Sanctuary 02 - The Only Easy Day (CMS) (MM) (6 page)

Himself? He should be on an official Sanctuary op where he belonged, not here with a team threatening to bring a rain of shit down on the family who controlled Albany. But he wasn't going anywhere. It was partly seeing Robert today and feeling his heart twist at the fear in the young kid's eyes. Dale didn't abandon people. The rest of it was pure loyalty to Nik, who always had his back, and to Morgan, who by extension, was Dale's to look out for.

"So the transcript of the tape…" Nik started.

"Bullen said in the call there was money to be had in the fourth quarter."

He blurted this out with a mouthful of chicken chow mein. Everyone looked at him. "Don't think that means much," he finished with a shrug. Dale looked at his sister, who was swallowing what was left of the noodles she'd just forked into her mouth. Swallowing, she wiped at her lips with a napkin and settled her plate on the small table.

"Some of the papers we have for the money laundering describe the areas of the city as quarters. That is part of what I was bringing to you tonight." She wiped her hands on the cloth by her side and reached into her voluminous bag. Pulling out notes, she pushed the remaining takeout cartons to one side and spread papers over the small table. 

"Shit, Lissa. What the hell?" Dale snapped.

"What?" Lissa looked confused.

"You took copies of papers from your office? What if someone saw you do it? Or suspected you?"

"These are from home. These are just my notes.

Chill, big brother." She waved away his concern like it didn't matter she was sitting here and passing on information that could get her killed. Okay, so maybe he was being over dramatic, but shit, look at what had happened to Elisabeth. Lissa looked so beautiful sitting there, her long blond hair pulled out of the severe hairstyle she wore when working and now loose around her shoulders. She was still staring at him, and his heart shattered into a million pieces at the confusion on her face.

"I want you to stop," he said simply. He cupped her face and pushed every ounce of emotion he had into his voice. "Don't end up like Elisabeth."

"The family won't dare touch the DA's office," she said softly. The family. The Bullens. Three brothers. Two openly crooked corrupt brothers and the other brother, a US senator, working the whole face-of-innocence angle. The DA was looking for something, anything, to pin to the Bullens. Any of them. Dale knew if one brother fell then the others would surely follow. 

"You can't be that naive. You know they could, Lis." He shortened her name to what he used to call her when they were younger. Not by design but by instinct. She smiled. It was a beautiful smile.

"So tell me about Elisabeth's brother." That was one hell of an impressive change in subject from Nik, and Dale blinked for a few seconds before he could pull his thoughts together. Lissa leaned forward with a gleam in her eye.

"He's tall. Built, not pumped up, but lean. Short dark hair and stubble. He has the most gorgeous gray eyes, and he looked beyond tired," she offered in response. Then, her eyes widened as she realized her mistake. Nik had been looking for an explanation of intent, not a description that could have been pulled from a dating site.

"Lissa?" Nik said with a questioning quirk of his eyebrows.

"Lissa?" Dale repeated. The description of his perfect man had him wanting to know more. Built? Brunet?

And a tough guy?

"She's just being thorough; it's important we know what we are dealing with," Morgan defended quickly.

"Sex on legs. Clearly," Dale joked. If only the asshole wasn't career black ops, he might have sounded like a viable one-night stand in Dale's limited world of quick and trouble-free sex.

That broke the tension, and all four of them finished what was left of takeout and the few beers while discussing what impact the arrival of the brother had on their work to find out why Elisabeth had been killed.

"He may cause trouble, but he probably has mad skills, and we should give him a chance to help," Morgan suggested.

"He might know something to add to all of this," Lissa commented carefully with a smile on her face.

"Lissa," Dale looked at the expression, "I don't give a shit how hot this guy is. He's so deep in covert shit he probably doesn't know his own name."

"They're not all—" she began. Dale wasn't even beginning to let her start that conversation.

"Leave it, sis," he said abruptly. She did as he asked. She subsided into silence, and it was left to Morgan to break the awkward quiet.

"So exactly how hot was this guy?" 

The alley was nothing to look at. Somehow Joseph had expected more. The dark passage was dirty, with broken ground and weeds holding firm to ageing concrete.

