Talon: Combat Tracking Team (A Breed Apart) (48 page)

He’s blaming me for Aspen
.

“I didn’t do this.” Austin stepped between the two men who had shifted from guarding him to protecting his life. Not that he’d put his life in their hands. He wouldn’t. Wouldn’t trust anyone on that level. Never again. He held up his hands.

“Where is she?” Cardinal demanded. Two men hooked Cardinal’s arms, hauling him backward. He wrestled against them, seemingly possessing supernatural strength because he came forward several paces. “Tell me!”

With the tangling and wrangling of arms and legs, it looked like an octopus writhing before him.

The Glock slid across the room.

Grab it
. Maybe he should.

A brunette lifted it from the ground and stuffed it at the small of her back.

Austin let himself draw in a breath, steadying his nerves. This man had mentored him. Taught him so much. Then betrayed him. “Even if I knew,” Austin injected as much disdain into his voice as possible, “I wouldn’t trust
you
with that information.”

Though Cardinal tried to wrest himself from the two men, their restraint held. Cardinal again attempted to jerk free before slumping back, looking defeated, as he said, “The gun’s gone. What can I do?”

Watterboy gave a nod.

“No!” Austin’s shout mixed with another. Apparently someone else saw what Austin did—Cardinal’s body language belied the fury roiling off the man. Loose, Cardinal would kill him.

Seconds took on supernatural length. Cardinal shot forward. His foot swept Austin off his feet. He landed with a thud. Cardinal was on top of him, pinning him with his knee. His fist rammed like a ball-peen hammer. Right into Austin’s face.

Shouts and a series of pops erupted.

Lance hesitated, glancing back to Hastings, whose eyes had widened. He shoved himself through the building. Through one door. Another. He burst into the safe house, drenched in sweat after the quick ride out from FOB Kendall.

Two men wrestled a third beneath them. Legs and arms thrashed.

Another was laid out cold, blood snaking out his nose and down his neck.

Scrip dug through a sack on the floor.

Suddenly, the writhing mass of bodies stilled.

“Get off me,” came a familiar voice.

“Not liking that idea,” Candyman countered.

“What in Sam Hill is going on?” Lance demanded.

Candyman and Watterboy shifted toward Lance. Slowly eased off the third—Cardinal. The man pushed back on his legs and stayed on the floor. Lance never fully realized how big that guy’s shoulders and fists were.

“Cardinal?” He hated that name.

The man pushed onto his haunches. Then stood.

Watterboy and Candyman stepped back, and Lance noticed they seemed to be guarding the body on the floor. Watterboy’s gaze skidded to Lance, and he gave a nod. “General.”

“What’s going on?” He sounded like a broken record, but considering nobody had answered, he didn’t care.

Cardinal swung toward him.

Instinct pushed Lance back a step. He bumped into someone.

Hastings muttered an apology as she shifted aside, her gaze locked on Cardinal. “Da—Markoski?”

Death lurked in that man’s eyes as he stalked out of the room.

Lance took a step forward. “Hey—”

Cardinal held up a staying hand but didn’t look back. “No.” He hung his head. Took a breath then walked out.

Silence drenched the tension that seeped through every pore and crack in this crumbling former storefront. Hastings started after Dane.

“Leave him, Lieutenant.” Lance had never seen that look on Cardinal before. And he had this feeling the guy just needed some time. “Watters—fill me in.”

The man nodded, glanced to the man on the floor, then crossed the room. “We got hit not ten minutes ago. That guy showed up with a team, Russians. They put us in lockdown, while he came in here with Aspen and Markoski.”

“Lockdown?”

Candyman muttered something as he paced.

“Yes, sir. They held us at gunpoint, but thanks to Scrip”—he nodded to the man on the floor, who now slumped against the wall—“we subdued the captors and blew out the door. When we got in here, he”—another indication, this time to the unconscious man—“had Aspen and Dane at gunpoint. Two minutes later, someone lobbed a flash-bang in here. By the time we were able to sort out what happened, Aspen was gone.”

“Gone?”

Watters’s expression tightened. “They took her. Markoski sprinted after them. Candyman went with him. Me and the team tried to hold the other guy down—we don’t know who he is.”

