Samurai Game (Ghostwalkers, #10)(44)

“So who the hell shot me? What have you found out so far?” he demanded. “And did anyone bother to retaliate for me?”

Ryland laughed. “You bloodthirsty animal. I think you did enough retaliating of your own. Do you have any idea what the body count was?”

“They attacked me,” Sam said righteously. “They should have stayed the hell home.”

Tucker nudged him. “If anyone made it home, I’d have to say they probably wished they’d never left in the first place. You’re a monster, Sam.”

“Who?” Sam insisted.

“We’re still working on it. The moment we have any IDs or we know the entry points into the country, I’ll brief everyone,” Ryland said.

“Two helicopters, Rye. They had to come from somewhere and they had to land somewhere. Fuel is always a problem,” Sam felt compelled to point out. They’d shot him.

“They put down at an abandoned airstrip not far from here. It was part of a private estate that’s been on the market for several years. We’ll find them. We’re on their trail and when we do, we’ll know who sent them.”

Sam knew he had to be content with that much. They’d gather information first. That was always the way, and information took time.

“What are you working on now? Catch me up.” He picked up the file sitting in front of Gator and flipped it open to study the contents.

Ryland looked around at his men with his steel gray piercing eyes. “We’ve got a problem, I’m certain of it. Two people suspected of being in Whitney’s employ dropping dead might be a coincidence, but three? No way. And the woman, the witness, Sheila Benet, at two out of the three accidents? We’re missing something here.” He turned his attention to Sam. “These are reports of deaths that have been ruled accidental. None of them raised an alarm anywhere else, but my gut tells me something’s definitely off. We flagged two of these people at least two years ago and the third, Major Art Patterson, we put on our watch list about three months ago.”

Sam’s eyebrow shot up. “Patterson worked on the general’s watch. They got into a thing a while back and he told me he was concerned about the man. He actually said he was keeping ‘the enemy’ close.”

Ryland nodded. “It was the general who put Patterson’s name on the watch list.”

“We’ve got both Flame and Jaimie tracking this woman Sheila Benet, finding out everything they can about her,” Kadan added. “It’s way too much of a coincidence.”

Sam scanned the medical reports of the three victims Ryland mentioned. A woman appeared to have died by slipping on water in a bathroom and hitting her head on the sink at an infamous nightclub. The second incident was a man dying in a car accident, his car going off the road on a remote mountain highway. The third, Major Patterson, lost his life in a restaurant, apparently dying of anaphylactic shock in front of a host of witnesses.

“I’ve studied all the reports,” Kadan added. “I went over both the investigating officer’s and coroner’s reports meticulously. They look like straight-up accidents, all three of them, but something is off. My gut doesn’t lie and it’s screaming at me.”

Nicolas “Nico” Trevane looked up from where he was cleaning weapons. “I’m in agreement.” He was a big man, half Native American, half Japanese, and all lethal. “But how could any of these have been anything but an accident?”

Sam scanned the report of the army officer a second time, his mouth going dry. He moistened his lips, his pulse beginning to race. He wished he hadn’t gotten up after all.

“Sam?” Ryland frowned at him. “Do you need to lie down?”

There it was. His out. Hell, yeah, he needed to lie down. He swallowed down his need to protect Azami and cleared his suddenly clogged throat. “The medical examiner’s notes on Major Patterson’s throat seemed pretty significant to me.” Why the hell did this seem like such a betrayal? His loyalty was solidly with his team—his brothers. He would protect Daniel at any cost.

“Spit it out, Sam,” Ryland ordered. “Why would you think that bruising was significant when the ME mentions he had a known allergy to peanuts and the bruising is in the shape of a peanut. The death was ruled accidental.”

Sam nodded his head, reluctant to continue, but loyalty demanded he do so. “He didn’t find a peanut in his body anywhere.”

Kadan leaned forward. “But it’s possible that when he was choking he coughed it out.”

“I’m just speculating that maybe he didn’t eat a peanut,” Sam persisted, hating himself. This was far more difficult than he’d thought it would be. “The woman who lunched with him said he didn’t eat anything with peanuts. He knew he had an allergy. It’s just a thought.”

“You’ve got a point,” Nico said. “That bothered me as well.”

“His airway could have swollen closed,” Gator said. “With the bruisin’, it would have been natural and there were signs of swellin’. All the witnesses said he was chokin’.”

“But the ME said there were inconsistencies. Anaphylactic shock usually isn’t quite so fast. His EpiPen was nowhere on his body and his colleagues said he always carried one,” Kadan said, his voice thoughtful.