Killing Time

33

“These beefed-up forces make me nervous,” Mike whispered as they hid from yet another traveling patrol. They’d left the mine nearly two hours ago, tripling their return time because they’d run into double the usual number of security details. In another hour and a half it would be daylight.

“The increased patrols have got to be because of the guns,” she whispered as they crouched low behind the food storage building and waited for the four-man patrol to pass. “I’d be nervous, too, if I was sitting on that many dollars’ worth of weapons.”

Mike placed a finger to his lips as the men grew closer, then faded away into the night. Several seconds passed before he tapped her shoulder—time to take off again.

They darted between the shadows and finally reached the rear of the cabin. With Mike taking the lead, they circled around to the front and crept up onto the porch. Eva kept seeing those semis loaded with weapons. She’d never seen so many fricking guns in her life.

The cabin was dark. Eva silently slipped inside and sprinted across the room. She only had one goal—get to the hidden cell phone—but she’d no sooner opened the closet door than a burst of light flooded the room.

She spun around, ready to rail at Mike, but the words died on her tongue.

They weren’t alone—and neither was the man who held the monster flashlight that lit up the room and half blinded her.

Three other men stood just inside the doorway, all of them with rifles shouldered and pointed at them.

Mike looked from Simmons to the other three and slowly lifted his hands in the air. “Look who’s here. The Welcome Wagon committee. Nice to see you again, fellas.”

Simmons ignored him. “Looking for this?” He held up their cell phone, then dropped it to the floor and stomped it with his boot heel. “Whoops. Guess it’s broken.”

Eva glanced at Mike, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Say nothing, his eyes said.

“I always knew there was something off about you, Walker. Oh, wait. Make that Brown.” Simmons walked up to Mike, a self-important sneer on his face. “Not as smart as you thought you were, huh, asshole?”

Mike gave the big man a huge, fake smile and Eva knew he was about to say something that was really going to piss Simmons off.

No, she mouthed.

“And yet, you’re the dumb fuck letting a loser like Lawson run your life. What’s that say about you… asshole?”

Red-hot rage spread up Simmons’s neck, over his face, and mottled the top of his bald head.

“If he fights back”—Simmons handed Bryant his rifle and the flashlight—“shoot her.”

Then he slammed a closed fist into Mike’s gut with a force that doubled him over.

Mike landed on the floor, folded in on himself, gasping for breath. “That… the best you got… pussy?”

Eva screamed when Simmons hauled back and kicked him in the ribs. “Mike, shut up! For God’s sake, shut up!”

But it was too late. Simmons unloaded on him like a bull, blinded by rage and seeing red. By the time Wagoner pulled Simmons off, Eva wasn’t even sure if Mike was breathing.

When Mike came to, it was to screaming pain, a hard floor, a hot, dark room, and a soft woman cradling his head in her lap. “What’d I… miss?”

“Oh, God. Thank God. You’re conscious.”

Even though she kept her voice low to keep from being overheard, Mike heard the fear and the tears. And he hated that he’d put her through it.

“Unfortunately. Yeah. I am.” Everything hurt. Breathing. Talking. Blinking. But most of all, it hurt to know he’d scared her.

“How long?” he whispered, lifted his hand to her face and discovered his wrists were flex-cuffed together in front of him. Bastards had tied her up, too.

“How long have you been out? Hours. Many, many fucking hours. It must be close to noon.”

Okay. Pissed off had officially muscled out worried and scared.

“So what was the plan, Brown? Was there a reason you invited Simmons to beat the snot out of you?”

How one small woman could pack so much venom into a whisper was beyond him.

“Yeah… sure.” He struggled to sit up, sucked in a breath when fire shot through his ribs. “Damned if I can remember why, but I must have thought it was a good idea at the time.”

Actually, he’d wanted Simmons’s focus on him. The big man had been working his way into a mean, dark snit, and rather than take a chance of him going off on Eva, he made sure Simmons unleashed on him.

“He could have killed you.”

Because he heard more regret in her voice than anger now, he figured she’d forgiven him. “But he didn’t. At least not yet.”

“Because Lawson wants you alive.”

He grunted, then regretted it. “For the time being. No doubt he’s got big plans for us. We’ve got to get out of here before that happens. More to the point… we need to head off Gabe and Green.”

The two men would be arriving anytime, unaware that they’d been found out. He couldn’t let them walk into an ambush.

