A Cowboy's Home (2 page)

“Suddenly there are rules? What happened to a
free
license to keep the country
safe?” Justin asked.

“You fucked that
up
as soon as
you started on your forays into revenge?”

“As well as getting the job done. I saved
lives. No one knew what we’d done. We’re heroes, right?”

Saunders looked uneasy. “Clarke won’t like
this—Webb down, you gone rogue. You know what will happen. He’ll
ask me to deal with this before it all goes to shit. No one can
know what we do.”

“Then explain to me why I shouldn’t take you
out now, before you order me killed?
It
seems
to me that without you doing whatever Clarke tells
you, I’ll be a hell of a lot safer.”

Saunders must have read the intent in
Justin’s eyes because he whimpered and crab-walked back to the
wall, one hand in front of him. “Please,” he begged. “Don’t kill
me.”

Justin grimaced. “Jesus, Saunders, I’m not
going to kill you.” He noticed a lot of tiny details at that
moment: Webb’s blood spreading to touch his foot, the scent of
death, the way Saunders had a calculating look in his eye even when
cowering
—he probably had already
called Rob for backup.

The team had made Justin into a weapon, and
he’d been the good soldier, every minute of his day fueled by
anger. He’d done everything to keep his country safe, everything to
keep his family and friends from being hurt.

And in the middle of that he’d hunted down
four out of the five who’d
hurt
him and killed Adam, dealt with the collateral damage, boxed away
the fallout, and finally he had Saunders—the man who had taken the
hate in Justin’s heart and turned him into a killer—begging for his
life.

“What will you do?” Saunders asked, his chest
heaving, his face bloodless.

Justin had to think. He didn’t know what he
was going to do.
He
wanted to go
home, but his head told him that wasn’t right. His heart, however,
demanded that he explain, see his family. But that would put them
in danger.

Webb was dead.
Saunders crouched
in front of him, and Rob? Who the hell
knew where Rob was. Last Justin knew, Rob had finished the job in
the Carolinas. They were an elite team: him, Rob, and Webb the
blunt weapons, and Saunders the planner, and above them Clarke, who
sat at his cozy Pentagon desk deciding on the order of people’s
lives. Who knew who was above that and how far it went?

Justin had never asked, had signed up wholly
to the concept that with terrorists on US soil, sometimes corners
had to be cut to ensure their country’s citizens were safe. He cast
a look at Webb, and something like remorse washed over him.

“If you kill me, Rob will have no choice but
to take you out before you kill him.”

Justin chuckled
darkly
as he focused back in on Saunders. “I know my
place, and I’ll eat a bullet before Rob has to kill me and my part
in this is over. But you… if I let you live, what does that make
me?”

Saunders looked desperate.
“Compassionate?”

He kicked out at Justin, caught his knee, and
Justin stumbled backward. Everything happened in slow motion:
Justin pivoted to get his balance and Saunders reached for an ankle
holster, pulling a gun, his movement sharp and desperate. He shot,
but Justin had a grip on his arm and the bullet went wide.

“Stop it!” Justin ordered. “I don’t want to
kill you—”

“Fuck you!” Saunders shouted and yanked at
Justin, lifting the small pistol until it was aimed right at
Justin.

Justin acted on instinct. He didn’t have a
clear shot as he let his weight shift, falling back as he pulled
the trigger. The angle was acute and the bullet ended up off-center
in Saunders’s forehead.

Saunders was dead before his body hit the
floor.

For a few seconds, Justin stared down at the
man, guilt and adrenaline like acid inside him.

“Jesus,” he muttered. He waited for
guilt
to win, but common sense
shoved it out of the way.

He pushed his weapon into his jeans at the
base of his spine and scanned the empty warehouse. The place was
familiar to him, and he pushed open the first door with a rusting
Staff sign, stumbling down corridors until he found the keypad,
stopping to catch his breath. The minute he attempted entry, Clarke
would know.

He imagined the interior, the steel
framework, the desk, and the computer.

