Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(36)

“Screw it,” he muttered. Screw the guilt. It was someone else’s turn to run the gauntlet. He’d be thirty-five next month, and some days he felt as old as f*cking Methuselah. It was the weight of those dead bodies and repeat adrenaline burns. He’d carried both as long as both his body and his soul could bear.

He rubbed at a scar on his right thigh, a memento from an AK-47 round in Beirut in ’99. And whenever it rained his collarbone ached like hell from when he’d broken it escaping an op gone wrong in Mogadishu in ’05.

His cell phone rang, Private Number showing on the readout. He’d personally fitted the security screens on his cell—this phone, even the CIA didn’t know about—but just in case he answered with his cover. “Windle.”

“Cav, it’s Wyatt.”

The chair creaked as Cav sank back. It had been months since he’d heard Wyatt Savage’s soft southern drawl, yet his old friend was one of the few constants in Cav’s history. He hoped that would be true in his future as well. In the spook world, where black and white too often bled into shades of gray, there had never been a question that Wyatt was also one of the good guys.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t give his old partner a hard time.

“Why is it that every time the phone rings and I hear your voice, I feel a knee-jerk reaction to say ‘wrong number’ and hang the hell up?”

“I need your help.”

“Ah. That would be the reason.” The last time Wyatt had enlisted Cav’s help it had involved infiltrating a human trafficking ring, the takedown of a rat-bastard Chinese crime boss, and several blown-up buildings near the Jakarta wharfs.

“Look, Cav. I don’t have a lot of time. So here’s the quick and dirty.”

“It’s always quick and dirty with you, Savage.” Just like Cav was always going to say yes to whatever Wyatt asked of him.

Over a decade and several dead bodies had stacked up since he, Wyatt, and Joe Green had guarded one another’s backs in service to Uncle. While Wyatt and Joe had said hasta luego to the CIA several years ago and teamed up with Nate Black’s private security and military contract firm, Black Ops, Inc., Cav had stuck with the Company. Until now.

“Cav… you still there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” he said when he realized he’d lapsed into silence. He glanced toward the liquor cabinet. “What’s going on?”

“Two days ago an American woman stepped off a plane in Mandalay, Myanmar, hired a taxi that let her off near her hotel downtown, and she hasn’t been heard from since.”

Cav reached absently for a pen, then flipped it back and forth between his fingers. “One of yours?” Black Ops, Inc. specialized in immobilizing bad guys on the international front.

“No. She’s not with BOI. Carrie’s a friend. And she’s as green as the damn grass.”

“What kind of friend?” Wyatt had gotten married last spring, yet he sounded damn rattled over this friend. Cav had missed the wedding. Like he’d missed many important events over the years, because he’d been embroiled in some covert op to gum up the works in a would-be tyrant’s attempted coup to overthrow a U.S.-sanctioned government, or an op to intercept an arms shipment bound for a terrorist training camp, or a score of other missions that had kept him on the razor’s edge of life or death. A lot of lives. A lot of deaths.

A lot of post-op scotch to blur the memories that hovered like ghosts around a crypt.

“Just a friend,” Wyatt said, snapping Cav back. “I grew up with her. Our families go way back. She’s a small-town hospital administrator. She wasn’t prepared for Myanmar. She’s never even been out of the States. Hell, for all I know, she’s never been out of Georgia.”

Cav could hear the desperation in Wyatt’s voice.

“Her family begged me to talk her out of going, and I tried. Believe me. I tried to scare her smart. But there was no stopping her.

“Look”—he paused, and Cav could visualize his friend rubbing his brow with his index finger—“she’s important to me, Cav. I’d be there in a heartbeat but Sophie… she’s pregnant and… Christ, Cav.” His voice broke and Cav sensed that what came next wouldn’t be good.

“There are complications. We… we might lose the baby.” His voice was thick with strain. “I can’t leave her right now. The doctors say it’s going to be touch and go for the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”

“I’m sorry, man.” Cav knew all about Sophie. One drunk midnight, shortly after the Company had paired them up as partners all those years ago, Wyatt had told him about the one who’d gotten away. Cav had been happy as hell when they’d finally found their way back to each other this past year. Now this tough break. One that was clearly tearing Wyatt apart.

Now he understood the reason for Wyatt’s call. He couldn’t go to Myanmar. Cav could. And he could get there a helluva lot faster from Jakarta than Wyatt could from Georgia.

“What’s the word from our embassy?” he asked.

“They’ve got nothing. It’s like she fell off the face of the earth. They’ve got calls in to both local and government officials, but so far it’s clam city.”

Cav listened intently while Wyatt gave him Carrie Granger’s physical description.