by Cindy Skaggs
“They will.”
“Then I have a better place to stay. Go on through town and turn west at the next intersection.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“My dad’s hunting cabin. It’s not much. A bedroom, a loft, and a small kitchen, but there’s a wood stove and a generator if the electricity goes out. And a shower.” God bless her mother for insisting on running water.
“Any food?”
“Canned goods, usually. I haven’t been out there since Danny.” She cleared her throat but couldn’t dislodge the tightness. “He stayed out there some, when things got bad. He’d disappear for days, so there’s no telling if he left any food, but the cabin is private. I’m not a big fan of crowds. Or sleeping on the high school basketball court.” She let her voice trail off.
“Keeping you safe in a gym full of strangers isn’t on my top ten list either.” Stills glanced in the rearview mirror at the line of vehicles coming off the mountain. “While the masses checkout the motel and the high school, let’s hit the market and stock up in case Gault didn’t leave any food.”
“Then we can go there?”
“Probably safer than the high school.” He parked outside a local market and handed Mandi enough cash to get supplies for a few days. “Be quick.”
Mandi opened the door and a gust of wind hit her scrubs like a kite, knocking her back against the SUV. The cold blew through the thin material and threatened frostbite. She didn’t have a coat and neither one of them had hats or gloves. Her car, correction, her totaled car had spare blankets and clothes, but there wasn’t much in the back of this vehicle except dirty rags and auto parts.
“Here.” Stills yanked the back of his hoodie and pulled it over his head one handed. “It’s not much, but it should keep out the wind until you get inside.”
“If you’re sure...” Mandi pulled on the hoodie and his heat instantly enveloped her. It smelled like a pine forest in the spring. She wrapped it tight around her, tucked her hands into the sleeves, and made a break for the front. When she made it through the glass doors, she turned to look at Dean.
He watched her as well, their gazes colliding through the snow. He smiled. Motioned for her to get a move on, but for a moment, she couldn’t take a single step.
This had been the best and worst twenty-four hours of her life. Someone had tried to kill her and Dean had saved her. He’d risked his own life, but he wasn’t perfect. He was blunt to a fault but told her the unvarnished truth even when she didn’t want to hear it. He knew how to get places and acquire things. He filled in the gaps. He aided her quest for answers. He led the charge to protect Ellie. He made her feel less alone, and now. Now.
Now, this big, rough, brutal man had given her the shirt off his back. And he thought he wasn’t one of the good guys. He didn’t have a clue.
Chapter Ten
Stills wanted to make the call while Mandi was in the store. In case. But he continued to keep an eye on her through the plate-glass windows of the convenience store. Her smile lit up like the Christmas lights still hanging near the cash register before she turned into the store.
The scrubs hung like a potato sack over her petite frame and his hoodie draped to her thighs. Absolutely nothing sexy about that, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. The light reflected off her hair, showcasing a dozen shades of brown and darker mink. The contrast to her pale skin only highlighted her delicacy. And the unfortunate bruising from the accident.
Snow collected on the glass between them, so he flicked on the windshield wiper.
At a clearance rack she grabbed a red scarf and raised it for him to see. He gestured back with an exaggerated nod. She’d need warm clothes if they got stuck along the way. She dropped it in the hand basket along with a matching pair of mittens. The impish smile she gave him sent his pulse soaring.
He forced his glance away from her. He needed to get his shit together because she was seriously off limits. Besides, behind the smiles and her playful mood was worry that drew lines across her forehead and dark circles under her eyes. He dialed Craft’s number, figuring the computer guy was least likely to hold a grudge. The call was short. Direct, and he was signing off when Mandi returned.
A blast of cold air followed her into the SUV, so he flipped the heater back on.
“Do they have Ellie?” she asked.
“They made it around the pass before the roads closed, but they’re still an hour to contact.”
“It’s less time than that between the pass and Dalton.”
“The roads are a mess,” he lied. They’d made it to town, but had set up a perimeter around Miss Connie’s house. They wanted to catch any members of Team Echo who might be observing, and before they went into the house, they needed to know the situation inside. But if he told Mandi that the team was in town and in sight of Miss Connie’s house, she’d go ballistic. So he told a lie. One more in a life of many lies.
“I guess that makes sense. They’ll call as soon as they have her?”
“Yes.”
She huffed out a breath and fogged up the front windshield. “Are they done being angry with you?”
“For the most part. They’re in mission mode. Not much gets through except the need to get the job done.” He envied them that mindset. Being in the zone, tuning out every thought and emotion; focusing on every detail, every boring minute of the mission.
“What happened on Danny’s last deployment?”
Stills shrugged and asked for directions. Visibility had decreased since they made the stop. It was like driving through a snow globe, but not the pretty kind. The white blinded him, masking anything beyond the hood of the SUV. He nearly missed the turn she pointed out due to blowing snow. Every damn thing was white and if she hadn’t pointed out the turn, he would have thought it was a narrow field.
