The Edge of Courage (Red Team) (29 page)

He could feel the burned skin and blood tightening on him. He shut his eyes. It wasn’t real, that phantom flesh. Mandy had said so. It was a memory, all that had remained of his son after Kadisha’s house blew up. It wasn’t on him now. He looked over the shoulders of the men tending to him. She was there, watching the proceedings, her face taut with anxiety.

He took a deep breath to calm himself before motioning her over to hold his hand. The paramedics looked from her to Rocco. In a small town like Wolf Creek Bend, everybody knew everybody and who their significant others were. He bet there’d been speculation in town about the two of them, especially after his freakout at the diner. And now this explosion. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her cold knuckles, making sure there was no doubt to any observers that she belonged to him.

“Sir, several of these cuts are going to need stitches. And you may have a concussion. We’re going to take you down to the hospital in Cheyenne.”

“No. You’ll put butterflies on them, and we’ll call it good.” He felt a growing pressure to get to Blade’s. He had to have seen the explosion, even from his place. If he were able, he’d be here. Something had happened to him. Rocco couldn’t screw around with little cuts when Blade was in trouble.

The two paramedics looked at each other and shook their heads. “If you won’t go to the hospital, we’ve got Doc Reynolds on call. At least let us take you into town to have him take care of these cuts, check you out more thoroughly.”

Before he could refuse any attention, Mandy tightened her hold on him. “Rocco Silas, you go see the doctor and let him fix you up.”

“Fine. But you’re staying here. I’ll get Kelan to take me. I don’t need to be driven in an ambulance.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You’re going to stay here, Em. I don’t know what’s going on, but shit’s hit the fan. I need you to stay here with Kit. It’s the only way I’ll go the clinic.”

“You’re hurt. I should be with you.”

He looked at the paramedics, who were observing their conversation with rapt attention. “Please,” he told her. “Stay with Kit.” He nodded to the paramedics as he grabbed his shredded T-shirt and stood up. He took hold of Mandy’s arm and led her back to her brother.

Kit and Owen were talking to a couple of men—one was the police chief. Rocco assumed the other was the fire chief. “Sheriff,” he nodded to Tate. “I told you there was more going on here than common pranks.”

“And I asked you for more information,” the sheriff grumbled. “If you thought this was a matter for Homeland Security, you should have said something.”

“I had nothing more to go on than a gut feeling. I guess we all are on the same page now.”

“Rocco warned you?” Kit growled as he glared at the sheriff. “You should have listened to my man.”

“There was nothing I could do. I had no facts to work with. Besides, your man here was having psychotic episodes. Didn’t exactly help his credibility.”

“Yeah, well, now you got a dead man and a whole hive of terrorists,” Owen told him. “I want this kept quiet. If anyone asks, it was a prank gone wrong and it’s under investigation. I don’t want OSHA up here asking questions. And I don’t want to alert the townspeople.”

Rocco pulled Kit aside. “Kelan’s taking me to see the doc in town to get a few stitches. Then he and I are going to Blade’s. Something’s wrong. He should have been back by now. Keep Mandy with you. The bastards are playing a game—she may be their next target.”

Chapter 18

Kelan shut off the SUV’s lights well before he and Rocco reached the turnoff to Blade’s ranch. They drove slowly up the long dirt road, their path marked only by the moonlight. Kelan cut the engine at the last hill before the house. They closed their doors quietly, knowing how sound traveled in the night’s cool, thin air. They made a circuit of the main house, keeping to whatever slim cover they could find—fence lines, shadows of outbuildings, and a few scraggly bushes.

The house was completely dark. Blade’s car was parked by the front steps. Rocco swallowed an oath, wishing he’d gotten over here sooner. What if someone had gotten to Blade?

He and Kelan made a fast dash toward the back door. It was unlocked. Kelan wore night vision goggles, so he went in first. Room by room, they cleared the main floor. Blade’s place was a huge, sprawling log home. Rocco had never been there before—he was a little surprised at how Blade hated the property. It was magnificent. They split up, Kelan taking the basement, Rocco the upstairs. The house was empty.

So where was Blade? Had he gone somewhere with the Jacksons? Rocco went back to the den, which was the only room where anything was out of place. He flipped on the overhead light and studied the room. A big mahogany desk had been swiped clear, everything plowed to the floor. A broken lamp lay in shattered pieces on the floor.

