Fixed Asset (Downrange), page 16
No, I wasn’t ready. This was nice, it was normal, just me and Jack eating lunch.
A date.
I was on a date with Jack Donovan.
The absurdity of that hit me. I’d slept with the man. I’d admitted I loved him, wanted to have his children, we’d already named one, and here we were on our first date.
He reached his hand across the table, pulled mine closer to the middle, and commenced tracing my fingers with his.
“It’s funny,” he said.
My eyes flicked from our hands to his face.
“We did it backward.”
It was a little freaky how he could read my mind.
“We did,” I confirmed.
“I like the way we did it.”
My lips pulled up into a smile. “I bet. You didn’t even have to buy me dinner before I gave up the goods.”
Jack’s eyelids slowly lowered. The gesture would’ve worried me if his shoulders weren’t shaking with silent laughter.
“Smart-ass.”
Yup.
That was me.
Totally a smart-ass with zero concern I had to pretend I was someone I wasn’t.
I was me.
And Jack Donovan T-totally loved me.
Chapter Twenty-One
“It’s beautiful up here,” Cat said, craning her neck to look out her window down the steep ravine. “I know California’s not the only state like this, but I’ve always found it interesting that you can be at the beach, then an hour later be deep into the mountains or a vineyard. You can see the most beautiful redwoods, then a few hours later see a castle.”
She wasn’t wrong; the juxtaposition was striking. The traffic was horrendous but the natural beauty was, in my opinion, only second to what Idaho had to offer. Though Idaho didn’t have beaches, they had lakes, and it won out mainly because there were fewer people and less traffic. I’d give up the year-round nice weather and the beach not to spend my life stuck in gridlock.
“Have you spent much time here?”
“Not really. I did a temporary duty assignment at Fort Irwin and some training at NAS Lemoore and a two-week stopover at Travis. When I left Lemoore, I rented a convertible, took three days, and did the whole touristy thing. Drove PCH from San Francisco to San Diego and flew back to Bragg out of SD.”
She paused, and I felt her gaze come to me.
“For the record, I rented a Ford. I fell in love with the Mustang and decided one day I would own one.”
There was something behind the Ford comment that was more than a dig at car manufacturers.
“What about the Ford made you fall in love?”
“It was the first time I felt free.”
My heart clutched at her soft admission.
“I went from . . . well, you know, I told you about it . . . to the Army. My life was not my own. I was told what to do, where to go, and when I got there I was given more orders. But I found I liked the structure. I needed it after so much disorder. I think that’s what I saw in Steven when he came home to visit. He was settled, it changed everything about him. I wanted that. I needed a break from the chaos and worry about where I was going, who next was going to take in the poor orphan. Not that Lina ever gave me the impression she wanted me to go, but it was still in me.
“But those three days with the top down, cruising down PCH, my life was mine. I was in control. I stopped where I wanted, I saw what I wanted to see, I slept where I wanted. I was free. Every decision was mine. I had three days to think. Three days with myself to reflect on the life I’d been given—from my parents dying, losing my grandmother, to the assholes I was forced to live with. Lina, Steven, Lars. All of it. Somewhere around Morro Bay, things started to come clear. I stopped for the night in this place called Goleta. Before I left, I stopped at the beach. There’s this long wooden pier. I walked to the end—mountains and ocean. It was so beautiful, I stayed out there for a long time thinking.
“It was there I realized that my breaths were finite. I only had so many of them before they were gone. I could spend the rest of them dwelling on the assholes in my life, or I could stop giving them precious headspace and move on. I gave them one final breath on that pier and moved on. I got back into the Mustang, turned the radio on for the first time since I’d started the drive, and spent the next two days with the music blaring, using my breath to sing at the top of my lungs.
“By the time I turned that rental in, it was gone. All the resentment, the bitterness, the anger. So while my life belonged to the Army, my breath belonged to me.”
