Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(73)

Clyde flew inside.

I blinked. A hundred-watt bulb hung from the ceiling, an orange extension cord leading to wherever they’d tapped into the grid.

A man sat in a wooden chair. His wrists were duct-taped tightly to the arms of the chair, his ankles bound by nylon rope. More tape covered his mouth.

My heart jerked as if I’d been shot, and I gripped the doorframe to keep from falling.

This was not Cohen.

This man had thick blond hair and a shaggy beard that reached his collarbone. Familiar blue-green eyes set in a web of wrinkles. Face and neck and forearms tanned a deep desert brown, the veins prominent in a physique stripped of anything unnecessary. He was so still I couldn’t hear him breathe, yet even bound to the chair, he was a coil of energy. I sensed, deep inside him, a clock ticking invisibly, ready to trigger an explosion.

His eyes met mine.

My knees sagged, and my breath caught in my throat. This wasn’t possible. It wasn’t. He was dead. I knew he was dead. I’d seen his corpse.

My mind hurtled into the past. I saw this same man sitting at a metal folding table in a grove of gum arabic trees, his long legs stretched in front of him, his left hand waving away the droning flies as he chatted with an old tribesman while Clyde and I kept watch. In my memory, dust rode languidly into the air and hung there, white as talcum in the desert light. The man twirled the old lion’s head ring he wore on braided leather around his neck.

Sarge squeezed in next to me. “What the—?” he started. Then, “Holy fuck.”

Clyde’s tail was wagging hard enough to take the rest of his body with it. He barked and circled the chair in a mad scramble, butting the man’s legs.

The man never took his eyes from mine.

Sarge pushed past me and ripped off the tape covering the man’s mouth.

The man said, “Rosie.”

Sarge produced a knife and went to work on the ropes.

“No,” I murmured. “You’re not real. You’re dead. I saw you.”

He shook his head slowly, his eyes sleepy from whatever drug they’d been giving him. “It wasn’t me.”

“I saw you. I have your ring. It was on your body.”

“Rick Dalton. Not me.”

“Get her out of here!” the Sir shouted.

Gonzo took my arm. “Come on, Lady Hawk.”

I shook him off, intending to go to Dougie’s corpse where it lay on the table, still in the body bag. His lion’s head ring caught the light and tossed it back. His face was covered with sand. I took a step, then collapsed to the floor. Dougie. I turned my head and vomited.

“I’ll take her,” the Sir said.

Clyde was whining now. I blinked. Sarge helped the man rise unsteadily to his feet. He was tall, over six feet, dressed in black fatigue pants and a sleeveless T-shirt. His legs shook, and Sarge braced himself beneath the man’s left arm.

“Maybe you should sit back down,” Sarge said.

“Not here,” the man answered.

“I never saw your ghost,” I said. “Never. Not once. You never came to me.”

“My dear, sweet Rosie.”

I was drowning. I must have sounded crazy to him. But the dead were all right with crazy. “Why now?”

He took two shaky steps and reached out to touch my face.

I remembered those long fingers. The calluses. The white-blond hairs and the knuckles and veins and the scar on his right wrist where he’d snagged it on barbed wire when he was a kid.

“No,” I choked. “It’s impossible.”

He pulled me to him. His flesh was warm and solid against mine. His heartbeat echoed in my ears. His beard tickled my face before he pressed his forehead to mine.

Doug Reynauld Ayers.

Back from the dead.





CHAPTER 21

I’ve killed people. I’ve tortured people. Sometimes under orders. Sometimes to stay alive. I need to be clear on this, Sydney. So you know who I am.

—Doug Ayers. Personal conversation.

“Panic won’t help,” Sarge said to me from where he sat.

Above us, trees rustled in the county park where we’d fled. The moon spilled silver. I stopped my pacing long enough to glare at him. “That the kind of bullshit platitude you peddled during the war?”

“It’s pure truth.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck that.”

But I took a deep steadying breath and hoisted myself up on the retaining wall. If I leaned back, I could see the basketball court at the far end of the park. The lone hoop was lit by a single streetlight.

Sarge was right. If I couldn’t get a grip, everything would go up in flames.

Across the two-lane country road from the park was the Coach Motel, a place as gray and devoid of character as a metal bucket. Except for an older couple in the room at the end—ranchers judging by their mud-splattered pickup and worn cowboy boots—we were the only customers.

Dougie stood in the lighted lobby, paying cash for two rooms. We’d left the body of Mark Fadden behind for someone on Team Alpha to find. We’d searched the place but found nothing of Fadden’s that was personal. Nothing that pointed toward who had hired him or what he intended next. What we had found was the Alpha’s arsenal—we’d helped ourselves to enough weapons and gear to equip an LA street gang. While I retrieved my belongings and Dougie got the backpack he’d had when he was taken, Sarge went through and wiped down every place the three of us might have touched, erasing our presence as much as possible. We stocked up on groceries and beer at a strip mall and finally came here, to this tiny roadside inn and a deserted park on the edge of nowhere.