Way of the Warrior (Troubleshooters #17.5)(54)
She took his silence for encouragement to continue. “You said things that night that led my brother to certain conclusions. You spoke of betrayal and righting wrongs—how your team was in the wrong place at the wrong time. My brother spoke of you often, but after that incident, he decided he would do whatever he could to find out what happened in Kunar Province. ‘There’s a truth somewhere in there that will set him free, Vivi. I’ve got to find it,’ he said. You were his family at that point, and Michael always took care of his family.”
He wanted to rail at her to shut up. Freedom was so close. He didn’t need to hear about honorable Michael and his insane crusade to save the un-savable. He could ditch her and take off, just disappear where nobody would ever find him.
But the truth. Where would that leave the truth? He owed Knight. He owed Michael and the four other men who’d given their lives in a fight two years after that f*ck-up in Kunar. That last battle in Mogadishu hadn’t been for God and country but rather a self-serving entity that wanted the secrets of Kunar kept silent.
“My brother’s last words to me were, ‘Find the truth, Vivi. He saved me. Help me save him.’ I have the tools, the connections to get you in front of who did this. But we need verification. Because if it’s who all the roads lead to, we could be signing our own death warrants.”
He laughed, surprised at the sound that felt like rusty nails scraping his throat. “Here’s a truth for you. My death warrant was signed in Kunar over two years ago. I’ve been living on borrowed time, Olivia Bentwood.”
“Time is finite for us all, Rook Granger,” she said, mimicking his use of her full name. “But I made a promise to my brother as the air left his body. And by God, not you, the men responsible, or any-f*cking-body else will keep me from seeing it through.”
The woman was as batshit as her brother. “Even if it means your life?”
She nodded. “Even then.”
He laid his head back against the headrest. Her words were another nail in his coffin. He knew damn good and well what Michael Bentwood had discovered about the incident in Kunar, and he wished he’d never gotten drunk after he’d seen Knight’s body loaded into the plane for transport back to the States.
Nothing he could do now. Whoever was responsible for that battle two years ago had decided it was time to take Rook out. And they’d done it in Mogadishu, Somalia, nine months ago. Best guess, Michael’s poking had prodded the beast, and that beast had destroyed Rook’s entire unit, then pinned it on him when he’d been the only one to survive. Case closed. Loose ends tied up.
“I’ve got questions I must have answered,” he bit out.
She glanced at him. “Soon,” she said and focused back on the road.
He closed his eyes and waited for soon to come around.
CHAPTER 3
It took them a little over an hour and a half to make it to their destination in Manhattan, Kansas. Her contact at the airfield had left the gate open and a light on. She pulled into the main gate, got out of the car, and locked the gate behind them.
Vivi breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled up to the main building and put the car in park. After the intensity of their earlier conversation, she’d needed the break and was glad things were going so smoothly. She got out and retrieved the duffel from the back, setting it on the hood of the car.
“Here,” she said as she threw him a change of clothes and a single boot in his size. “I’d suggest you change out of that lovely prison orange. The door to the building is open, and there’s a bathroom in the back.” She threw him a small packet wrapped in gray plastic. “Put this in the toilet tank once you’ve showered and cleaned up. I need you to wipe it all down, no prints, please. Put the prison suit in the dumpster out back.”
He caught the packet, looked at her with a raised brow, and headed into the building. The man didn’t walk—he stalked. The prosthetic wasn’t a hindrance in any way. If anything, it made him even more badass. It was eerie how he was so in control of his space and how the environment around him morphed to his presence. She took her first deep breath in well over four hours once the door shut behind him. Then she stripped, right there in the darkness of the parking lot, changing into black cargos, a black hoodie, and combat boots.
They were going to have to hike once they made it to their ultimate destination in Warrenton. The former Delta Force member living on that property didn’t play, and while he was expecting them, pulling up to his front door wasn’t an option.
Vivi pulled out her laptop. It was an off-market computer, though no less high-end, and she’d spec’d it out last week for this job. In the Company one week. Rogue the next. Who would have thought Olivia Bentwood capable of such a thing?
She booted up the device and stroked it as if it were her lover. Lots of RAM, 32GB, an SSD hard drive, and a 64-bit quad-core processor completed the unit. She’d installed a Linux operating system because of the security. She’d also installed an in-device Wi-Fi system that would allow her to piggyback off CIA satellites. She would remain untraceable because she’d created the program that allowed her to mask her presence on the originating IP address. There was a certain irony in using her employer’s resources to perpetrate this crime. She booted up, brought the encryption software online and shot out the first email to the man she was going to owe big-time for his help.