The puzzle that was Catarina Keys clicked into place, and the whole picture formed. And I wondered if she had any clue the strength of mind she possessed. With the way she’d told the story of a life-changing epiphany, I doubted it. She’d made it sound like her mental fortitude was commonplace instead of extraordinary. Most people did not have it in themselves to face the past—what’d been done to them, what hadn’t happened, what they missed out on, regret. It’s easier to bury the pain instead of facing it, reflecting, then freeing it from their minds. The problem with that was, it festered. The lesion was always there just under the surface, filling with poison. But the pain of bloodletting the trauma was so excruciating, for some, living with the toxin was easier.
I’d lived on both sides of that coin. I still had shit buried I would never unpack from my days in the Navy. Things I saw, but mostly what I’d heard—the screams, the sobs, the tremble in voices, the last breaths. Shit that I couldn’t force my mind to relive.
“Favor, baby.”
“What’s that?”
“Twice now you’ve given me important pieces of you. Twice I’ve been driving and can’t give you the attention I want when I learn more about your remarkable strength. Do me a favor and next time, wait until I’m not behind the wheel and I can properly tell you how fucking astoundingly special you are.”
“I think you just told me,” she whispered.
“I haven’t scratched the surface, but as you wisely said last night, we’re playing the long game, so I have a lifetime of showing you.”
“And I’m not special,” she parried.
“You are very wrong about that, Catarina,” I told her and pulled onto the dirt road that led to Pete’s mountain compound. “But we’re here, and this is one of those conversations that shouldn’t be had while I’m driving.”
Cat leaned forward and stared out the windshield at the gateway sign.
“Downrange.” She noted the sign. “That’s . . . succinct.”
“I think it says what it needs to say.” I chuckled. “Pete’s got eighty acres. We come up here to train.”
“Where ya goin’, honey?” she started in a fake and horrible Texan twang. Then switched to an equally fake but much worse male version of her exaggerated Texan accent. “Headed downrange, darlin’.”
“You forgot the best part,” I noted.
“What’s that?”
“Headed downrange to blow shit up.”
Cat sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “You left that part out. What else does Pete have up here?”
“A shoot house, two pistol ranges, a sniper field, and long-range lanes set up. There are three houses—he lives in the main house, Beck lives in one of them, the other is guest quarters. There’s three Quonset huts we use for storage for gear and several outbuildings.”
“Who’s Beck?”
“Beckett Yates. He’s former DEA. I met him when I was up in Idaho with Takeback. He was undercover in a motorcycle club.”
“The Horse Heads . . . or something like that?”
“The Horsemen,” I corrected. “He was with them for years. I got no problem with MCs. A lot of clubs are geared toward former military or law enforcement. A brotherhood with a shared passion. But there are some, like the Horsemen, who are rotten. There wasn’t a good man in that club. Drugs, prostitution, extortion. Beck lived and breathed depravity. That shit ended for him before Vegas, and he’s adjusting to life outside that filth.”
“Is he part of Pete’s crew?”
“Yes and no. He lives up here and takes care of the gear, keeps the shooting ranges maintained, and other upkeep besides. What he doesn’t do is go on ops with the guys. Neither does he go to the Dirty Plank to drink. If he makes the trek to IB, it’s to come by my place or Mason’s. The man doesn’t do bars or restaurants. And Pete has told the rest of us Beck does his grocery shopping at night when it’s less crowded.”
“PTSD?”
We were approaching the main house, so I slowed.
“Not the way you’re thinking, but yes. He lived so long with the stench of those assholes it seeped in. Part of that was submerging himself into the criminal lifestyle and living like one. He’s having a hard time shaking it off. I get what he’s going through, and I’m sure you do too. When you separate from the military, you lose a part of your identity. That transition is hard enough, but Beck’s got that twofold; he has to shed the criminal he became and law enforcement officer.”
Catarina was quiet for a moment.
“Duality,” she murmured. “The lawman and the felon. Who does he shed first?”
