Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(74)

I’d gotten one more text from the Alpha. Our original deal was off. At noon the next day, they would begin removing pieces of Michael Cohen.

By two in the afternoon, if I hadn’t delivered, they would kill him.

The temperature had dropped to the fifties, but my skin burned as if I’d dunked myself in acid. Under my jacket, blood seeped through Gram’s bandage. Every molecule of adrenaline had dissolved, and now my body sent up flares of pain strong enough to make the world spin.

But my pain was nothing against what Cohen would endure if I could not find him.

I leaned down and ran my fingers through Clyde’s fur. “You learn anything at all from that friend of yours?”

“Hutch?” Sarge sighed. “Nothing. Man drank my whiskey, but he was scared as shit to talk.”

I curled my hands into fists.

My mind could not find a place to roost. It lit on the feel of Fadden’s weight on my body and the sight of his crushed skull, then flew to Clyde’s desperate barking. It circled about and landed on the fact of Dougie’s sudden return from the dead, and my struggle to figure out how I felt about that—relief, rage, joy, and shock were all good candidates.

It bumped up against the photo they’d sent of Cohen.

And there it lingered before finally wandering into the past—Cohen in his living room, his shoulders up, his voice ripping a hole in my flesh.

I don’t know if I can trust you to have my back.

The mantra I kept coming back to was the fact of Dougie’s key. On the drive over, I’d taken it from my duffel and placed it in my pocket. Every hope I had for Cohen hinged on that.

The key, and the weapons locked in the back of my SUV.

I nodded toward a paper sack. “I’m ready for another.”

Sarge popped the top off a bottle of beer and handed it up. I hesitated, then placed it on the wall next to me. Probably good to take a breather.

With his own drink, Sarge gestured toward the lobby. “That is one messed-up dude.”

“You don’t know him.”

Sarge’s chuckle was as dry and mirthless as bones rubbing together. “Knew him then, know him now. War turned that boy inside out.”

“Didn’t seem like it did you any favors, either.”

He glanced up at me. In the faint light, he was a silhouette, solid against the night.

“Ditto for you, sister,” he said after a moment.

A breeze flicked against my flesh, tangled my hair. I registered the sensations as if they belonged to someone else.

“Least we got one thing,” Sarge said. “We got the fucker who nailed Kane.”

We did have that.

I held my head in my hands to keep it from flying off. “When you guys were driving here, did Dougie tell you how they got him in that strip club?”

“Just said he was tired and he got careless. Wouldn’t say anything else. Point of pride, I think.” Glass clinked as Sarge got another beer. “What I want to know is what he’s been doing since everything went down in Iraq.”

Lying to me. Hiding from me. Breaking my heart across years of silence.

But the camera in my brain clicked through old images, and I thought I knew at least some of it.

A man calling himself Strider leading Malik to safety in Iraq. Snap.

Delivering him to another man in Mexico City. Snap.

A different man in the airport, his throat slit. Big fucking snap.

I lifted my head as a lone car whizzed by, speeding toward the horizon. The dark soon swallowed it.

I picked up the beer, drained half of it.

Across the street, Dougie came out of the lobby and moved through the parking lot toward our two vehicles. Even his walk had changed in the years since I’d last seen him. In Iraq, he’d been a force—his six-foot-three height, his optimism, his booming laugh. Back then, he’d taken over every room he went into.

This new Dougie was quieter. And much more dangerous.

He got a backpack out of the trunk of Sarge’s car and disappeared into one of the rooms.

“Why did Rick Dalton do it?” I asked. “Go along with destroying Haifa’s and Resenko’s bodies? Why did he pass along the Alpha’s order and start all this?”

“Only thing I can figure is that he thought it was the right thing. Just like you and me and the rest of us poor dumb schmucks. All of us trying to fit one big fucking genie back into the bottle.”

“It didn’t bother you, what we did?”

He shot me a look; I felt the heat coming off it. “Bothered the hell out of me. We were choosing the many over the few, which I get. Sometimes, that’s how the play goes down. But Resenko was one of mine, and Haifa saved our lives more than once. Still . . .” He fell silent for so long I thought he’d had his say. Then he added, “Parnell, you’d better learn to move on. We all got things we wish we hadn’t done. But God sees everything in our souls, and even with that, He believes in forgiveness.”

I thought about that for a time.

Dougie came out of the hotel room and walked across the parking lot toward the park. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a black short-sleeve tee. His wet hair gleamed.

Clyde got to his feet, tail wagging, straining toward Dougie. I held tight to his lead in case he forgot there was a road between us and his former handler.

I nudged Sarge’s shoulder with my foot. “Did he tell you what intel he hid?”