Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(30)

I jerked back around. The flight attendant stood in the aisle, a crease between her blue eyes.

I nodded, and she handed me a soft square of cloth before offering a compassionate smile and moving on.

You’ll never be warm, a voice breathed from behind.

My own set of Greek furies. Furiae. Erinyes. The infernal ones. Their presence cast me as the tragic hero of my own story, an Odysseus doomed to wander forever without peace.

I forced away my self-pitying thoughts and returned to more practical matters, back to the man who had been murdered at the airport. I wanted to believe I had a guardian angel, even if I’d prefer a less violent one. But I suspected the truth was darker. I figured there were multiple parties involved in whatever was going down, and someone had just upped the ante.

At least the risk wasn’t all one-sided.

What I felt about the man who’d died was a sense of satisfaction. And that scared me more than anything. As soon as you are no longer bothered by death, maybe even approve of it, you’ve lost yourself on a dark path.

I slammed down the rest of the whiskey and reclined the seat. The lights dimmed. I pulled the blanket to my chin and let my eyes drift closed as memories swam to the surface.

The boiling sun set over Iraq, yielding to the silver knives of moonlight that carved up Camp Taqaddum, slicing through the barracks and the rec center and the motor pool. Outside the barricade, someone fired an AK-47, the rounds echoing in the empty desert around us.

Insurgents.

I touched the sidearm in my thigh holster to make sure it was still there.

Combat—24-7-365.

“We’re safe,” said Corporal “Conan” Tomitsch.

“You think?”

“Sure, Lady Hawk.” My own nickname.

I ducked into my tent and curled into a fetal position on my cot, breathing in kerosene fumes from the canvas. I must have finally slept, because sometime later I was startled awake by my commanding officer, the Sir, who knelt next to my bed, the red beam of his flashlight illuminating his face. He pressed his finger to his lips and tipped his head to indicate I should go with him. I reached for my uniform, but he handed me a pair of sweats and a hoodie, and I noticed that he was dressed in civvies. Uneasy, I pulled the sweats on over my T-shirt and shorts and followed him, weaving my way past my sleeping tent mates. Outside, the warm wind threw dust in our eyes while overhead, the Milky Way glittered like treasure from Ali Baba’s cave.

The Sir said, “I’m going into Habbaniyah, Corporal Parnell, and I could use your help.”

“This an order, sir?” Knowing something was off by his manner and our clothes.

“No, Corporal. Your choice.”

He knew damn well I would crawl to Baghdad if that was what he needed me to do.

“Should I get Ayers, sir?” I asked. “For security?”

He regarded me with sudden alarm.

“No,” he said. “No one can know about this. Especially not—no. Do you understand, Corporal? You can’t tell Doug Ayers.”

“I won’t, sir. But, sir, you’re giving me a bad feeling.”

“Want to back out?”

“No, sir.”

“I trust you, Parnell. It’s why I chose you.”

“Yes, sir. You can trust me.” I trust you, too.

“This way, then.”



After a layover in Dallas where I went through Immigration and Customs, then boarded a different plane, I awoke a second time when we touched down in Denver at zero dark thirty. A text greeted me as soon as I switched my phone out of airplane mode: Cohen and Clyde were in the cell-phone lot, waiting for my text.

Once off the plane, I found the nearest bathroom and cleaned up as best I could. A bruise had bloomed across the bridge of my nose, edging toward my left eye, and there was no hiding that. The bleeding from my side was now only a seep. I reapplied paper towels and tucked my blouse to hold them in place.

I checked myself in the mirror one more time. Bruises. Check. Bloodstains. Check. Glowering rage with a side of panic. You bet. Everything I needed to make Cohen wonder what the hell I’d been up to.

No chance to dance around it any longer. It was time to tell this good man the truth. Even if it drove him away.

“Grab those bootstraps,” I whispered to my reflection, “and pull hard.”

Back on the concourse, the tourists streamed around me, talking sleepily. I shot Cohen a text, then called Hal Beckett, damn the hour. I’d tried to reach him while I was waiting to board the plane in Mexico and then again in Dallas.

As before, his phone went straight to voice mail. This time I left a message. “It’s Rosie. We have to talk.”

Hal was one of the few allowed to use my middle name. Father figure. With a caveat.

I snorted and wondered if this was how Luke felt about Darth Vader.

As I walked through the eerily quiet airport, I worked over how I would tell Cohen about my secret life. But as I fumbled over possible segues into my checkered past, I found no gracious way to tell him that I’d gotten myself eyeball deep in some serious shit. And that, through no fault of his own, he was hip deep in the cesspool with me.

Not for the first time, I reflected on the fact that if our roles were reversed, if he’d been the one who spent our time together getting all “I can’t tell you or I’ll have to kill you” on me, I would have walked out months ago.