Talon: Combat Tracking Team (A Breed Apart) (49 page)

“So, that’s it? You walk out of here. What happens to Aspen? Someone took her.”

“Then you should stop arguing with me and find her. You have the resources.”

“You and I both know finding her is next to impossible without a lead.”

Cardinal steadied his breathing. Was the general implying he didn’t know where she was? That…surely he knew.

Wait. Of course he knew. Had to. “You’re baiting me.”

Darkness worked wonders to conceal facial expressions. The general hadn’t had as much experience as he in detecting silent signals.

“She needs you, Cardinal.”

“No.” His heart ka-thumped through the next few beats. “She needs to be saved so she can live a long, happy, healthy life.”

“Word has it, you and her hit it off.”

He would
not
be goaded.

“Real well. In fact, someone suggested you made that marriage legitimate.”

Guilt harangued him. He hadn’t crossed ethical lines. Perhaps succumbed to weakness. Made a foolish error in judgment. Let his feelings get the better of him. “You’re wasting breath and time, General.”

Cardinal walked out of the room, across the lip, and down the stairs. He spotted Hastings.

“Dane.”

He held up a hand, and apparently more of his foul mood showed in his body language because that slight signal was enough to stay her response.

“What’s he doing?” someone—it sounded like Candyman—asked.

“Leaving.” Burnett stomped down the steps.

“Hey!” Candyman shouted.

Cardinal kept walking. Reached the door.

Boots thudded behind him.

“Hey, you sorry piece of crap!”

The door squeaked closed. Cardinal let it. Let it shut on the guilt they wanted to heap on him. The weight that oppressed him.

Thap!

“You sorry son of a—”

Cardinal glanced back.

A fist collided with his jaw.

He stumbled back, but there was no fight left in him. Not after what happened. Not after feeling disembodied as he watched the demon of a man within him take over. The one that was so like his father he couldn’t tell the difference between that man and the colonel.

Chin up, he swiped the blood from his lip. Eyed Candyman.

“She loved you!” Candyman’s tension radiated a nuclear yield. “She gave you everything, trusted you. And this—
this!
—is how you repay that?”

Cardinal took the blow. Turned. Started walking.

“I see. It’s only a game to you. You’re a spook, so you screw people over and move on, is that it? All Aspen was to you was a warm body?”

The words twisted around his heart. He slowed. Hung his head.

“You’re unbelievable. Walking away knowing full well she could be dead by nightfall.”

“She won’t be dead.”

“That’s right. Because she’s already dead, thanks to you.”

Cardinal stretched his neck. “If they wanted her dead, they wouldn’t have kidnapped her. She won’t die.”

“That’s right. She won’t die,” Candyman said, his nostrils flaring, “because some of us actually care about her. Some of us are willing to fight to the death for one of our own. Because some of us didn’t play a beautiful, innocent woman’s affections.”

“I did not play her.”
Can’t go there…can’t…open…that…

Angel headstone. Glass shattering. Screaming. Flash. Bright light. The sickeningly hollow flap of her clothes as she fell to her death.

Cardinal flinched. Clenched his eyes. He raised a hand as if to ward off the jumbled thoughts.
What’s happening to me?

“Hey.” Candyman’s voice changed. “You okay, man?”

Cardinal met the ironclad gaze of the special operator. A man who’d been an ally. Cardinal glanced down the road where he’d seen that vehicle tear off with Aspen inside. He’d known then, hadn’t he, what happened? Who took her? Even though he unleashed on Austin, he
knew
. The beating he’d given her brother was pent-up rage. He’d been found. He’d been cornered. Trapped. And they had bait.

“Look, whatever spooked you, I get it. But she needs you. And right now, you’re the only one primed to do this.” Candyman’s left eyebrow dipped. “In fact, by that look on your face, I’m thinking you have a good guess about what happened.”

Cardinal said nothing. Didn’t want to give voice to the demons rising up from the past to consume him, his life, his soul.

“Who?” Candyman stood a couple inches shorter, but the man measured feet above the rest in courage. “Who did this?”

The second Cardinal’s mind started to answer, he shut it down. He rerouted his thoughts to a solution. “Take the dog. Go to Russia.” With that, he started walking.

