Because I sure as hell don’t want to be the next one popping up on the top of someone’s list as a loose end in need of tightly tying.
Chapter Seven
Now
After I knock Fowler out, I turn and order my two hired grunts out of the warehouse. I need a moment to think. Fortunately, these two only speak Russian, not English, which is one of the reasons I used them and not some of my regular local guys who speak Hungarian and English.
There would have to be lotto-ticket-worthy coincidences aplenty for this Eddie to be who I think he might be, and for him to be talking about who I think he’s talking about.
Carter isn’t exactly the most common first name in the world.
Lots of guys meet and marry a woman in college and go to law school. And work in politics.
And plenty of them even have two sons.
It would be nothing more than a huge coincidence if my little brother and Fowler happened to be in the service and in the same region at the same time.
Wouldn’t it?
In my mind, I page through Fowler’s jacket and what I know about him. He’s fifty-one.
Carter’s fifty-two. They both served in Germany. Until—
Holy. Shit.
They were both deployed from Germany. Maybe even to the same FOB in Afghanistan…
My heart hammers in my chest. Is it possible they were in the same unit? Did they both serve under the same shitbag who I hold personally responsible for our brothers’ deaths?
Maybe I was right after all. Maybe this was a set-up from the start.
While I have no problem taking out a target, I do have a problem being sent after an innocent person.
“Innocent” in terms of being set up to take a fall, not “innocent” in the grand scheme of things, because Fowler’s definitely no choir boy.
My tablet’s in my SUV. Fowler’s still out cold, so I risk leaving him there to go get it. The two men are standing by their truck and grabbing a smoke.
I walk over to them and, speaking Russian, I say, “You aren’t needed any longer. I’m taking care of it. Leave me a shovel and go.”
They share a glance, shrug, and after handing me one of the shovels, they climb into their truck and drive off. I already paid them in full in euros, so it’s no skin off their noses to leave without digging a shallow grave in a Hungarian hillside to bury a body. Easy money for them. No, they’re not going to hang around and argue and risk me demanding some of the money back.
I return to the warehouse and scroll through Fowler’s dossier on my tablet. Yep, Fowler was in Germany and in-country at the same times and in the same places as Carter.
In the same freaking unit.
Oh, shit. Could it be that this Eddie is who I’m now thinking he might be?
Is he one of the three?
Pulling out my personal burner phone, I quickly log into a Dropbox account where I store things I want access to but not keep a personal phone on me or have things tied to me in any other way. I really shouldn’t be doing this, but I have to know.
I have to be sure.
In this account, I store duplicates of all my personal and family photos. Scrolling through the date stamps, I finally find what I’m looking for and click on it.
It’s a picture of Carter and a couple of his buddies from some thirty years ago. Two of who died in the car bomb that almost killed my little brother. But Carter nearly died because he threw himself over three other guys who were already down and injured, protecting them and earning himself a medical discharge and a Purple Heart as a result.
In this picture, the guy on the end was one of the ones he protected. One of the three. And—
No fucking way.
I unlock the chain securing the hood around Fowler’s neck and yank it off his head, shoving him over onto his side with my foot to get a better look at him.
It is him.
It’s absolutely him. Older, yes, but aren’t we all? The picture I have matches the old picture in his official military jacket.
I think about how I noticed him getting hard a couple of times during my interrogation, like a man used to rough trade and craving it.
How I thought if the situation were different, I’d absolutely love to pick him up in a bar and take him home and rough him up.
Hmm.
This revelation needs a moment to percolate through my brain. I always suspected my little brother and I shared some of the same personality traits when it comes to power exchange and intimate relationship dynamics, but in our family it’s definitely not something we would ever talk about. From the way I’ve watched Carter and his wife Susa interacting, to the way I’ve witnessed him handle his old friend and “boss,” Owen.
Who happens to be the two-term governor of the state of Florida, and will be until Susa, his lieutenant governor, is sworn into office in a few weeks, since she won her election to take Owen’s place as governor. Carter will then become the First Gentleman of Florida, leaving his job as Owen’s chief of staff to become a stay-at-home dad.
To their two sons.
I’ve always wondered if there was more to the three of them being “roommates” in college. All these years, they’ve been inseparable.
That, and the fact that Owen’s a confirmed bachelor.
Plus, Carter’s sons both have Owen’s green eyes.
Guess I’m not the only one in my family hiding some pretty dark secrets.
Maybe it’s instincts that kick in, I don’t know. But I pull out my other burner and text one word to a number I have memorized.
Liquidated.
I get a response a moment later.
File noted.
After removing that burner’s battery and SIM card, I drop the phone to the floor and crush it under the heel of my tactical boot. I’ll dump it and the SIM card in a river on my way out of here.
At this point, I’m not only disobeying a direct order, I’m playing a very dangerous game that could quite possibly get me killed.
I didn’t make it to fifty-seven while still actively working as a spook because I’m a fucking idiot, though.
