Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(2)

“Because of that?” he finished weakly.

“Only thing I can think of. Look, I gotta go. Stay on watch, brother. Remember what we used to say? Just ’cause you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Crowe disconnected.

Kane’s thoughts flew in a hundred different directions. No question, Crowe was crazy. He saw things no one else did. He babbled on about conspiracy theories and space aliens. He’d never learned to rest his head anywhere for more than a night or two.

Then again, given what Kane had learned, maybe right now Lester Crowe was the sanest man on the team.

A sound at the bedroom door made Kane spin around, one hand gripping Megan, the other reaching for a nonexistent gun.

His four-year-old daughter, Haley, stared up at him, eyes wide. “Daddy?”

Heart racing, Kane sucked in air and forced his hand back to his side.

“You should be in bed, Haley.” His voice came out all wrong. Sharp and angry.

Both Megan and Haley began to cry.

An hour later, after Kane had gotten both girls to bed, he stood at the front window and watched until his wife pulled up in their ancient Toyota. He waited until she was safely inside, the garage door down, the doors and windows locked. He listened to her complain about his sudden moodiness while she got ready for bed, then waited some more, until her soft breathing told him she was asleep.

Then he got out the handgun he’d hidden from her and stood watch through the night.

Crowe might be crazy, but Kane knew better than most that sometimes the monsters were real.



For the next few days, Kane tried to call Tucks and Sarge, the other members of his fireteam. Neither picked up. Both men went in and out of Kane’s life like it had a revolving door. So he left messages. I might have screwed up. Watch your back. He installed an alarm system over Sherri’s protests that they couldn’t afford it and insisted Sherri and the girls stay at her parents’ house while he was at work.

“What’s wrong?” Sherri asked as he stuffed books, bathing suits, and pool toys into Haley’s Shopkins backpack. “Why are you acting like this?”

What could he say? That something—he didn’t know what exactly—had happened in Iraq, and he had been looking into it. Just a little local recon during his free time, and the details he had uncovered so far indicated . . . what? Shadows, really. Whispers in the dark.

Just ’cause you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not out to get you. This was true, but the fact was there had been no mysterious visitors, no cars lurking at corners, no one tailing him. He was starting to think that maybe Crowe was crazy and that maybe some of that had rubbed off on him.

He dropped all his attempts to look into what had happened in Iraq and made every effort to prove to anyone watching that he was only a simple husband, father, and wage earner.

A week later, after dropping off his family with Sherri’s parents, he bounded into Denver’s Union Station, tugging on the damp uniform shirt clinging to his back in August’s electric-blanket heat.

Saturday night at Union Station was Kane’s favorite shift. Tonight he took in his surroundings with his usual all-in stare of a combat vet who had done more patrols than a bear had hair on its ass. He watched the swirling, restless throngs of people—window-shoppers, travelers, drinkers, gourmands, loiterers, and likely pickpockets. He studied the stores and kiosks, the nooks and corners, the doorways and high, wide windows. He inhaled the scents of hamburgers frying and coffee brewing, noted the overstuffed waste cans and the crumpled trash tossed beneath benches, and cocked an ear for the whoosh of trains and the hum of passengers disembarking outside.

He scanned for abandoned backpacks, wet paper bags, wires, and pipes, and for any man or woman who sweated and shook and refused to meet his gaze.

During Kane’s first month on the job, the RTD had received twenty-two bomb threats, thirty-three callins for suspicious packages, two alleged suicide bombers who promised death and destruction, and one real bomb placed under a light-rail platform near the football stadium, a bomb that had been quickly detected and quietly disposed of.

The public knew nothing about it.

Kane had found the bomb—a pressure cooker filled with nails, ball bearings, and black powder with an estimated fifteen hundred–foot blast radius. After that, he understood that if the short-term memory issues caused by a head injury in Iraq meant he couldn’t be a doctor, he could be a shepherd—not a fair trade, but a good one. His prize was the safety of the people—their innocence something to both envy and protect. Maybe finding and removing a terrorist or a bomb was not so very different from rooting out a virus before it could harm an otherwise healthy patient.

Kane swiped away the beads of sweat on his forehead and nodded at Mills, another security officer, who was headed in the opposite direction.

“It’s a sauna,” Mills said. “Ninety-four degrees at effing 1800 hours.”

Kane grinned and leaned in as they passed. “Try Iraq, you pussy. A hundred and twenty in the shade.”

Mills laughed and moved on.

Kane spun on his heel and headed toward the hallway leading to the north end of the station. Some part of his brain registered himself in this space—the pain in his leg from years-old shrapnel, the trickle of sweat between his shoulder blades, the weight of his utility belt, and the faint burn in his right deltoid where he’d tweaked it lifting weights.