“Rafe, buddy. You’re repeating yourself.” Dillon twirled the locket around his finger. “I can protect your family. Or not. Your choice.”
Sanchez lowered his weapon. “Why? Why would you do this?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug and lied. “A job. Money. I’m mercenary that way.”
Sanchez contemplated. Weighed options. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers in the air and said, “Ramon, my music,
por favor
.”
Just as Dillon was wondering
what the hell
, two men grabbed him from behind and slammed him to the floor. He rolled, started to stand, but the gorillas knocked him back and captured each arm over his head with a heavy boot. His shoulders ground into the hard floor shooting pain down to his friggin’ kidneys. He was starting to question just how fucked he really was, even though he’d figured something like this might happen, and half wished he’d gone ahead and worn his clutch piece. Although, if he’d come here armed, the trust factor he was aiming for would have been blown to hell and the playing field would have gotten a lot bloodier. But shit, he damn well didn’t like being roughed up.
When the Stones came back on, Sanchez stood, strutted to the next table and back as the intro to
Sympathy for the Devil
played. Agile and graceful as a ballet dancer, the black silk of his suit rolled and shimmered in the light. Reminded Dillon of Nicolas Cage on a bender, only Sanchez was a lot less hinged. Sanity had fled and something akin to madness shone in his eyes.
When the intro ended, Sanchez sang, “Please allow me to introduce myself,” and kicked Dillon hard in the ribs. Nausea shot through his stomach.
Dillon sucked in air and wondered how long before his blood was shed and he’d be a writhing mess on the floor. When he could finally breathe, and because he was getting a little pissed, his smart-ass mouth got away from him and he said, “Nice boots. All pointy and shit. You borrow them from Mick?”
Raphael’s eyes rolled back, his lips curled, and he did a twisted version of the Rumba before singing, “I’m a man of pain and hate.”
Just as Dillon was going to correct the song lyrics, Sanchez stomped his solar plexus. Pain exploded from his chest to his balls. Fuck, he couldn’t breathe. Might never breathe again. Might never see clearly again either as Sanchez backhanded him across the face. No fist, just a solid backhand meant to humiliate. Still, his nose started bleeding and his lip split.
“So you’re Michael Madsen now in Reservoir Dogs. Wrong song, but I get it.” Lunatic bastard. Dillon spit blood onto one of the gorilla’s boots. “Point taken.”
“Fuck the point,” Sanchez raised his arms, twirled, whirled. Kicked again.
Another rib. Dillon tried hard, really hard, not to curl into a ball. He knew Sanchez needed this machismo crap to save face, but damn, what was next, cutting off his ear? Dillon could probably muscle his way out of this but not without a whole lot more hurt. Besides, if he tried, if he won this round, the point would be lost and he’d have to start over from scratch. Not something he cared to do.
Except…Sanchez was enjoying himself a little too much and alarms started bouncing inside Dillon’s head. “While I admire your power play, if you kill me you’ll never get your money, and when your family is kidnapped or murdered, you remember that I could’ve stopped it.”
“
Ooo, who, who…
” Sanchez came back to earth, slowly, with a crazy giggle and an insane fucking smile. “Am I still repeating myself?
Buddy
, was it?” He motioned to his men and Dillon felt himself being tossed like a bag of sand back into the booth. Sanchez sat, then leaned forward and said, “One last time. You fuck me again and your life will be over. I will massacre everyone you love. Everyone.”
Dillon straightened himself, leaned back, and wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve. Drained his beer. Thought about his wife. His family. And wondered what in the hell he was getting himself into.
“I love no one,” he lied again, and prayed to God this lie wouldn’t cost him. “You, however, do.” And then, because he was more than a little pissed, he returned the necklace to his pocket. “
Plata o plomo, amigo
.” Bribe or bullet. “You’ll have your money tomorrow.”
“Why? Why should I trust you?”
Dillon slid from the booth and stood. “Because,” he said, “I let your daughter live.” With those final words, with Jagger’s voice dogging him, Dillon turned and walked through the door into the night.