“Dude, in case you missed the news flash, Russia’s big. That’s not helpful. And by the time we figure out where to go, she could be dead.”

At the gate, Cardinal muttered, “She won’t be dead.”

Because he wants me to come for her
. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t go there, literally or mentally. Could
not
enter that psychological war zone again. He’d escaped it twenty years ago.

“Dude! Seriously?”

Cardinal turned. Eyed Candyman across the grounds. “If you want to find Aspen, find General Tselekova.”

Burnett stepped into the open. Hands stuffed in his pant pockets, he frowned. A frown that said a lot. Said he knew what was happening.

Arms wide, Candyman shrugged. “Who the heck is that?”

“My father.”

    Thirty-Five    

W
arbling plucked at her hearing. A steady vibration wormed through her being, each microbounce jarring her further awake. Her head thundered. She swallowed, and her ears screamed in protest. She winced and curled in—at least tried. Only then did she realize she couldn’t move her arms. She tugged but felt something holding her by the wrists.

She tried to open her eyes…but as she lifted from the fog of sleep, she felt her whole body rising.
What on earth?
Her eyes—she couldn’t see. No…no, something covered her eyes. A dart of fear mingled with adrenaline as she remembered being in the safe house. Remembered her brother and Dane—Cardinal—going at it. The explosion…then…

Dizzying images. Being…

She grimaced as pain smacked her head.

Why couldn’t she remember it clearly? Crazy wobbly. The world just seemed to be on fast-forward and reverse combined, images and memories shifting and colliding.

Being flung around.

She shook her head. If something was tied around her eyes, could she get it off? Aspen tried rubbing her head against whatever it was. Not the floor. Too soft. The swish of the fabric spoke of leather or vinyl.

Her shoulder dug into something. Ached.

Again, she dragged her head over the material. Lifted and used her shoulder to—Light peeked in under the mask.

Aspen tensed and stilled.

Airplane. She knew that much instantly. How did she get on an airplane? And why?

Voices skidded into the cabin. Hurried footsteps.

Aspen dropped back, her stomach lurching at the sight of a man in black looming over her. He bent closer, a needle in his hand.

“No.” Her voice faded out as she slumped back, feeling a strange warmth spiraling through her arm. Her muscles went limp. Again, her head swam in that thick ocean of confusion.

“Sir, I think you need to hear this.”

Lance looked across the room where Hastings had been interrogating the previously unconscious man for information. Two hours. He’d been in country for two hours, and things had gone south in a handbasket. He hoisted himself off the chair and lumbered over to the room. It took every effort of mental energy not to just turn around and go home. He didn’t have that luxury.

Neither did Cardinal, but he’d left. Curse that man! Handling him was like trying to contain a fire with your bare hands. He’d known that for years. But he’d been willing to put in the hours, the exhaustion, the aggravation. And it’d paid off. Until today.

As he crossed the room, Lance spotted Timbrel. She’d been working Candyman down for the last twenty minutes since Cardinal had beaten the path of least resistance out of here.

Lance entered the room.

Hastings stood beside the man handcuffed to a pipe that held no function other than being convenient for interrogations.

“My name,” the man began, his face a little bloodied, “is Austin Courtland.”

“Well crap.” Lance wanted to curse. “You’re an enemy of the state, Mr. Courtland.”

“No, sir. I’m its patriot.”

“Do tell, and while you’re telling, explain why you no longer look like Austin Courtland. Ya know what? On second thought, I don’t care.”

“I went off the grid because I came upon the operation to hide the yellowcake. I couldn’t ascertain who was involved and who wasn’t, so I had to wait it out.”

“And that took you eight months?”

“Yes, sir. But…the woman—”

“What woman?”

“My girlfriend—well, I thought she was. Discovered a couple of days ago that she’s a Russian operative.”

Lance muttered his mom’s Catholic oaths. “Russian, so that’s where you got those thugs that hit my men?”

Courtland stared hard. “Yes, sir.”

“That is some seriously bad news, Courtland.”

He gave a slow, contemplative nod. “And now, they have my sister.”

Unswayed by the man’s sudden surge of patriotism and familial duty, Lance shook his head. “Don’t tell me what I already know. You left your mentor and handler in the lurch. You abandoned protocol. That tells me I can’t trust you—”