In my SUV I have a travel kit that covers a wide variety of potential situations. From it, I pull out a new syringe and needle and draw up enough drugs to keep Fowler sedated for several hours. He’s in pretty rough shape and dehydrated, too. I can’t risk starting an IV on him right now, though. I need to move him first.
I need time to think, and I can’t do it here, out in the open, where the morning and daylight could bring discovery and interruptions.
Working fast, I position the SUV so the back hatch is at the warehouse’s doorway. After I push the drugs into Fowler, I unchain him, pop his shoulder back into place—because it’s the least I can do for the poor fucker—and reposition his hands in front of him before chaining him up again. Using a tarp, I wrap him in it and drag him to the doorway, where I roughly load him into the cargo area of the SUV. He’s not quite as big as I am, but I am no longer as strong as I once was, so there’s no finessing this. Normally, I don’t have to do the grunt work anymore, which is why I hired the two Russian meatheads.
But I can’t have anyone seeing this man leave here alive.
Fortunately, this area is desolate at night and there’s no one around to witness any of this. There also aren’t any cameras to record me leaving with someone stowed in the back of my SUV. Even if there were, it looks like I’m loading a dead body, not a living person. Were it ever to come up—which it won’t—I could always say I needed to question Fowler further about sensitive information I dredged up during my interrogation, and I didn’t want the meatheads witnessing it. If ever pressed to produce a body, I’ll say I couldn’t risk the discovery and I dismembered him before dumping the pieces into a nearby river.
Wouldn’t be the first time I did that.
Except…
Why am I doing this?
I don’t know.
Or, maybe I do.
Because there was a viscera
l level of genuine terror in Fowler’s voice as he begged me to spare my little brother’s life and family. The first true emotion I heard Fowler express during my brief time interrogating him.
Not that Fowler knows Carter’s my brother.
I’ve heard men break like that before, plenty of times.
Too many times, I’m afraid, it’s because I was legitimately threatening their family. For a subject who’s not some narcissistic sociopath, sometimes threatening their family—or pet—is the only thing that will break them.
Why do you think I’ve never allowed myself to have a long-term relationship?
I mean, besides the fact that I’m gay and deep in the closet to my family. My parents have suffered enough loss over the years. I refuse to add to their grief. Maybe they wouldn’t disown me for being gay, but living as a career military bachelor is an easy mask to maintain around them all. They think I’m now a civilian contractor and working overseas. It makes it easy to keep my private life hidden from them.
Why risk spilling that apple cart if I don’t have to?
After sweeping the space one last time for anything I left behind, and with Fowler securely covered by a tarp in the cargo area, I return to my SUV and race toward the border crossing where my guy is on duty and waiting to wave me through. In under two hours, I’ll be at my safehouse outside Bratislava.
I’ll be using it a lot longer than I first planned.
When I pull to a stop at the crossing to wait for the truck ahead of me to be given permission to continue, I fight the urge to get antsy or act overly nonchalant. I pretend to scroll through my phone so I don’t keep looking at my rearview mirror to see if Fowler’s awakened yet.
Then, it’s my turn. Yes, it’s my guy doing the talking. Fear makes my pulse pound as he gives my passport a perfunctory glance, swings his flashlight through the back windows as if looking for cargo, and then gives me a nod and waves me through the checkpoint.
It’s a struggle not to speed away from the crossing in a panic. I want the SUV safely parked in my safehouse’s garage well before dawn.
At that point, I’ll be able to breathe easy again while taking time to figure out my next steps. Because this is stupid and crazy and not what I should be doing.
For starters, I should have followed orders, killed Fowler, and been done with it. But if he was in a relationship with Carter, I have stronger leverage against Fowler to get information out of him that I didn’t possess before.
That was a man who definitely gave zero fucks about his own life, but was in a panic at the thought he’d possibly put an old flame in harm’s way. He went from obviously not giving two shits about his own life to essentially throwing himself at my feet and groveling.
Fowler is far more useful to me alive than I dreamed possible, if I have that kind of leverage against him.
Maybe it’ll also finally give me an inroad where one has never existed before in bringing down a certain retired general.
Because orders or not, I have a vested interest in taking that fucker out. Not to mention how everything about this assignment hit me as fishy from the get-go.
Admittedly, that pisses me off. Especially considering nothing in Fowler’s dossier indicates he has ever tried to topple governments for funsies, unless our government assigned him to help do it. Either before he separated from the service or after, when he did quite a bit of freelance mercenary wet-work for various allies.
Hey, I’m not judgy, just stating the facts.
What adds to my unease is that this isn’t the first unusual liquidation assignment I’ve heard of in recent months, either. I know of three others that didn’t fall into my lap at the time, but now that I think harder about the dossiers I saw, I’m wondering if there was a common thread joining them.
Like perhaps retired General Coltrane Cunningham. Because Carter served under Cunningham when he ran the base in Germany, meaning Fowler served under Cunningham, too.
