No Place to Run (KGI #2)(9)

Sam snorted. “As if Mom will believe that. She has a nose for our lies. She sniffs us out every time.”

“We’ll let Van tell her. She always believes him,” Garrett offered. “It’s the rest of us who can’t get away with shit.”

Donovan sent them both smug looks. “Favored son status does have its perks.”

“So when are you going to snap out of this funk, Sam?” Garrett asked bluntly. “If you need a break from KGI, tell me. I can take over operations. The teams are getting restless. They need the action. So do we.”

Even Donovan looked like he agreed with Garrett.

“I’m not in a goddamn funk. A lot of shit has gone down over the last year. We needed to be here with the family.”

He could feel himself growing defensive, which meant they had a goddamn point, as much as he hated to admit it.

Both his brothers just stared at him, as if waiting for him to come to the conclusion on his own that he was being a dumbass.

“Yeah, okay, I get it,” he mumbled. “I’ll put your asses to work.”

Sam sighed and rose from the patio chair to stretch his legs. He rested his palms on the railing of the deck, enjoying the sun-warmed wood against his skin.

Maybe it was time to get back on the job and work off his restlessness.

He glanced back at Garrett and studied the shadows under his eyes. Garrett didn’t like time off. It gave him too much time to think about the shit that went down with his special-ops team just before he left the Marines. He hadn’t been sleeping lately, not that he’d admit it to either Sam or Donovan.

Van had confided to Sam that Garrett had been tracking down any and all information on Marcus Lattimer, the man responsible for Garrett’s mission going to shit and Garrett’s subsequent stay in the hospital to recover from a bullet to the thigh.

Sam had been meaning to bring it up with Garrett, but he hadn’t found the right time. Not that any time was ever good to try to pin Garrett down and make him talk.

“What the hell are you staring at?” Garrett asked rudely.

“You look like hell,” Sam said bluntly. “You haven’t been sleeping again.”

“Yeah, well that’s two of us. At least I’m not hung up on some chick. Quit trying to avoid the subject by making this about me.”

“Find anything yet?” Sam asked mildly.

Garrett frowned and looked for a moment like he’d pretend he didn’t know what Sam was talking about. He slapped a burger on the grill, banging the spatula in the process. Then he glanced over at Donovan.

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Donovan said, holding up his hands. “You haven’t exactly been discreet about it.”

“I want to take the f**ker down,” Garrett said.

Sam leaned back and braced his hands behind him on the railing. “Christ, Garrett. KGI can’t afford to go on some damn revenge mission.”

Garrett shrugged. “Who says it has to be about revenge? The world would be a better place without the piece of shit. He’s dirty. He’s a traitor.” He stared hard at Sam. “He cost me my team. While we sit here waiting for you to snap out of your funk, we could be doing something useful. Like nailing Lattimer’s sorry ass to the wall.”

There wasn’t a whole lot Sam could say to that. He understood Garrett’s rage. He’d be doing the same in Garrett’s shoes. But he sure as hell hoped his brothers would rein him in. Just like he was doing with Garrett.

“Garrett’s not the problem right now,” Donovan said pointedly. “You are. You need to pull your head out of your ass, and we need to go back to work, otherwise Garrett’s going to go rogue on us and start some goddamn war trying to find Lattimer.”

Sam blew out his breath and turned around to gaze out over the lake once more. His brothers were right. His head wasn’t in it, and that was a very bad thing for KGI. They’d built their business into an extensive list of military and government contacts. They did jobs for agencies that didn’t even exist.

The job to take out Mouton had come from their CIA contact, Resnick, and while KGI had thwarted one arms deal, Mouton himself had slipped through their fingers. Which meant he was still there, still viable, and he was busy rebuilding his network.

And at least for now, the U.S. government didn’t seem inclined to follow up.

Sam hated unfinished business. It went against his every principle to leave a predator out there who was capable of destroying so many lives. In theory it wasn’t personal. Mouton was just a job, but to Sam it had become personal the moment he failed to take the man down.

He was tempted to tell his CIA contact to f**k off and go back after Mouton, but it wasn’t worth getting on Uncle Sam’s bad side.

His lips twisted into a grimace. Maybe Donovan had the right idea. Maybe some sun, sex and vacation would get his mind back in the game. And off Sophie.

He had started to turn around to his brothers again when he caught sight of something that gave him pause. A large log was floating lazily down the lake. Water levels were way up in the spring as the TVA held water in so as not to burden the rain-swollen rivers and creeks that the lake fed. Recent storms and heavy rainfall had caused a debris field that had only just begun to diminish. But it was something on the end of the log that captured Sam’s attention.

“What the hell?” he muttered.