After quickly keying in the code and opening
the door, he crossed to the office, pushed in the memory stick from
his pocket, thankful it hadn’t been smashed in the fight. He
dragged everything he could find on the PC onto it. Then he pulled
down the container of C4, flipped the catch, packed the explosive
around the room, set the timer, and gave himself just enough time
to get away.

He needed to run, so he pressed his shirt to
the wound in his leg, dragged the belt from his jeans, and used it
to keep the shirt in place. Where it had been numb, there was
fire
in his leg, and he was pretty
much fucked if he didn’t get the bullet out soon. He was halfway
across the interior of the warehouse when he heard the single
word.

“Cowboy.”

Justin stopped. His hand automatically went
for his weapon, but it was only Rob, using the ridiculous nickname
that had been coined over one tequila too many.

Rob, the one trained killer who knew Justin
way too well.

Justin didn’t even bother to take out his
gun. If Rob were here to kill him, then he would have been dead
already.

He turned. Rob had his weapon in his hand,
but held loose at his side, not aimed at him. “Rob.”

“You’re bleeding.” Rob’s tone was steady,
dispassionate;
no empathy in his
expression or in his flat tone
.

Justin looked down at his jeans, at the tear
in them and the damage the bullet had wrought, at the blood soaking
into denim. “Flesh wound,” he dismissed, even though it burned like
hell.

That raised a dark chuckle. “That’s what you
said in Vancouver, remember? You nearly fucking died.”

Justin forced his hands into his pockets. He
didn’t want a walk down a shared memory lane of undercover jobs.
“I’m okay.”

Rob tilted his head to the warehouse. “What
did you do?”

Justin shrugged. “What I had to do.”

Rob closed his eyes briefly. “Shit, Justin.
Who?”

“Saunders, Webb.”

“Both of them?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Why?”

He wasn’t going to explain that it had been
Saunders who shot Webb; the technicalities weren’t necessary.
Saunders and Webb were dead: the boss, the enforcer… and that just
left him and Rob. He couldn’t even think about the pencil pusher
above them, Clarke wasn’t
important
.

So, what should he say?
I killed them
because they fought back, because they carried on lying? Because
they destroyed me, made me into something I was never meant to
be?

He kept those words to himself. “It was
me or them
,” he said instead.

Rob winced. “And just us now.”

“And Clarke, and whoever he reports to,”
Justin reminded him.

They’d had this conversation before,
wondering how a unit like theirs could survive without someone
above Clarke calling the shots.

“There’ll be a price on you now. Whoever the
fuck it is, they’ll say you’ve gone rogue, and send me to kill you
for what you did. You know too much.”

Justin stepped closer to the man he loosely
called friend. “You’re a liability as much as I am. Come with me.
We can find somewhere, anywhere, and be something else.”

“Like what? This isn’t some happy-ever-after
scenario. We’re trained killers, Justin. We don’t know any
different.”

Justin held himself steady, pushing away the
insistent press of dizziness. “We could be something else.”

Rob laughed, and when he moved, it was to
holster his weapon. Then he looked at Justin with deliberation in
his icy green gaze. “You’d better hide well,” he said, and regret
flashed in his eyes.

Justin nodded. “I’m done.”

Rob shook his head. “No you’re not; you still
have one more on your revenge list. I know you.”

The list that Rob spoke of, the men who had
hurt him and killed Adam, named five men—and four were dead. Only
one more left to cross off. But his imperative to kill, that Adam
was dead, was a lie. So, did that mean Justin had been wrong to end
those responsible for Adam’s death? Even if he wanted to hurt them
for what they’d done to him? Or, if they wanted to hurt others? A
tiny amount of uncertainty pushed its way into his consideration,
but it wasn’t enough for him to stop.

“One more.” He didn’t drop his gaze from
Rob’s.

“You need to leave that list alone, Cowboy.
It’s going to be the end of you.” Rob sighed heavily. “Clarke will
send me to take you down after what you’ve done here. What you
know, what we’ve done, we could take down the White House.”

“I took an oath….”

“But you’d be running for your life, and I
know you as well as you know me. I’ll find you. Don’t make me do
this.”

“Just give me some time.” Justin thought of
the memory stick in his pocket, all the information he’d gathered
about the fifth man on his revenge list.

