Ryland said.

  “Grief knows no time limits,” she said.

  “It would take a long time to set up something like this,” Cain confirmed. “Not the least of which would be waiting for the right opportunity.”

  “And going to Texas, was that it?” Tabi asked.

  “Very few friends are in Bullard’s world. Ice and Levi are the ones who he would bend over backward to help. A few others are around the world that he would do the same for, and I’ve already put out an alert, asking them to stay low and to watch their backs,” Cain said.

  “Do you think he’s trying to take out Bullard, Bullard’s inner circle, or everybody in Bullard’s network?” she asked.

  “Targeting everybody in Bullard’s network would be out of reach,” Ryland said, joining them with a cup of coffee. “That’s hundreds and hundreds of people.”

  “So just the team then? How many is that?” she asked.

  “Depends on any given day,” Ryland said. “Thirty?”

  “Have you had everybody, like, check in yet?”

&nb
sp; He looked at her with an uncomfortable expression and said, “Not quite.”

  After a few moments of awkward silence, Cain spoke up. “No word from Garret’s brother, Gregg,” he said. “He works on another Bullard team, based out of Africa, but Gregg isn’t usually this quiet. Especially with Garret in a coma, we expected Gregg to make contact.”

  Tabi looked at Cain. “Garret’s brother works with all of you too?”

  He nodded, his voice grim. “He was in Africa, holding down the fort.”

  “And you’ve not heard from him?” she asked cautiously.

  “No, but, once we activate an alert status, we go into black mode.”

  “But surely there’s a way to contact him.”

  “I’ve tried,” Ryland said. “Cain too. So all I can do is hold off on thinking the worst and believe in the fact that Garret’s brother is very, very capable.”

  “Is he younger or older?”

  “Younger.”

  She winced at that.

  He caught it. “What difference does that make?”

  “Older siblings always feel responsible for the younger ones, that’s all,” she murmured.

  He glared at her. “Did you hear me when I said he was capable?” he said. “We taught him everything we know.”

  “I get it,” she said, with a pleading look at Ryland.

  Ryland just gave her a half smile. “There’s always trade-offs when your family works with you,” he said. “The work we do is dangerous, and we go black for any number of reasons, and it can be for weeks or even months.”

  “I get it,” she said. “I hope there’s nothing in particular with this case that sets off any alarms.”

  “All the alarms are ringing loud and clear,” Cain told her. “And believe me. Gregg wasn’t alone at the compound in Africa. Dave’s there and even Kai and maybe a couple others.” He looked at Ryland. “Do we know for sure who’s manning the fort?”

  “I got the list from Eton yesterday,” Ryland replied.

  “Good. Any reason to be concerned?”

  “No, the usual players.”

  “Good enough,” Cain said. He glanced back at Tabi and said, “We’re doing what we do best.”