Rocco stared at the debris, trying to make sense of it. The papers were displaced but not torn or wrinkled. There hadn’t been a fight.

“Anything?” Kelan asked as he entered the room, his M16 shouldered, and his night vision goggles sitting on his forehead.

“Nothing. Just the mess in here. What happened, do you suppose?”

“It’s hard to say. You tried his cell?”

“Several times.” Rocco began walking around the room, trying to see what else might have been disturbed, looking for a clue, something that could lead him to Blade.

Kelan cursed and held up a crushed cell phone. Rocco shoved the door open farther, his movement fast and angry. The panel hit something on the floor, rolling it toward the shadows against the wall. Rocco bent down and picked up a small syringe. He showed it to Kelan. “They’ve got Blade.”

“Looks like they wanted him alive,” Kelan observed. But neither of them voiced the unthinkable—how long would he be allowed to live?

“Found the mutts,” Val said as two excited dogs swarmed Mandy. She knelt and hugged them both, then ran her hands over them, checking for wounds. They were uninjured but still nervously trembling.

Kit’s phone rang. “Mandy, take them up to the house. Val, stay with her.” He looked at his screen and saw that it was Rocco. “Go,” he opened the conversation.

“Blade’s been taken,” Rocco’s said on the other end of the line. “His car is here but no sign of him or his caretakers. They tranq’d him, Kit.”

Kit cursed even as another call broke into their conversation. “Get back over here. Owen’s called a meeting.” He ended the call with Rocco and accepted the new one from an unknown caller. “Bolanger here.”

“Hello, my friend.”

Kit snapped his fingers to get Val’s attention as he was climbing the porch steps. Kit pointed to his phone. Val pulled Mandy into the house, in a hurry to get Max to trace the call. “Why would you think we were friends, Amir?” Kit asked as he started walking toward the house.

“You may not like me, Mr. Bolanger, but I am indeed your only friend at this point. How do you like the game we are playing? Rather exciting, don’t you think?”

“You owe me a new equestrian center. But don’t get in a dither about coming up with the money to pay restitution. I’ll be taking it out of your hide. Personally.”

“Tsk-tsk. You really shouldn’t be making threats you can’t see to completion. You cannot fight me. I am terror. I am all around you. You’ll never know what I’ll do next. One by one, each of your friends and family members will die, in most horrible ways. I will crush their dreams first, then fill them with terror as you filled my people with fear, then kill them.”

“What do you want with Ty?”

“I just told you. Are you not listening to me, Mr. Bolanger? Your friend, Mr. Bladen, will see his death coming but will be able to do nothing about it. Do you remember the pit your friend Mr. Silas was in? We have a similar one for Mr. Bladen. Unfortunately, there aren’t any scorpions in Wyoming, but I found rattlesnakes were a fair trade. There are so many of them. He will die slowly, painfully, as his body shuts down, knowing all the while that you will never find him. Such is the will of Allah.”

Kit made it to the basement where Val gave him a thumbs-up sign. “Don’t make this about religion, Amir,” Kit scoffed. “Nor is it about an eye-for-an-eye retribution. If it were, you would be building roads for us and schools and hospitals, finding jobs for our unemployed citizens, as we did for your people in Afghanistan.”

“You did not improve my country. You made every man stand between two lines of guns—yours and the Taliban’s.”

“This is not a debate I’m gonna have with you, Amir. We both know your complaint with my men and me is that we crippled al Jahni’s main drug and arms trade route. For that, I will not apologize. I took you down there, and I’ll take you down here. And when I’m done with you, I’m going for al Jahni.” Kit dropped the call.

“The call originated in Jalalabad, Afghanistan,” Max told him.

“Impossible,” Kit growled. “We know Amir was in Denver two days ago. He’s bridging his call somehow.”

Owen replayed the recording of the phone call. Twice. Kit struggled to find meaning in the words Amir spoke. Sounded like Blade was in a pit. With rattlesnakes. In Wyoming. Was it man-made, as Rocco’s had been, or was it naturally occurring? He started pacing. What if Amir had mentioned it knowing they would go off chasing that lead? What if it took them in the opposite direction of where they needed to be looking?