“Yup. And how does he reconcile the crimes he committed, the laws he broke, when he’d taken an oath to protect and serve? It’s easy to say he had to commit those crimes to keep his cover. It’s harder to believe that to be true.”
“Damn.”
Damn was right.
I parked next to Mason’s Ram and shut my Chevy down.
“If I told you to wait so I can come around to open your door, would you listen?”
When we’d stopped for lunch, she’d jumped out before I could get to her side of the truck.
“No, but if you ask, I’d consider it.”
“How’s this? Please keep your ass in the truck until I come around.”
Cat rolled her eyes.
“That’s not asking, that’s using the word please in a command, and I only listen to those when I’m naked and promised orgasms.”
Her eyes danced with humor—a stolen moment before we went inside to start planning a new op. A moment I didn’t want to end, and not because I was worried about Catarina being a part of the mission. I just didn’t want to have to share her. Not now, not so soon. I wanted more time before we were back at it again.
The long game.
“Good girls get good things.”
The humor sped out of her eyes and desire sparked to life.
“What do bad girls get?”
“Spankings.”
Cat opened her door, jumped down, and with a smile and a wink, she slammed it, effectively closing me in the truck while I roared with laughter.
Smart-ass.
Pete had just finished telling the team what had happened in Juárez with Rafael Quintero and the threats he’d unwisely made against my friend Cole’s wife, Mia. Yes, she was Pete’s sister, but the anger burning through me was for Cole. He should’ve been told. Takeback as a whole should’ve been told we needed to keep an eye on the situation, to make sure the danger in Mexico wasn’t going to make its way up north. Further from that, they needed to know now, because Mia was currently operating with them.
“You need to tell Cole.”
Pete’s not-so-happy gaze landed on me. “Rafael’s been taken care of.”
“And Carlos? Unless Tom is full of shit, you have a credible threat gunning for your sister, yet you’ve got some hang-up about telling her team that I don’t get.”
“He’ll be taken care of,” Mason put in.
“As fun as it would be to tear through Juárez and liberate the people from the cartels, you know that’s not gonna happen. Carlos goes down, within a week someone will take his place.”
“It’ll be—”
I cut Mason off. “Cut the shit, you’re not a murderer. You’re not gonna track down every male relative and preemptively kill them. There will always be a threat, and Cole needs to know. Again, I don’t understand what the big fucking deal is.”
“So your loyalty is with Cole?” Mason seethed.
From beside me on the couch, Catarina grabbed my forearm.
“That was way the fuck out of line,” Fallon piped up. “Jack’s right, Cole needs to be told. But you know who else needs to know? Mia. But, hey, you wanna talk about loyalty, Mase? You got Pete’s back on this but don’t talk to the rest of us?”
“Fuck,” Pete growled and got to his feet. “This is on me, not Mason.”
“You’re right, it is,” Ryan easily put in.
I glanced over to the table off to the side where Aiden and Gavin were sitting. Both had identical frowns.
Ryan and Fallon were sitting on a couch at opposite sides, an empty cushion separating them. Mason was in a chair next to Ryan, and Fallon across from where Cat and I were sitting.
Pete was now pacing.
The room wasn’t huge, but it was big. Still, it was now suffocating. Every man in the room was giving off seriously pissed-off vibes.
“I fucked up,” Pete admitted. Then growled, “She’s my sister. She’s all I have. Fuck.” He tore his hands through his short-cropped hair. “I lost it. The women he had, and the little . . . fuck, she was a kid. A little fucking girl. I snapped. He had my sister’s picture. He said . . . Christ . . . I came home, and that’s when I fucked up. I should’ve gathered the rest of you and told you. I should’ve told Mia and Cole.”
