Hard Play (Delta Force Brotherhood)

by Sheryl Nantus

  Molodavi still didn’t believe she’d done it out of revenge. He was sticking to his theory she wasn’t alone.

  The irony was she now had Dylan and the Brotherhood.

  Frank continued. “Eddie doesn’t want a war. You got people, he’s got people. You two meet, and we can work something out. No one else needs to get hurt.”

  “Eddie.” She rolled the single word around in her mouth. “You keep saying that. Are you telling me you’re on a first-name basis with Edward Molodavi? When the hell did that happen?”

  A throbbing started behind her eyes as she realized the men outside the diner weren’t there to threaten Wheeler.

  They were there to protect him.

  “That’s not for you to know.” He shook his head. “Jessie, you can’t do this. I know you got a burr up your ass about your father, but you can’t take Molodavi down. You shouldn’t do it, for my sake or your father’s. He wouldn’t want to see you do this and he sure as hell wouldn’t want you to die for nothing. You got this all wrong, you got it all turned around.”

  “What about my father?”

  Frank wiped his forehead. “Drop it, drop it all and go on your knees to Molodavi. Tell him who’s behind this and make the deal. It’ll keep you alive, I promise.”

  “What about my father?” Jessie pushed.

  The weary grunt grated on her ears. “I promised him I’d never tell you this, but if you’re going to get yourself killed over it…your dad wasn’t shot by one of Eddie’s men while he was trying to collect protection money.” He hesitated, just long enough to send her heartbeat into triple digits. “He got himself shot ’cause he was asking for a higher cut and pushed Eddie too far. He made an example of your father, showed he didn’t have any problems taking out one of his own, even a cop. Didn’t mean to paralyze him—that was on the idiot gunman he put up for it. Eddie felt bad ’bout that, he really did. But had to do it, had to draw the line somewhere. Your father just got greedy, and he paid the price for it.”

  She felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. “What? My dad wasn’t dirty.”

  “Neither was I when we started, fresh out of the academy. But life on the streets, it’s got a way of showing you the truth, showing you the way things really are.” Freed from his promise, Frank babbled on, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “It was only a bit here, a bit there. Then we wanted more, needed more. Opportunities presented themselves, that’s all I got to say about that. After your mom was gone he needed the cash for your schooling, for keeping you two together.” He shook his head. “Look, you can’t take Molodavi down ’cause it’ll be like taking your old man out. You think those files you stole won’t have your dad’s information inside it? You’ll destroy his memory, his legacy, for you and for anyone who knew him.” He pointed at himself, his tone changing to a rough growl. “And me, too. You can’t do this to me, Jessie. I earned my pension, and I want to be free long enough to spend it. And I’m not the only one who’d suffer if you go rogue. I get you want justice—trust me, Eddie’ll treat you right if you give him what he wants. Play it his way and you can get anything you want.”

  “No.”

  She saw the man sitting at the bus stop stare at Frank and get to his feet, realizing their target was talking on a phone.

  Frank wheezed. “Come in from the cold, come meet me here at the diner. I’ll put in a word for you. I’ll help you get through this. Your dad wasn’t a bad man. He was my friend.” His voice rose. “Jessie. Listen to me. He’ll get to you. No matter what you think or who you go to, he’ll find you.”

  “Go to hell.” Jessie yanked the headset off and dropped it on the table, nausea almost overwhelming her.

  Dylan nodded to Trey.

  The Brotherhood tech wizard tapped the keyboard.

  She stared at the screen as Frank leaped to his feet, likely with a curse.

  The fuzzy images couldn’t supply everything, but she saw the smoke begin to fill the diner, forcing everyone out of the small building and into the street.

  Except for the two men assigned to guard Frank.

  The one from the bus stop raced in while the other got out of the car and watched, hands in his pockets as he scanned the streets.

  Dylan cursed and Jessie covered her eyes with one hand, hiding from the betrayal.

  Trey cleared his throat. “Small explosive inside the phone. Fried everything beyond retrieval. Not a chance they’ll get anything from it. At least we know which side he’s on now.” He glanced at Jessie. “I’m sorry.”

  She sniffled and forced herself to look up. “Thanks. I guess I didn’t want to believe Molodavi’s power stretched that far.”

  Finn’s voice came in over the speakers. “No one made me. On the way back to the club now. Confirm.”

  Dylan looked at Trey and nodded.