“Pull up a topographical map of the area within a hundred mile radius of Blade’s home,” he ordered Max. “I want to know about all rock formations that might house crevices or holes or pits wide enough to dump a man deep enough that he can’t get out.”

“Hold up,” Owen called out. He shut off his phone and looked at Kit. “A vehicle registered to Dennis Jackson was just reported to have been in a roll-over accident near off Highway 130 not too far from here.”

“Were there any survivors? Any bodies?”

“No word on either yet.”

Kit sighed and swiped a hand over his eyes. He looked at the guys. “Greer, get over there. If they are alive, stick with them. Give me an update when you can. Max, concentrate on the area within a fifty mile circumference from the accident location.”

* * *

When Rocco and Kelan came back to the ranch, they both went their separate ways. Rocco knew Owen was waiting for a meeting, but he had to get rid of the dirt, ash and blood still clinging to him from the explosion. And, he needed a few minutes to process everything that had happened that night. Whatever the team wanted could wait until he cleaned up—or they could catch him up when he joined them.

The coffee pot was gurgling, filling the house with the rich scent of freshly brewed coffee. The dogs had returned and were happily chowing down their breakfast. Though dawn was only a faint hint on the eastern horizon, Mandy was already starting breakfast prep. He stood there, watching the woman he loved.

A strange sense of being beside himself, observing his life instead of living it, came over him. His present and his past had collided a few hours ago, and he wasn’t sure what remained of himself. Believing his son still lived was the only thing that kept him alive in the months following the explosion in Kadisha’s village. And now that he knew the truth, he realized he’d lived beyond that terrible event long enough to begin again, to heal, to start a new life.

A life he had no right to live.

He headed down the hallway before Mandy caught him watching her. He wasn’t ready to talk to her or anyone yet. Christ. He’d remembered what happened. All of it. And the freshness of it was like losing his family all over again.

In the shower, he bowed his head in the streams of the hot water. Revisiting the memories the night had unlocked, he forced himself to walk through the minutes before the explosion had destroyed Kadisha’s village. He saw again the panic that had women and town elders fleeing about, gathering their loved ones. Kadisha was helping them to hurry, bombs still strapped to her waist.

He thought of how much C-4 she wore, realizing it wouldn’t have been enough to wreak the destruction the explosion had caused. She’d said there were more bombs placed about the village. Whoever had set them wanted it to look as if an airstrike had hit the remote mountain town.

Rocco scrubbed his face, his hair, every inch of his body. The salt of his tears stung the cuts on his face as he thought about his son. Beautiful. Precocious. A child full of laughter and light. As a grandson of the region’s most powerful warlord, he’d been the darling of the village. He’d made a vow to himself that the taint of war would never darken his son’s spirit. His boy was born to stand in two worlds. Rocco had intended he would know and love not only his mother’s people, but his father’s as well.

Instead, he’d let the war snuff his boy’s life out.

Rocco shut off the water. He grabbed a towel and mopped his face, trying to compose himself. Now wasn’t the time to break down. His son was gone—he couldn’t undo the past. Terrorists were loose, Blade was missing, and Mandy and the team were still in danger. He had to stay present and on task. He could compartmentalize it, as he had all his feelings and desires and dreams for ten long fucking years. It was what he’d done when he’d let himself forget the truth of that day. But no matter what he told himself, that wound was raw and gaping, exposed as it was to the air and the light of day.

Stepping to the sink, Rocco made the mistake of catching his reflection in the mirror. He swiped at the steam and looked at the visage of a man he didn’t know. Tall, lean, gaunt, eyes filled with shadows, chin covered with a few weeks’ growth of beard—a beard he no longer needed now that he knew his son was dead.

That realization was heartbreaking. Paralyzing. He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. What was there left to him?

Nothing. Not a goddamned thing.

He reached into a cabinet and retrieved his shaving kit. His movements were angry and jerky as he slapped shaving cream on his face, sending white foam everywhere. He reached into his kit for his razor, but it caught in a bit of netting and wouldn’t come free. He yanked at the razor’s thin handle, knowing logically that wasn’t the way to free it but unable to stop himself. He yanked and yanked, flapping the kit around, emptying its contents in a noisy clatter across the counter, but still not freeing his razor.