Lance strode over to the man and squatted in front of him. “Russian, huh? And nobody’s ID’d him?”

“No, but Markoski came back in—”

“Took my Glock right out of my holster.” Candyman grunted. Disgust shaded his features. “Did it so fast, I didn’t know till I saw the gun in his hand.”

“He came storming in here and was about to kill that guy.”

“If Markoski says he’s a threat, then he is. Hogtie the heck out of him.” Lance straightened, his mind racing as Candyman and Rocket went to work zip-tying the man. “Pops, get on the horn. Notify the embassy that an American has been kidnapped. Leak her information to everyone.”

He stormed out of the room, biting back curses. Hating that he didn’t have a single Dr Pepper handy.

Hastings stood in the open area at the back, eyes on the upper level.

Lance took the cue and headed toward the stairs that lacked a banister or other support.

Behind him he heard steps. Over his shoulder he saw Hastings and Smith trailing him. “Stay with the team. Get a game plan. Wake that man up and find out who he is.”

Hastings paused, her gaze tracing the upper level again. He’d have to be blind not to know she was smitten with Cardinal.

“Go on. Get it done, Lieutenant.”

With a reluctant nod, she turned.

As he continued up, he wondered if the entire thing would collapse without a guardrail. Plaster dribbled. Three doors presented themselves. He pushed open the first door. His body swayed and swooped—straight toward the ten-foot drop. He grabbed the doorjamb and yanked himself back. His heart dropped with the gaping emptiness. Only half the room still existed. The other half, blown out with whatever relegated this building to abandonment. Hauling his stomach and courage back, he eased the door closed. Whispered a prayer of thanks to his maker.

As he made his way along the narrow ledge, he tried to avoid looking to the right, the drop to the lower level. The next door, he decided, sat too close to the previous one, so it most likely had its space missing, too. Lance tried the last door. Darkness spread its venom. He scanned the black void. Nothing.

As he turned away, a shape caught his eye.

He whipped back to it. Strained against the darkness to figure out what snagged his attention. There, in the corner…“Cardinal?”

Whispering wind was the only response.

Lance stepped in, embraced by the shadows as his eyes slowly adjusted. Sure enough. There sat Cardinal. In the corner, each shoulder blade pressed against an adjacent wall. Legs bent and pulled close, he rested his arms over his knees.

This wasn’t the time for booming sarcasm. Nor for biting wit. What he’d seen down there, Cardinal completely unglued, required delicate and precise wording. An arrow to aim right at this man’s steel-barricaded heart. Cardinal would like Lance to believe he didn’t have a heart so he couldn’t do any damage. But Lance held the firm belief that
every
person had a soft spot. The trick was finding it.

“I want you to know,” Lance said, treading a thin line, “whatever’s going on”—his mind ping-ponged over the facts, over the past, over his knowledge of this über-skilled operative he’d recruited right out from under the nose of the Russians, right out from under the man’s father— “I’ve got your back.”

“It is a nice sentiment but unrealistic and therefore false.” Cardinal’s sigh carried heavily through the dank room. “And if you knew the price of that statement, you’d backpedal so fast…”

There was entirely too much truth in that statement. Already, thanks to Payne, Cardinal’s role within DIA hung in jeopardy. Lance’s own position there could be compromised.

“I know what the price is,” Lance said. “I also know you’re probably the single best asset we’ve ever had.”

“Again, nice sentiment, but it’s not true.”

“What’s going on, Cardinal?” Ominous quiet rankled Lance. Something huge had shifted in the man before him. Left Lance with a bad taste in his mouth. He knew the whole marriage thing to Aspen would push the man, but he’d really thought it would make him work better, harder. Had he been wrong? “If this is about the marriage—”

“When you walk out of here, you’ll never see me again.”

    Thirty-Four    

C
ardinal never thought this day would come. But that was foolhardy. Expecting to live this life—to actually have a life. To think his father would never find him…

“Cardinal—you can’t.”

“I can.” He drew himself off the ground. “I should have done this a dozen years ago.”

“Done what?” An edge had crept into Burnett’s voice that marked him as angry.

“Vanished. Disappeared.”

“You did that. Became Cardinal.”

The man was trying to talk him out of it. “Good-bye, General.”