Talon: Combat Tracking Team (A Breed Apart) (51 page)

“I do that all the time.”

Cardinal jerked to his feet, stunned to find a smelly beggar squatting a few feet from him. Scraggly beard matched scraggly hair. “Talking to myself, ya know? Or maybe talking to God when no one’s around. That way, I can ignore what I don’t want to hear.” A fisherman’s jacket hung on bony shoulders. A jacket? In this heat?

The man smiled, the moonlight catching a hopscotch pattern of teeth.

“Don’t worry, boy. I’m not going to hurt you.” He reached for a makeshift spit where a fish sparkled under the moon’s glow. “Say, can you hand me that plate?”

Cardinal frowned. “What pl—?”

A plate lay less than two feet from him.

Where did that come from?

“Couldja hurry?” The old man wagged his gnarly, dirty fingers. “It’s burning.”

Cardinal bent, retrieved the plate, and handed it to the homeless guy, then started to turn.

“You had dinner?” The man slid the fish from the spit and tugged the stick out. He patted himself down, each slap poofing a foul odor Cardinal’s way.

“Not hungry.” As if to defy him, his stomach growled. Loud.

The man cackled. “Sounds like your belly would disagree. C’mon.” He waved Cardinal back to himself. “Pop a squat. I won’t bite—and neither will this fella.” Another cackle. “Say, you got a knife?”

With an annoyed yet amused snort, Cardinal tugged his butterfly knife out, worked it open, then handed it over. Why he sat down, he didn’t know. Maybe it was the weariness. He just didn’t care anymore. And he was too tired to fight. Didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. With the guilt.

The old man gave him a piece of wood on which half the fish waited.

“You look like you could take a load off your mind.” The man chomped into the flesh.

Cardinal wondered for a second what it was like to chew with half your teeth missing.

“I knew this fella once, when I was younger.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And had my looks about me still. He could talk a horse dead and never say a word.” The man ate more fish, grinning as he did, and nodded toward Cardinal. “I’m thinking you’re like that fella.”

“Maybe he didn’t have anything to say.” The fish proved tasty. Cardinal finished it off in just a couple of bites.

“Where you come from, Lone Stranger?”

Cardinal bunched his shoulders. “Everywhere, I guess.”

The man laughed, lifted his leg, and slapped it. “If that ain’t a sailor’s answer, I don’t know what is. I come from just beyond the horizon.” His eyes snapped at him, keen and inquisitive. “So. Don’t mean to pry—well, yes I do, I guess. I overheard you say you can’t do it. Mind if I ask what that is?”

Cardinal looked out at the water.

“Eh, don’t mind me. I get up in people’s business and make ’em mad.” He waved a hand around the beach. “It’s why I’m out here.” He laughed. “Can’t help it if I care about people. You know? I mean, what else is there? People…and animals.”

“Chaos. Corruption. Evil.”

“You got the right of it there.” The man clucked his tongue. Ate the last of his fish. “I seen a lot of that in my time.” He shook his head.

Cardinal couldn’t help but notice how the man suddenly seemed weighted. Man, he could relate.

“But you know, I seen good, too.” The man nodded, his jaw jutted and lips pressed tight, almost as if he had no teeth at all now. “Sometimes, you have to look for it. Get out of where you are and look—really look for it.”

Good? The only good in his life had been…Aspen.

“Sometimes,” the man said, his voice bearing the burden of grief, “it gets taken from you.”

Shooting a look to the old man, Cardinal tried to ignore the sudden electric dart through his gut.

“Sometimes, we got choices to make when that happens. And sometimes, we make a choice that hurts.”

“The wrong choice,” Cardinal said.

The man scowled, his bushy eyebrows pulling together like a snowdrift over blue eyes. “Son, jus’ ’cause it hurts don’t make it wrong.” The man sniffled loudly then swiped a hand beneath his nose. “Takes a real man to fight that battle. Yes, sir.”

Cardinal’s stomach warmed. “Sometimes, a bigger battle is won by
not
fighting, not engaging the opponent.”

“Yep, you’re sure right.” The man shrugged in a way that told Cardinal there was more coming. Yet only the lapping of the nearby water whispered in the warm night.

The man had nearly stepped on Cardinal’s toes—metaphorically. He wouldn’t hand him a personal invitation.

“There was this man,” the beggar spoke, leaning closer and spiraling his stench over the area. It was strong. Almost spicy. “He’d stolen something from his brother. Pretty much the entire inheritance. Right out from under his brother’s nose.”

The man swiped his thumb under his nose. “Decades went by, and he finally wanted to return home. Felt he was supposed to. So he starts heading home.”

Something I won’t do
.

“He was so scared, he had his people go before him.”

The man must’ve been rich to send people home with him.