CHAPTER THREE
The Pentagon… June - 3 ½ years later…
Life, Dillon knew, was about to slide sideways, take a left turn into Shitsville and leave him reeling. He’d already had a long, hectic day of briefings, phone calls and endless paperwork, and okay, granted, nothing huge had happened so far, but something dark was coming. Something sinister. He could feel it. And whatever that something was, chances were, it was going to make him crazy.
Dillon shot the cuff of his dress shirt, looked at his watch and sighed. It wasn’t even noon yet.
The headache he’d been nursing all morning thrummed back with a dull roar. Not the typical hangover headache, which he’d gotten fairly used to in the last six months, but the brain crushing, dark seeking, don’t speak, not-even-in-a-whisper, kind of tension headache.
His cerebral arteries were going to blow.
And now he was about to see his boss after six months of playing the duck-and-run game. He hadn’t officially worked since Sara’s funeral and he wasn’t particularly happy to be back. Being back meant he wouldn’t be free to keep looking for Sanchez. The bastard had gone off the grid and Dillon had been travelling from one country to the next, searching, hunting, but no one knew Rafe’s whereabouts or they were too afraid to say. For six miserable months, Dillon had hit one dead end after another.
Before he touched base with the admiral, he wanted to splash some water on his face, try to tone down his headache, and just take five. He headed for the men’s room.
A slender blonde dressed in a gray business suit and carrying a black leather portfolio smiled at him as she strode past. Long blonde curls swooped past her shoulders. Green eyes crinkled with laugh lines at the corners.
Dillon’s facial muscles froze and he blinked.
Sara.
The hallway shimmered.
His steps slowed, sweat dampened his forehead, and his vision blurred. Anxiety tightened his chest. Nausea rolled through him in greasy waves.
The pressure in his head grew, and he pushed into the men’s bathroom, gulping in great breaths of air.
Not Sara.
Shaken, he leaned against the cool, white tile and scrubbed a hand over his face.
Sara was dead. Gone. Never coming back.
He hooked a finger under his collar and loosened his tie and as the truth punched into him, yet again, he slid down the wall.
Your fault. You failed. Sanchez warned you.
The pain rose up, deep and raw and stark. His eyes burned.
Yeah, Sanchez had warned him.
And then one night six months ago the warning had become fact.
Staring at nothing, he flashed to the night on the pier. To his shock at seeing Sara. Sara’s shock at getting caught in the middle of something she’d known nothing about. Then the explosion. The huge fireball hurling orange flames into the sky, into the ocean, then the concussion tossing Sara with violent velocity into oblivion.
His op had been compromised and his wife, his precious wife, had followed him because he’d been too much of a dick to stay home and make things right.
He blamed himself, sure. Sanchez, definitely. But what about fate? Chance? If he and Sara hadn’t argued that day, if Sara hadn’t seen him drive by the restaurant and then followed him to the dock, would she be alive today? Could he have protected her?
He just didn’t know.
Fate wasn’t only a fickle bitch, she was a cruel mistress of chance.
Sara hadn’t deserved to die. Not because of him or his job. Or because of his lies to Sanchez.
But she had died, she’d been blown to hell, and he wondered just how much fate had played into it.
If he’d had a chance to start over, what would he change?
Everything. For Sara he’d have changed everything.
Now he’d never have that chance.
Dillon sat, unmoving, unseeing, fighting not to think, fighting not to feel, fighting not to cry, and when the fighting got too hard, he gave up and let the grief take him.
<><><>
After being escorted into, and comfortably ensconced in the admiral’s office, Dillon hoped he was going to get a real good reason he’d been called back in, to the Pentagon no less, so he could go the hell home already. He had plans of his own, murder on his mind, and he didn’t want, or need, another leash around his neck.
Trim and tall, John Edge’s athletic body moved with starched precision as he strode from the window to take a seat behind a large mahogany desk. One look from his cold gray eyes could freeze a man in mid-step but today they showed nothing more than the heavy weight of suppressed frustration.
Which Dillon might actually have found interesting if his head wasn’t about to roll--literally and figuratively.