Pete stopped moving and dropped his head forward. After a pregnant pause, he confessed, “I couldn’t repeat it. I didn’t want Mase to know, but I was dying inside. I didn’t want him telling the rest of you, speaking those words out loud into the universe. I don’t know, I just wanted to pretend that some sick fuck hadn’t gone into great detail, telling me all the ways he was going to violate and rape my baby sister, then rent her out before he sold her to another sick fuck who would do the same.”
I thought about my sister and my nieces. As soon as the thoughts flitted in, I shoved them away before the bile rose any higher.
“You did what you had to do, and that includes taking the time you did to process what happened,” I began. “That’s done. Now, Cole and the others need to be told to keep an eye. It’s not like they don’t already, but still, they need this intel.” I stopped to look at Mason. “We’ve got an op to plan. Are we good to do that, or do you and I need to talk?”
Mason lounged in his chair, holding my gaze.
“Fallon’s right, that was a shit thing to say,” Mase admitted.
“It was. But just so we’re clear, the loyalty you brought into question was for Mia. And to be clear on one more point, my loyalty doesn’t extend only to one person or team, nor does it end. When you have it, you got it for life. Just because I no longer work with those men, they are still my brothers, and I will never not have their backs. But make no mistake, this team has my full commitment and loyalty too.”
“You’re heard,” Mase said.
Good.
Time to move on.
“I love my sister,” Pete unnecessarily clarified.
“Never thought you didn’t. Which again begs the question why you wouldn’t want more eyes on her.”
“Because for as long as I can remember it’s been me taking care of my sister. Me making sure she’s safe. Me protecting her.” Pete stopped, glanced at Mason, then continued. “Me and Mase. I know Cole loves her, I know he’d give his life to protect her, but that doesn’t mean she’s still not mine. I’ve never had to answer to anyone about how I provided for my sister. Further from that, Cole is my friend too. They spent a long time apart, and I didn’t want anything fucking up them getting back together.
“But you’re right. With Carlos in play, they need to know. I’m being a stubborn asshole about this. I don’t want my sister worried when, after twenty years of living in misery, she’s finally happy.” Pete paused again to suck in a deep breath. “I screwed up. You all have my apologies. Before we get back to it, I have to call my sister. Then I need to talk to my brother-in-law and endure a well-deserved ass chewing. If anyone has something to say, now’s the time to say it.”
No one said anything, yet the room remained stifling.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The guys had left me with Shep’s intel in favor of maps.
Ryan and Aiden were planning the route we’d take to get to Juárez. Mason, Pete, and Jack were leaning over a large map of Juárez while at the same time using a tablet to enlarge areas of interest.
Fallon, Gavin, and Beck had been working with Pete and the guys, pinpointing possible places Carlos could be holding Calista, but they’d gone out when a box truck pulled up. Pete had been expecting the delivery—Tom’s ammo had arrived.
That left me to go over a very detailed report on Carlos Quintero and his operation, as well as his cousin Rafael. Between my stomach churning in disgust and my temper flaring with every sentence I read, I was having trouble seeing the bigger picture.
Jack had told us he’d spoken to Lincoln Parker, and he relayed Linc’s thoughts on Tom, his reasoning for conning me and cornering Pete and his guys, not to mention Berta. I could have bought Tom’s reasoning if the Honduran president’s wife and kids had not been among the women and children smuggled out.
I could see Tom wanting to know the whereabouts of this woman in case he needed to use her location in the future. Information was power. The whereabouts of a runaway wife could buy Tom the upper hand should he need to control the president. I didn’t like it; the thought of using humans like disposable pieces on a game board made me sick, but that was the way of the world. Especially in the CIA.
There wasn’t much information on the men Calista had supposedly killed—I was reserving judgment until I met her. It was easy to set someone up. There was even less information about Calista herself and her family. Specifically her father, the man who Tom said had saved his life. How did a man who owned three dry cleaners save a CIA officer’s life? Unless that man was using his businesses to clean more than clothes. Unless that was a cover for something else.
“Shepherd Drexel is supposed to be the best, right?” I asked the room.