Before long they were on a strip of dirt she called a road. Looked like ancient wagon tracks through the woods. If Mandi hadn’t pointed out the tracks, he’d never find the place, which fit his purposes just fine. Made it a lot less likely Echo would find them. The wind and blowing snow would cover their tracks within five minutes.
They traveled for fifteen minutes before she pulled off her gloves. “The store didn’t have any gloves that would fit you, but I’m sure some of Danny’s old things will fit.”
“Assuming we get to this cabin. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“I’ve come out here several times a year since I was two. I know what I’m doing. Now answer my question.”
“Fine.” He’d given her most of it anyway. The SUV chugged along at a painful ten miles an hour, keeping the tires between the stand of trees on either side, but the trees blocked the wind so it was better than the highway. “I told you that we’d signed on for a classified program. The government wanted a company of fearless soldiers and we all agreed. There were six teams of twelve men. We were the last team.”
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot.”
He shook his head. “Team Fear. From day one, we were Team Fear. The best of the best.”
“You boys are awful sure of yourselves.”
“Fearlessness will do that,” he admitted. “No need to fear second place when you know you’re in the lead.” They bought the company propaganda and imagined themselves as an invincible fighting force. No fear. Stills snorted at the thought. They had no brains. They were cocky bastards who never asked the right questions. “God, country, family. We all signed on for the greater good. Did our job without question. After every mission, Captain Johnson told us we were the best trial group with the best results. We were everything the government said they wanted, but...”
“But?” she prompted.
“Several months into the last deployment, they pulled us in. We were en route from one mission to the next. Onboard a Chinook when Captain Johnson took a detour. One of the other teams went rogue. There were no hostile targets in that village. No reason to even fucking be there, but another t
eam made it there first. Wiped out every man, woman, and child.”
“Team Echo?” Mandi guessed.
“Give the girl a prize,” he muttered. The memory still burned. Even now, he fell asleep seeing that family—the woman and the kid first—shot from behind and on the run.
“That’s why Danny was so haunted when he came back?”
“Could be.”
“Why didn’t he talk to someone?”
He heard the underlying question. The underlying pain. Why hadn’t Danny confided in his twin? “We were never there, according to our chain of command. That’s code for keep your mouth shut and your head down. Didn’t sit right with any of us. The village was a massacre, the kind of thing you can’t unsee, but we had bigger problems. The company cut the program. We left the service with a section eight discharge.”
“Section eight. I saw it in the papers after Danny’s death. What does it mean?”
He tasted bile as he repeated the words. “Mentally unfit for service.”
“Was it true?”
“Fuck if I know.” The snow created a near whiteout and he had to blink to see the path. “The meds screwed with our heads. The withdrawals were intense. They kept us in a hospital in Germany until the worst of it passed, but the medical tests didn’t show everything.”
“Like what?”
After all this time, he still didn’t want to think about it. Admit it. Acknowledge the clusterfuck of his life. He didn’t mind dying—fearlessness served a purpose—but he sure as shit didn’t want to talk about it. “What good does it do for you to know this shit?”
“They’re a threat to Ellie.”
The road narrowed until branches smacked the sides of the SUV. “We have the chemist who designed the original protocol working with us. Debi—she’s Rose’s girlfriend—she’s smart. Determined to figure out why, after quitting the meds, we’re still fearless. But we’re also paranoid. Months after the last dose, we’re angry as fuck.” He brushed a finger over his healing lip. “Got this from Rose. Who the fuck knows why he decided to rearrange my face? It wasn’t personal. It’s part of the problem.”
She closed her eyes momentarily, before facing him head-on. “Is that why Danny...” She swallowed. “Killed himself?”
“No. We thought so at first. I have a buddy on Team Delta. Lots of suicides. Car accidents. People above my pay grade call them statistical anomalies.”
“Meaning?”
“The company is eliminating us, one by one. Like Madigan. And Danny.”
“Danny was the only one on the street that day. Over seven hundred miles away, and I felt his heart stop beating the moment it happened,” she whispered.
“Shit. We don’t have to talk about this.” What the fuck was wrong with him? Mandi was a civilian. She didn’t need all the gory details.
“I’m not the sweet, small town girl you think I am.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t think you’re sweet.”
“Danny made sure I was made of strong stuff. I need to know what happened to him. I need to know what’s coming for Ellie and me. And if I have to go around you to your superior, I will.”
Stills snorted softly. “You’re definitely Danny’s sister.”
“Thank you.” She took a breath and turned to face him in the low light of the SUV. “Finish it.”
“Madigan was the first to go. We thought he went batshit crazy. Killed his family and then himself. Thought it was the meds. Another twisted side effect. Turns out, Team Echo killed his family and dosed him with enough meds to help him blow his own brains out. We know that because your brother had copies of the autopsies for Madigan and his family.”
“He didn’t tell you that he was getting them, did he?”
“Nope. We were all flying solo at that point. Knowing doesn’t make it easier, does it?” The SUV hopped a log in the middle of the road. “Are you sure this is the right route?”