There was nothing there to show Elisabeth's passing, and he crouched to the ground. His soldier's eye looked critically at his location, but his head was far from involved. Memories of her assailed him. He hadn't known her long, but she had been vivacious and full of life.

Loud laughter broke into his recollections, and the raucous noise of passing revelers was enough to push him to his feet in a controlled move. Deliberately he forced the heartache of being a brother back and dragged the SEAL forward. The time for mourning and remembrance was for later, after he had found out why Elisabeth had died.

Turning three-sixty, he consciously catalogued every fire escape and doorway facing the alley. It never hurt to have the kind of intel that came with being aware of his environment. The prickle of tension in his spine was his first indicator he was being observed, and he spun on his heel. With feet slightly apart and knees bent, he had his hand on his Sig and was ready to face whatever was in his way. Adrenaline subsided when his gaze settled on a homeless guy weaving drunkenly towards him, but the tension didn't lessen until he had made his way out of the way of both drunken bum and dark alley shadows. He hadn't been this jumpy since Afghanistan.

The sudden light and activity of the main street made him blink to readjust his range of vision, and he rolled his shoulders to relax his stance. No point in running into groups of civilians looking like he did—a threatening, wild-eyed, emotional madman. Casually he allowed his hands to fall to his sides, and stooping a little, he hurried, without catching anyone's gaze, away from the main street area and back into the shadows. His cell was vibrating in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see a text from Fuentes.

A single name and an address.

Connecting a call to Fuentes, he didn't waste time with the niceties of social behavior.

"This is the witness? This Drake guy saw the murder? What else do you think he can give us?"

"I don't know, sir," Fuentes responded quickly. "But there's some squirrely shit in his current location. The address red flagged all over the place; it belongs to some foundation called Sanctuary. Looks like a private security company."

"Never heard of it. Is this agency protecting this guy? Is it FBI sponsored?" If Morgan Drake had given evidence, it was either over and he could return to normal life or he would be hidden by witness protection. Why private security?

"It's a pretty open organization on the face of it, but I can't crack any deeper than that." Fuentes had come to the SEAL team with the skills of a hacker and the brains of a genius. If he couldn't get deeper, Drake was caught up in something out of the public arena. Fuck. Had he actually been involved in the killing? Had he turned on his accomplices to get freedom? Is that what the ADA was so reluctant to share with him? Anger so intense it hurt flooded Joseph, and his famous control slipped a few notches. Bullen was on his radar, but Morgan was now next on his list. The anger retreated under the insistent press of icy calm, and he inhaled deeply of the night air.

"Keep on Bullen for me and try to crack Sanctuary."

"On it, sir."

He checked his cell for the address and locked it into the phone's street view. Morgan's address was six clicks from here, and determinedly, he set out in the right direction. He glanced down as the time on his cell showed it was nearly midnight. It was crazy to realize he hadn't been in the country for twenty-four hours yet. Sudden grief carved through him, and the pain of his loss stopped him in his stride. This was wrong, and he knew it. He couldn't approach Morgan as anything other than someone who wanted answers. Entering any situation with this burden of grief was going to get him killed. Spotting a coffee shop down a side street, faintly lit and quiet, he ducked in and ordered a shot of caffeine. Maybe not the best thing to do—
he was hyper enough—but hell, he didn't have to drink it.

He could just nurse it until he managed to get a handle on what he was feeling.

"You okay, son?" The voice was kindly and concerned, and emotion welled in him, almost choking him. Please God, don't let anyone be nice to him. Not now.

Swallowing the tightness, he looked up at the woman who had served him the black coffee. She had a cloth in her hand and compassion in her eyes. Fuck.

"I'm fine. Thank you, ma'am. It has been a long shift." He didn't go into specifics. Let her think he had worked in some nebulous place that meant he would be sitting here in the middle of nowhere drinking coffee at near midnight.

"Shout if you need a refill," she said simply.

Evidently she was taking his words at face value, and she moved away to the next table to clear plates and mugs from the couple who had just left after eating face for the last ten minutes. Joseph checked for the restroom sign and left the main room. Locking himself in the tiny bathroom, he emptied his bladder and washed his hands.