“Hell, I don’t know how much time I can stall
this.”

“I’ll do what needs to be done, and I’ll
disappear.”

Rob scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked
more than troubled, horrified maybe, almost certainly resigned.
“Shit, Justin, this…. You have to drop this, go somewhere I can’t
find you.” He shook his head. “Look, leave it, yeah? They’ll know
what you’re doing. They’ll send me to track you down. Don’t make me
kill you.”

Justin stepped closer, placing a palm on the
flat of Rob’s chest. “I won’t make you do it.” He injected some of
the familiar cockiness into his voice. “You’re my friend, Rob, as
much as we can be in this fucked-up shit.”

“Then just hide, don’t let me find you.”

“Even if you find me, I’ll make sure to take
myself out. I won’t let you have that on your conscience.”

Sadness replaced the horror. “Fuck, what did
they do to us?”

Justin wished he had an answer. Wordlessly he
turned and walked away.

In a sick, twisted way, Rob was the
definition of his family, and what Justin had just done had made
Rob his enemy.

It’s not like I deserve family.

He made it to his car, not even the noise of
the explosion making him falter. With determination, and staying
under the speed limit, he made it away from the city. Heading south
he switched cars twice to older models he could hot-wire, avoiding
cameras as much as he could.

He only stopped when his ability to focus
began to fade. His head hurt, his thigh burned, and something was
seriously wrong. He was nauseous and dizzy, and wasn’t going to
make it much farther.

He wiped the steering wheel clean of the
blood and his prints. Any CSI worth their salt would still find DNA
in the car, and they would have all the information they needed for
a profile, but the man who matched it wasn’t even alive.

Because Justin Allens had died when he was
sixteen, and the man he’d become overnight was black ops, hidden so
deep he wasn’t even sure he knew who he was anymore.

He closed his eyes as he stood beside the
car. He’d driven south by instinct, pulled off the road at a lane
that eventually led up into the mountains. Somehow his head told
him the place would be safe until the fever broke.

Or until it didn’t.

Twenty miles west of here was where the
Crooked Tree land started. The bleeding had stopped, but the pain
had reached the point where he couldn’t breathe or move without
cursing. The agony in his head was a band of fire, and his thoughts
were a
muddle
of hell and hurt.
He’d been slammed him so hard against the wall he likely had a
concussion, and it was a miracle he’d driven that far in one
piece.

Unless he went to a hospital and got some
treatment for the leg wound, he could just bleed out, slowly and
agonizingly, his brain swollen and frying in his head.

Maybe from here he could get to Crooked Tree.
He crouched with difficulty and cursing to dig at the dirt, holding
enough in his hand so he could feel its coldness, smell the dark
loam. This was Montana soil, and dying here would work.

He glanced up and down the road. Who would
find him? A soccer mom with kids? A man on his way to work? A bus
driver minding his own business?

Justin didn’t have a choice. He pulled out
his knife and tore at the jeans, sweat beading on his brow. He
couldn’t see a fucking thing. The entry hole was small, but who the
hell knew how far the bullet had gone?

He ran the blade of the knife across the
wound, blood seeped, and he swallowed a scream. Blackness
threatened, and he counted in his head, focusing on the numbers
until he could look down at the wound.

He poked with the knife, finally finding the
bullet, and as if he was doing it to someone else, he dug out the
piece of metal, screaming in the safety of his car at the pain. His
vision blurred but he was aware enough to ask was the bullet he’d
removed intact? Had he got it all?
I need to check.

He tightened the belt another notch; the
wound was red and raw, but wasn’t bleeding so much. Thank God it
appeared no arteries were involved, but there was enough blood that
made him think he wasn’t going to make it out alive from this
situation. Hell, what did it matter anyway? Even if he managed to
get to a hospital, he’d be a dead man as soon as Rob got the order
to take him out.

What had happened back at the warehouse was
the beginning of the end for the Unit, and he’d broken every
unspoken rule. He was dying either way, but he regretted that he
may not live to kill the last man on his revenge list. Somehow he
needed to find peace with that. He’d wanted so badly to make his
revenge complete.