With Eva’s help, he staggered to his feet. Through swollen eyes and a blinding headache, he checked out their prison. Slivers of daylight filtered in through windows that were boarded shut. July heat seeped through the walls, searing and suffocating in the stagnant air. The main light source was from a triangular ventilation grate like the one in the armory, where the back wall met the peaked ceiling. The room was approximately twelve by twelve. Bare-bones construction. Plywood floor, open rafters, and wall studs.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked.

She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her bound hands. “It’s the overflow food storage shed—empty now, but I’m guessing it’s where they keep their winter supplies. Why wouldn’t they have a jail or a brig like any other military operation, since Lawson fancies himself a general?”

He hadn’t wanted to tell her this before, but there didn’t seem to be much point withholding it now. He shuffled over to a wall, leaned against it to keep from keeling over. “Remember my buddy, Bucky? He made it pretty clear one day that I needed to keep my nose clean. You break a rule around here? You cross the boss? One shot. Back of the head. The coyotes eat well that night. There is no discipline. Just death.”

“Well. It’s efficient, I’ll give him that.”

No whimpering. No hand wringing. Way to take it on the chin, Eva. God, he loved this woman.

“How many guards?” he asked.

“I counted six—three at the door and three more stationed around the perimeter of the building. Inside? It’s just you and me and the mice.”

“So… thoughts?” God, his head hurt.

“None that I see working. Even if I could climb up to that ventilation grate and get outside without making enough noise to raise the dead, I’ll never get past the guards. And you? Right now, you’re pretty much worthless thanks to your smart mouth.”

Okay. So she wasn’t totally over being pissed at him.

“But you’ve got a plan, right?” He knew she had one. Eva wasn’t a reactor. She made things happen.

“Yeah. I’ve got a plan. But you’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“We wait for Gabe and Green.”

He carefully let his head fall back against the wall. Closed his eyes on a fractured breath as sweat trickled down his spine. “You’re right. I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to like it. We just have to do it.”

Now she was throwing his own words back at him. Guess he had that coming.

“At least with them inside, we’ve got enough numbers to make something work. And unless you sprout wings and a machine gun, we aren’t going anywhere anyway.”

Very slowly he sank back down to the floor. Breathed through the pain. “Fine. We wait.”

He closed his eyes and dozed on and off, so he wasn’t sure how much time passed when a key rattled in the lock and the door swung open. He squinted up to see Simmons standing in the threshold, carrying his shotgun. Then he flipped on the light switch and an overhead bulb blinked on. “Special delivery, asshole.”

Simmons stepped aside and Wagoner and Bryant shoved two men into the room, their wrists bound with flex cuffs, their heads covered with hoods.

Even though he’d been expecting it, it ripped a hole in Mike’s chest to know that he was responsible for putting Gabe and Joe in this position.

He propped himself up on an elbow. “Four people? This small room? Gotta be breaking some fire code for maximum capacity. Who do I see about lodging a complaint?”

Simmons backed toward the door. “You’re a real funny guy. What do you wanna bet you aren’t laughing tomorrow at this time? Oh, wait. Tomorrow at this time you’re gonna be dead. You and your bitch and your buddies. If it was up to me, the deed would already be done. Make a joke about that.”

He stomped across the room, flipped off the light, slammed the door, and locked it behind him.

Mike swallowed back the lump in his throat, feeling a despair unlike anything he’d felt since Afghanistan. He thought of Gabe’s little girl. Of the baby on the way. Of Jenna and Stephanie—the wives and lovers these men might never see again.

“Sorry, guys.” His voice broke. “Didn’t exactly see it going down like this.”

Both men reached up and wrestled off their hoods.

And for the first time that he could remember, Mike couldn’t have uttered a sound if his bare feet had been held to a fire.

He squinted his eyes into focus, certain he was hallucinating, but there was no getting around it. It wasn’t Gabe Jones staring back at him. It wasn’t Joe Green.

“Long time no see, Primetime.” Bobby Taggart stood there grinning at him as if he’d just checked into a resort and eight years of hating Mike’s guts had never happened.

What the hell?

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Jamie Cooper’s Hollywood smile was as blinding as it had ever been. “Always landing your sorry ass in a sling.”

What the holy hell?

“And dragging us along for the ride,” Taggart added, then directed his attention to Eva. “Ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet you—present circumstances notwithstanding.”

All Mike could do was stare. At those far-too-familiar faces that looked so much like he remembered, yet had changed in ways he understood too well. He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. After he’d left a message on Jamie’s machine and never heard back, he’d figured that the bridge was well and truly burned.