He avoided looking at himself in the tiny mirror over the sink. Last thing he needed was to see naked grief. He needed to be one hell of a lot stronger to find the person who had killed Elisabeth.

Noises outside snapped him out of his introspection.

Familiar noises. A shot and then shouting. In an instant, all the self-flagellation and worry disappeared as a rush of adrenaline replaced the grief.

Opening the door a crack, he looked out to the café beyond. Two men, dressed in black and wearing bandanas, one waving a gun like it was a July Fourth flag. He couldn't see if the safety was off, but the single shot he had heard implied it was and that the guy waving the gun around wasn't afraid to use it. One man was at the door, the other at the till. The shot hadn't hit the waitress; she was standing with terror in her eyes behind the counter. The crazed and cracked glass mirror behind the till showed the bullet's final resting place. Quietly he pulled his Sig out of the back of his jeans then, in the same instant, replaced it. This wasn't the time for a freaking gunfight in downtown Albany. This was time for something else entirely.

Ears tuned to the slightest move, with his hands held out in front of him in a gesture of innocence, he entered the dining room. The man at the door was startled, and he was the one with the gun. But he was clearly not high on anything, and his gaze was focused and intense. He clearly knew shit about how you handled a gun, but Joseph knew for a fact he couldn't underestimate an adversary that was armed. It didn't matter if it was an enemy combatant or a child protecting his family, this was no different from the theater he had been in this time last week.

Three.
He walked slowly to the guy at the door, stumbling over a chair and righting it with a drunken grin.

The armed man blinked at him, and the gun dropped slightly. Joseph had been judged and dismissed as no threat.

Two.
The guy at the door was now unconscious on the floor from a fist to his face, his gun thrown into the air.

It tumbled in a crazy arc, and as it fell to earth, Joseph caught it in a quick snatch from the air.

One.
Rolling to his feet, Joseph took two steps and vaulted the counter, catching the other perp with a roundhouse flying kick.

It was over in seconds. He dragged the two unconscious intruders into the bathroom, snapped the internal lock, and wedged the door from outside. The waitress broke out of her fear and was on the phone immediately to call the cops. He left before they arrived.

There were no cameras in the café, nothing to hold him for a chat about what had happened. He didn't have time for that.

He'd needed that rush of adrenaline. He wasn't going to wallow—the silent and deadly SEAL was back. It was time to see where this link to Morgan Drake took him. 

Joseph scoped the address Fuentes had sent him. He circled it three times. The building really was nothing more than a single detached house in a row of similar post-World War Two homes. Brick-built, it had both front and rear entrances, and there was no sign of visible security. Joseph didn't underestimate what he could see, and until Fuentes pulled up more information on this Sanctuary thing, he was sticking to the shadows as he gauged the best place for ingress. A room on the first floor, on the opposite side of the large harvest moon, had a window ajar. Shimmying up a red oak, he cracked the window wider and crept in.

Landing nimbly on thick carpet, he immediately pulled his weapon. In mere seconds he had analyzed every inch of the room he could see in the dark, and in only a few more, he was out in the corridor, assessing the house plan. The three floors seemed quiet. There was evidence of people living here, but nothing to indicate children, thank God. One hell of a fancy kitchen that smelled faintly of Chinese takeout covered most of the ground floor, and there was no sign of overt security. He walked the house a floor at a time, with his Sig held in front and preceding him into each room. At the top of the last flight of stairs, he found what he was looking for.

The door was ajar, and he pushed it open far enough to slide into the room. This bedroom was filled with moonlight coming through open drapes, and the figure in the bed was clearly asleep. Taking a single step closer, he pointed his weapon directly at the huddled figure under the sheets.

"Morgan Drake?" he said firmly. The guy didn't move, and Joseph took another step and poked with the muzzle of his gun at the sheets. Nothing there except a tangle of cloth, and he straightened just as he felt the press of a muzzle against his neck. Fuck. Rookie mistake. So focused on the lack of the witness he had misjudged the scene. He knew better than to approach a situation half-assed and exhausted.