John pushed a newspaper toward Dillon across the wide expanse of polished wood. Dillon ignored the newspaper with a scowl. “I don’t know what you’re up to, John, but I’m starting to get a real itchy feeling about whatever it is. I haven’t been reprimanded even once.” He rubbed his temples and studied the Lalique clock on the admiral’s desk and wondered, why here?
The admiral had a perfectly nice office in San Diego. Dillon had a perfectly nice office in San Diego. Coincidentally, his office wasn’t too far down a perfectly nice hall from John’s. All of which were a whole lot more convenient than this. Albeit, neither office was quite what this one was. John’s office here had the grandiose only an admiral of long-standing could achieve. Expensively framed pictures of him in full dress uniform shaking hands with three different U.S. presidents and the Secretary of Defense stood along the back of a mahogany credenza. A decanter of unblended Scotch sat in front next to a humidor with a burl wood finish. American and Navy flags stood at crossed staffs against one wall. Books on history, economics and world politics marched along an adjacent wall. The whole place screamed ‘major sucking up goes on here’.
Nothing at all like the offices back at EDGE. But then nothing could be.
Dillon lived in San Diego. The admiral lived in San Diego. The admiral had an office there, just as imposing, and a hell of a lot more convenient than this. Yet here they were, both sitting, oh-so-nicely, in the friggin’ Pentagon.
And Dillon in a suit. With a tie around his neck. He would’ve preferred fatigues. “Why the formality?” Leaning back in the wide leather guest chair, Dillon gave up on his temples and folded his hands in his lap, patiently waiting for an explanation.
He eyed the SEAL Trident on the admiral’s chest, then let his stare drift up to the steel gray eyes watching him. Dillon had a Trident too, somewhere. In his desk at home maybe. Or tucked away in Sara’s jewelry box. When he’d joined EDGE, he’d handed the pin over to his wife and never looked back.
Now he couldn’t seem to look forward.
John steepled his fingers. “I had to break a lot of rules and lie my ass off to get you back on the inside. As for not getting reprimanded, I gave everyone a hands-off order. This time. But next time keep in mind the Command doesn’t like its people going UA. Especially not for six very long, non-communicative months.”
“I was absent, yes. But hardly unauthorized.”
“You could’ve checked in. Returned my calls.”
“I’m here now. So what’s up?” Something was, for damn sure. Something clandestine or covert, he was sure, and something he probably wasn’t going to like if the severe look on John’s face was anything to go by.
Like Night Shield and Gray Dawn, Admiral Edge’s Tactical Security Team (TST) didn’t officially exist. Sanctioned by the president, the TST was a clandestine unit of special forces operators who worked under the radar, off the grid, and could strike with a kind of cunning that would knock the CIA on its ass. If the team was compromised during a mission, the U.S. government would
deny their
existence.
They were all a part of SPECWAR. Black ops. And so deeply buried only a handful of men in the Pentagon had even the slightest awareness of them.
Dillon did what his country asked—provided justice, security, protection, hoodoo voodoo if need be. Anything and everything no one else either provided or allowed.
That was his job, and at one time he’d loved it. Then Sara had been killed and then his family, all of them wiped out within two days, and now, well now he had other, more important things on his mind.
Vengeance being foremost.
And wasn’t that an ugly word. Apt, considering what he’d lost, but still ugly.
John took a sip of coffee from his stainless steel mug and grimaced. “Over forty-five hundred cups of coffee served daily in this place, and I’ve probably got the only cup that tastes like sludge.” He ran a hand through his close-cropped, gray hair. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just my mood. I want to get back home to San Diego and out of this endless maze of bureaucratic bullshit.” He tapped a newspaper. “Read this.”
Dillon ignored the paper a second time and frowned. Thought about closing his eyes and plunking his feet up on John’s desk long enough for the pounding in his head to back off.
Probably not the best move.
He settled for saying, “Look, John, my brain is dissolving inside my skull, so if this is a Come-to-Jesus meeting, let’s do it in San Diego next week, okie dokes?” He started to stand.
“Commander.”
And there it was. The Tone. Dillon sighed and placed his butt back in the chair. “Coffee and politics aside, I wasn’t exactly UA. I had time coming and I took it. Since when is drinking my butt into the ground any of your business?”