“Wh…” He stopped, shook his head, unable to form the words. What are you doing here? Why did you come? “What happened to Gabe and Joe?” Even before Cooper spoke, he knew. Cooper hadn’t just gotten his message—he’d believed him. Then he’d convinced Taggart and, knowing Taggart, he’d needed a helluva lot of convincing.

“Your buddy Jones says ‘hey,’ ” Cooper said.

“And to not fuck this up,” Taggart added.

Since they both had candy-eating grins on their faces, Mike knew Gabe had probably had a lot more to say.

The fact that the two of them were here, though, said everything he needed to know. When they couldn’t reach him, they’d called the number he’d given Cooper to reach Gabe, who had read them in on the mission, and they’d asked to take his and Joe’s place.

Pig simple. And not simple at all. They were here because they needed to be. They were here because they had to be.

Because they were his brothers.

His vision misted over as a relief so huge and so consuming threatened to drop him to his knees.

“Not that we don’t appreciate the stellar digs”—making a point of giving Mike a chance to pull himself together, Cooper craned his head around, checking out the possibilities—“but it’s a little stuffy in here. I’m all for going for an upgrade to oh, say… anywhere but fucking here.”

“I’m down with that.”

Mike recognized the gravel in Taggart’s voice, since the same rock of emotion had lodged in his.

Sonofabitch. They’d come.

Eva sized up Taggart and Cooper, deciding the two men were as different as tequila and scotch. Taggart was tall, fair, wore his light brown hair in a military buzz cut, and was built like a tank. Cooper clearly had Latino blood running through his veins. The man gave Mike a run for his money in the drop-dead gorgeous department. He was also muscular, but more like a runner or a swimmer.

And regardless of the trash talk that passed between the three of them, that indefinable bond that united them still held strong. Not that they weren’t feeling their way carefully around each other. Eight years of distance and resentment, no matter that it was founded on lies and misunderstanding, rode heavy on the air between them. But the team mentality had fallen back into place like well-oiled gears.

The looks that passed between them made Eva’s heart break. Typical men, they couldn’t come out and say what was really on their minds. Years of regret. Years of pain. Years of loss. And all they exchanged were looks and trash talk. No handshakes. No hugs, because, God forbid, contact might trigger an emotion they’d have to actually deal with.

Okay. She got it, she thought, as Mike filled them in on the semis full of guns and their speculation that a deal with key members of the Juarez cartel was about to go down. Now wasn’t the time for a sentimental reunion. Now wasn’t the time to voice forgiveness and repent. Neither was it the time to sort out her link to Lawson, although she suspected that Gabe had connected the dots between her and Ramon when he’d read them in on the operation.

But so help her God, if they got out of here alive, she was going to make sure that the three of them confronted the ghosts that haunted them. They were going to have a touchy-feely moment if she had to knock them all in the head with a hammer.

But first they had to get out of here. Cooper and Taggart were already making a visual sweep of the room for possible escape scenarios when a commotion outside had them all turning in that direction.

Mike gave her a What now? look.

“Open it.” Lawson’s voice was unmistakable on the other side of the door.

Eva’s heart sank. This couldn’t be good.

Was this it, then? The end? Why else would Lawson be here?

Mike moved close against her side just as the door swung open and the overhead light flipped on.

Lawson walked in, flanked by Simmons and Wagoner, both of them armed to the teeth. Lawson glared at Taggart, then Cooper, let his ferret gaze drift over Eva and finally land on Mike. The smile that tilted his lips was ugly. “You’ve got yourself a little problem, Walker. Excuse me. Brown.”

“I’m guessing this means I’m not going to get that promotion?”

Anger flashed in Lawson’s eyes, but his smile never wavered. “What it means is that you’re a dead man. You and your friends. But not just yet. I’m not without compassion. So as long as we’ve got this reunion theme going, I want to give you an opportunity to say hello to an old friend.”

Lawson stepped aside. First into the room was a woman Eva didn’t recognize. She was blond and totally unremarkable except for her eyes. And the coldness Eva saw there chilled her blood to ice. She was dressed all in black. In one hand she held a wicked Heckler & Koch MP5K. Her other arm was immobilized in a sling. And though she’d never seen her before in her life, Eva got the distinct impression the woman’s ice-queen exterior was a wall holding back a red-hot hatred.

A man stepped in behind her. Big man. Tall. Late fifties, maybe early sixties. Like Lawson, he was dressed in camo pants and a neatly pressed broadcloth shirt. An officer’s shirt, complete with a shiny nameplate pinned to his breast pocket.

She squinted to make out the letters… then sucked in her breath on a gasp.

BREWSTER.