“And he was still so scared, he sent his wife ahead of him. And the children.” The man slapped his leg. “Ha! Can you imagine?”

“That’s a coward.”

Wise-beyond-their-years eyes came to him slowly. “Yeah, but he
went home.”

The words sailed over the hot night and corkscrewed past Cardinal’s every excuse, every defense, straight into his chest. Warmth spread. “I can’t go home.”

“That can’t sounds a lot like won’t, son.” The man poked his shoulder. “Sometimes, we make a choice that hurts.” He grinned his checkerboard grin. “But hurts heal when we face them. Leave them to fester, we have to chop off that limb or end up dying from the poison that infects our system.”

Heady over the man’s words, Cardinal felt a strange, alarming fear grip him. “Who are you?”

The man guffawed. “Shouldn’t you have asked me that before you ate that fish?” He clapped a hand on Cardinal’s shoulder. “Son, I think you know what you need to do.” He grunted and strained as he pushed to his feet, wobbling.

Cardinal helped him, coming to his own feet as he did.

“Now, I’d better be gettin’ back.”

“You have a home?”

Laughing, the man patted his jacket as if looking for something. “Nothin’ like a fresh North African catfish to fill the belly.”

Where were his manners? “Thanks.” Cardinal touched his stomach. “I think I needed that more than I realized.”

“Then finish it off.”

“I did.” Cardinal frowned when the man stared at him like he’d lost his mind then motioned with his arthritis-curled hand toward the wood. When Cardinal glanced at it, he was stumped to see several more bites. “Oh.” But…he’d eaten it all.

He looked up.

The beach stretched and curled around the bay. Empty.

    Thirty-Seven    

W
e need a game plan.”

“No. Really, Sherlock?”

Austin skated a heated look to the only female left on the team.

“Want to stow the sarcasm and actually contribute?”

“Hey.” Candyman stepped up, his broad chest puffed. “Ease up there, chief.”

“Let’s all bring the tension down.” Boots thudded across the open room as General Burnett joined them. “This entire thing stinks, but we’ve got to get a handle on it.” He turned to Brie Hastings, an attractive late-twenties lieutenant who had as much spit and fire as Aspen. “What’d you find out about Hendricks and Payne?”

“Nothing yet, sir.”

He wagged a meaty finger at her. “Keep working those channels—find Payne. He’s the key. He went somewhere. I want to know where.”

“Sorry,” Austin said, his anger getting the best of him again, “but the bigger concern here is Aspen. We have to find her. She’s not trained for this.”

“She’s stronger than you think,” Timbrel Hogan said. Condemnation and accusation formed her venom-laced words. “She grew a lot after you abandoned her. Figured out where her priorities were.” She smirked.

“And she found a good man.”

“Good?” Austin snapped. “He walked
out
on her and us!”

“Did he?” Hogan spat. “Or did he abandon dead weight, and right now he’s out there hunting down whatever idiot took her from him?”

Austin wanted to curse at her ignorance. “If you believe that, then you don’t know the first thing about the man who played my sister.”

Arms folded, Hogan glowered back. “I bet Aspen’s thinking the same thing about her twin brother right now.”

“All right, all right.” The big guy sidestepped in front of Hogan, facing her. His voice softened and quieted as he spoke with her, his words shielded from others in the room. The salve of his approach seemed to soothe her, calm her down.

“Hogan,” Burnett spoke up, “how’s Talon?”

“A basket case,” she said, once again nailing Austin with a glare. “His first handler pretty much screwed him up.”

“Look—”

Burnett slapped his hand against the table, ending the argument. “Can you get him back together?”

Hogan hesitated. “I…I don’t know. He’s pretty shot.”

“What about that vet you people use?”

“Khat?” Her voice pitched. “She’s in Texas!”

“Do we have time to get her over here?”

Hastings shook her head. “I think we should have something pinned down in the next hour or two. And if we get word on Payne, we have to leave immediately. The jet’s already on standby. We should be airborne within a couple of hours, at the latest.”

Burnett muttered something about a can of soda then scratched the back of his head. He again focused on Hogan. “So get that vet on the webcam. Talk to her. Find out how to help him.”

“Sir,” Hogan said, Candyman hovering close by, “even if we talked to her—he’s psychologically traumatized, out to lunch.” Her gaze went to the Lab, still sitting beneath the table.

Austin’s heart chugged with guilt. Talon had been one of the best and smartest working dogs out there. When the time came for him to disappear, he’d expected Talon, tough dog that he was, to be fine. It hurt—a lot—to think that his commitment to serving his country in a deeper way had traumatized the poor fella. And now, with Aspen getting snatched…

“Let me try.” Austin’s heart vaulted into his throat.
What are you doing?
Talon had already shown that he wouldn’t respond to him. Not anymore. He remembered him, that was clear. But letting Austin handle him?