“Positive.” They traveled in silence for several minutes. “What happened the day Danny died?”
He rubbed an ache in his temple. He wanted to spare her the gory details, but she was having none of it, so he finished the story. Maybe knowing would give her closure. “We don’t know for a fact, but given the events of the past few weeks, we think Echo dosed Danny with the same meds as Madigan.”
“The ones that pushed him to suicide?”
“Danny had proof that Madigan wasn’t a crazy PTSD soldier who killed his wife and kid. They couldn’t let that get out.”
She grabbed the stack of papers off the dashboard. “And now I have Danny’s tox screen.”
“Which means you have proof that Danny wasn’t some crazy ex-soldier.”
“Will they hurt Glen for giving this to me?”
Glen was already dead unless he went underground. Stills pointed to the papers. “The autopsy will help Debi determine what they’re using on us. Maybe next time, we can counter the effects. Maybe we can beat the garbage flowing through our veins.”
“This is why that man tried to run me off the road? Why he showed up at the hospital?”
“I figured as much when I heard about your accident. They’ve done this kind of thing before. First, they eliminate any evidence that the program existed.”
“Which is why they want me to stop asking questions. And the second part?”
“For months, we figured they cut the program because Team Echo went off the grid, but Echo wasn’t an anomaly. They were the successful trial. The second part of the plan is turn each of us into one of them.”
Chapter Eleven
“What?” Mandi’s voice rose. “They think you’ll join them? Become psycho killers?”
“Pump enough drugs in our veins and who knows what will happen. We either join up—”
“Or do what Danny did,” Mandi finished. Her stomach ached. She wanted to throw up and forget everything she’d just learned. “I’m not equipped to fight someone like that.”
“Swear to God, we’ll either get rid of them—”
“Or die trying.” Holy hell. Danny had died trying to free himself from this sadistic program. “We’ll never be free.”
“I will protect you.”
Mandi shook her head. Stills was like her brother. Determined, and deceived by his own fearlessness. “Why is your team mad at you?”
“Because they have no sense of humor.”
“Fuck you.” Embarrassed heat climbed her cheeks. The last time she’d used that word was the day Ellie was born, but she didn’t let embarrassment inhibit her. She had a child to protect. The last hour of conversation made her realize how little she had known her brother. He’d held too much inside, and keeping information from her hadn’t protected her. “Evasion was Danny’s specialty in the last few months. Look how that turned out. Not knowing put me at a disadvantage. If I had known the full truth, I wouldn’t have gone looking for Danny’s autopsy, or not in a way that put me at risk.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” he insisted.
Mandi realized she was probably being irrational. It wasn’t so much that she wanted the answer to this particular question. She was fed up with the pattern of avoidance. She had had enough of that with her brother. “Answer, or I swear I’ll keep us driving around in circles. How’s the gas situation?”
“Jesus. It’s like arguing with fucking Gault.”
“Damn straight.” The comparison to her brother lifted her spirit as pride welled in her chest. Grief quickly followed, because her brother wasn’t around to see how much she’d grown in the past few months. She couldn’t take her anger out on Danny; she hadn’t been strong enough to force a conversation that might have prevented his death. But she had learned her lesson. No more putting off difficult conversations. No more avoidance. Time alone would not heal the wounds. So she straightened to face Dean, asserting herself in a way she’d never pushed with her brother. “Let me break it down where even a bonehead can figure it out. Why. Is your team. Mad at you?”
Stills rolled h
is neck to release the tension there.
She tapped the digital display on the dashboard. “Clock’s ticking.”
“It’s not a big deal. Camy and Debi planned to break into the university lab and steal the files for the experimental program. Debi had access because she used to work at the lab. When I found out, I didn’t stop them. I joined them. I knew it would speed up the process. We needed intel and sitting on my ass isn’t the way I fight.”
Since she was seeking her own answers, she understood his motivation, but not his execution. “Going on off on your own isn’t smart. It’s what killed Madigan and my brother.”
“You have a point, but...” Before he could finish, they rounded a corner and landed right next to the cabin. ”You were bluffing. You knew it was close and we wouldn’t be driving around all night.”
She smiled at his incredulous voice. “Danny taught me to play poker in middle school.”
“Remind me not to bet against you.”
“You might want to remember that.” She winked at him and laughed when he did a double take. She directed him to park in the detached garage. It looked more like a shed, but it would keep snow off the vehicle.
He hopped out to open the garage door and then backed into place. He stepped out of the vehicle to close the door behind them before retracing his steps to the driver’s seat. The narrow, dusty garage was unfinished inside. The floor was dirt. It was nearly as cold as the outdoors, but it protected from the wind and snow.
A small window on Mandi’s side let in enough light to see the side door that led to the house. A workbench, tools, and camping supplies were in the dark corner where the light didn’t reach.
Dean turned off the engine and handed her the car keys. “If things go south, or if I tell you to get out, you take off. Don’t stop to pull the garage door open. Get in and drive. This old car will survive the impact.”
“Without you?”
“Absolutely.”
