Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(79)

Despite everything, I laughed. “You? A house husband?”

“I’m ready for it, Rosie. It’s all I want as soon as I finish with the covert work.” His face lit up. “That and about five kids.”

My laugh came smaller this time. “Kids.”

His fingers brushed my jawline, trailed down to my throat where my pulse ached. “Every day and night for months while my body healed, I imagined you next to me. I’d close my eyes, and there you’d be. Telling me that I had to live. Nothing more. Just live.”

My shoulders shook with my sobs.

His hand moved to my bare shoulder, the calluses across his palm like brands upon his skin. “I never gave up on us. I always imagined that in another year, two at the most, we’d be together.”

“All I had were memories. And those hurt so much.” My breath shuddered. “I tried to let you go. Lately . . . it’s been a little easier.”

“Because of the cop.” His voice was filed down to an edge.

“Michael Cohen.” Saying his name brought fresh pain. My eyes strayed to the clock on the bedside table, calculating the hours. “I’m not the same woman you loved.”

“I’m not the same man. Everyone changes.”

How easy it was to see that. His confidence hardened into hypervigilance. Optimism buried by anger. The man I loved had been washed through a cycle over and over, until what remained was a hard core of qualities that almost mocked the man he’d been.

And yet. The gentleness remained.

He said, “Is he a good man?”

I remembered our bedroom that morning, a million years ago. The silence between us. Would that be the last thing we shared?

“He’s a very good man.”

“And you love him.”

I’d already searched my heart. “Yes.”

“More than . . . ?” He pulled his hand away and dropped his gaze.

“Don’t ask,” I whispered.

Silence hung in the air.

But when he lifted his eyes to mine, he pulled up a smile that must have cost him almost everything he had left. “Then we’ll bring him home to you.”



Sarge came by to let us know he’d booked a 6:00 a.m. flight. The three of us sketched out a rough plan for the next day, I gave him Rick Dalton’s key, and Sarge bid us goodnight. After he left, I washed up in the bathroom. When I came back out, toweling my hair, Dougie had removed his shirt and shoes and settled atop the covers next to Clyde. Clyde slept with his head tucked under Dougie’s shoulder.

The soft light from the bedside lamp illuminated a network of thick scar tissue that webbed Dougie’s stomach.

I stopped. “When did that happen?”

“During the ambush.”

I sat on the other bed. “That’s when you decided to switch places with Dalton.”

“I didn’t make that decision, Rosie. I was gut shot. I woke up twenty hours later and miles away. I assume it was one of my sources in the village who made the switch in order to protect me, and another man took me out of the city. When I came to, I was in a house in the middle of nowhere. The man and woman who lived there took care of me for almost a year.”

“So much pain.”

“Life is pain. There or here. No matter who we are.”

True that. “How are we going to find Cohen?”

“Sleep. Something will come to us.”

“That part of your secret-ops training?”

“Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to walk away from it. I’m guessing you know that. You just don’t know how to do it.”

“Maybe not.” Not when it came to Cohen.

He reached over the edge of the bed into his backpack and tossed over a few protein bars. “Better to use this time to eat and rest, Rosie. So we can be on our game at first light.”

As I turned down the sheets, Clyde lifted his head. But when Dougie cooed a few words to him, he resettled. They both closed their eyes, and soon my partner’s quiet, even breathing joined Dougie’s.

Dougie was right. I should sleep. Come dawn, I needed to be in the zone, ready to find Cohen and spirit him away before he ended up like Angelo.

But as tired as I was, I could not rest. Not with Cohen beaten and in pain, wondering if the next day would bring his death. I stared through the gloom at my laptop and asked myself if the key to his location lay buried somewhere on the internet. Something I’d missed. Some clue I’d failed to pick up.

I threw off the covers and opened my computer, curling my feet beneath me as I sat at the table. Using multiple browsers, I hunted down virtual alleyways and surveyed electronic vistas. I pursued James Osborne as if he were a rabbit to my wolf, diving down holes, digging through layers, searching for a scent.

Since I didn’t think Osborne would take the risk of hiding Cohen on Vigilant property or at his personal address, I looked for ties to other locations.

But Osborne was too smart for someone with my skills. He’d erased all footsteps save for those on the broad avenue of his website.

He was a ghost in the machine.

After an hour, with my eyes closing against my will, I had to admit failure.

Determination is not a plan, desire no substitute for strategy.

I rose and went to the window, edging aside the curtain.