Cunningham might be retired, but he has a lot of friends, and even more dirt on people.
I don’t want to be the next one in the cross-hairs, if that’s the case. Just because the general isn’t active military any longer doesn’t mean his pull is any less strong with those who occupy the upper branches of those trees. I never served directly under him, so maybe I’m not on his radar, which works in my favor.
Maybe if I were twenty years younger I wouldn’t have looked too hard at all the details, or thought too much about these things and gone ahead and taken Fowler out.
But the more I learn about the larger picture, the angrier I grow about my chosen career path and how I might have been manipulated more than I ever believed, even as I was seeking long-overdue retribution.
Fowler may hold keys to that.
We’ll see.
At the very least, I want to know more about this promise Carter made Fowler. One thing I know about my little brother is he never breaks a vow. To anyone.
If this man is somehow the exception to that rule, then that’s something I want to know more about.
And why.
Yes, it’s run through my mind a couple of times to take an extended vacation—or finally retire—and spend some time with Carter and Susa and their kids and see if I can fish in Owen’s pond. The guy’s a hunk.
Apparently, my brother’s very careful. Likely schooled Owen in how to not get clocked. That’s my supposition, anyway, because I’ve never heard anyone in my family raise even the hint of a suspicion that they think there’s something going on between the three of them.
Maybe I’m the only one who thinks Carter’s sons look remarkably like Owen. I mean, to a spooky extent.
Maybe Owen’s admittedly sad childhood story engendered enough sympathy from everyone else in our family to help them overlook pernicious suspicions that might flit through their minds.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I have no answers, and won’t, until I can get them out of Fowler.
Until then, I drive.
Chapter Eight
To the best of my knowledge, despite our family’s record of military service I’m the only one who ended up in intel and working deep undercover. My “work” is actually the perfect cover, because our father and all six of my brothers served, two of my brothers losing their lives during that service. Carter is the youngest, and I’m five years older than him. No one in my family thinks it’s unusual my post-military work is as a “civilian contractor.”
I race through the night with the uncomfortable metallic tang of adrenaline coursing through my veins and sharpening my senses. At this point, I believed I’d be driving leisurely back to the safehouse to nap before returning to Paris tomorrow.
I’ll need to go shopping tomorrow to stock the safehouse.
Meaning I’ll have to keep Fowler knocked out longer than I’m comfortable doing, but it can’t be helped.
Like the flat in Budapest, this is one of several safehouses I use while on assignment. It was paid for with black-account money provided to me in untraceable Bitcoin. I still remember the days when I’d literally be handed a Pelican trunk full of umarked cash, or given the account and routing numbers for a Swiss or Caymanian bank account.
Now, it’s all untraceable electronic payments from unseen wonks holed up in dingy government offices somewhere deep in the bowels of Langley, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, or somewhere equally depressing.
I’ve had this safehouse for six months. My vanilla cover is a software developer who’s a military contractor, and using the same name. Jason Wilson isn’t exactly John Smith, but there are plenty of us out there, more than enough to confuse anyone sniffing around, and it makes the passport issues easier for me to deal with.
Having six different valid social security numbers with matching DOBs to refer to helps as well. I mean, I do have a few valid passports in completely different aliases that I’ve acquired over the years, but not even my handler knows about those.
Always have a backup plan.
Tonight is proof of what happens when you don’t, and shit goes sideways in a manner completely unexpected.
Relief fills me when I make the final turn onto the quiet road that leads to the house. It’s only three a.m. and I haven’t passed a single vehicle in the last ten minutes. There are few security cameras on houses out here, because it’s a fairly rural area just outside a mid-sized town. Mostly farmers. But nearly every vehicle seems to have a dash cam because of accidents and fraud, and I don’t want this SUV showing up on any of those cameras this morning.
I stop at the old iron gate across my driveway, punch in the access number on the keypad, and impatiently wait for it to open. I pause after driving through to make sure it securely closes, then back into the garage, which I’ve already opened with the remote, where I park next to the older Renault I drive around town. Once the garage door rolls closed, I flip the handle to lock it, giving me a little security and allowing me to let out a relieved breath.
Part one, done.
Leaving Fowler in the SUV for now, I draw my sidearm and make a quick sweep of the house. I disarmed the alarm from an app on my tablet while at the gate and I know nothing was disturbed during my absence, but I take no chances. I have over a dozen IR cameras strategically placed inside and out, with motion detectors that would have tripped if so much as headlights swept the front of the house if someone pulled into the driveway and stopped at my gate. That’s in addition to door and window sensors, and motion detector sensors as part of the alarm.
It’s secure, and all the tells I left in place just in case someone managed to skirt my electronic system are still intact.
I make sure all my blackout curtains in the house are in place before I return to the garage and open the hatch to deal with Fowler. He’s still breathing, thankfully. I had to guess his weight when I dosed him and had prepared a second dose to give him in case he came to during the drive.
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