  “Confirmed.” Trey kept the surveillance cameras turned on, the briefing room still filled with the black and white images.

  Frank Wheeler and his escort were outside on the sidewalk talking to the waitress now, their hands gesturing frantically as they likely heard the story about Finn’s good deed. She shook her head and shrugged before walking away. Then a fire engine pulled up, hiding them from the traffic cameras.

  Her heart told her it was a lie. A fabrication intended to get under her skin and distract her from bringing down Edward Molodavi. Wheeler was being forced to tell her this fib, this whopper of a lie, or they’d hurt him again.

  Her mind told her to consider the possibility Frank was speaking the truth.

  She tried to recall if her father had ever said anything to her, had ever done anything suspicious. If any of her fellow detectives had hinted, made a bad joke about it, this blot on her father’s character.

  This blot on her family name.

  So many new questions clogged her mind, with no way to answer them.

  None she could trust.

  She opened her eyes to see the surveillance cameras blink off, one by one back to the standard black screen.

  She couldn’t ignore Frank Wheeler and his treachery.

  Dylan turned toward her again and Jessie fought the urge to break into tears.

  “Let’s get out of here.” He stood up and gently pulled her to her feet. “Trey, call me if you need me. We’ll be upstairs.”

  The tech master nodded, staying silent.

  Neither of them said a word on the way back to his apartment. He unlocked the door and let them in, securing it behind her.

  Dylan led her to the couch, seating himself in the chair across from her.

  He clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward. “Talk to me.”

  The innocent sentence broke her.

  The tears flowed and she had no way to stop them, no way to control them.

  In a flash Dylan was beside her, pulling her into his lap as he hugged her tight, his arms warm and welcoming.

  Safe in his embrace, Jessie let her world come apart, sobbing uncontrollably.

  …

  Dylan lay back on the couch, tugging her atop him. She hiccupped and sighed, the tears already drying on her face.

  He rubbed her back, knowing she’d talk when she was ready.

  “My father.” She stopped and swallowed hard.

  Dylan waited.

  Jessie propped herself up on his chest and looked at him. “He said he was dirty.”

  “So I heard.”

  “What if it’s true? About my dad, I mean.” Jessie swallowed hard. “That’d make everything I’ve done a mockery of justice, a laughable matter.”

  He frowned. “It does not. Why would you think that?” He shifted on the couch, sitting up to pull her into his lap. “Listen. Molodavi’s willing to say or do anything to get you back, including getting Wheeler to lie about your father. What he said, you can’t automatically accept it as gospel. I sure as hell don’t, not until we find more evidence. When Trey gets into Molodavi’s servers he can check—but until then you have to hold off thinking any of it is true
.”

  “But…” She fell silent and pressed her face against his neck. “What if it is? All of it? Any of it?”

  “Then we’ll deal with it. Your father was more than a single event, a single decision. He was your father, and that alone makes him a damned good man in my book.” He stroked her cheek. “We’ll get through this.”

  “But…”

  “Shush. Rest up.” He dropped a kiss onto her flame-red hair and held her tight.

  His outer calm disguised his inner turmoil as he juggled these new facts. It didn’t change what they’d done, or what they’d do to keep Jessie safe and take the jerk down, but it was a disturbing aspect he hadn’t planned for.

  Dylan continued, lowering his voice to a softer, gentler tone. “Whatever sins your father committed have nothing to do with you here, now.”

  “Why didn’t Molodavi say anything? He had me right there. Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked.

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions, the first being that it’s true. Second, Molodavi might not remember your father—I’ve no doubt he’s got a hell of a lot of cops on his payroll, and remembering a beat cop from years ago isn’t likely.”

  She sniffled. “The men I worked with. They would have known. They should have known, the older ones who had been around for a while.” Jessie looked at him. “Why didn’t they tell me? Say something, anything?”

  “Would it have changed the way you acted? Affected your work?”

  “I…I don’t know. Maybe.” She shook her head. “Maybe not.”

  “Listen,” he said, desperate to soothe her soul. “You are your own person; you’re not your father. You stand in front of him, not where he is or where he was.”

  Jessie closed her eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Sure you do.” He ruffled her hair. “You get the flash drive to take Molodavi down. We hack his servers and retrieve the untouched surveillance tape to clear your name.” Dylan tapped her cheek, forcing her to open her eyes. “So let’s get ready to take them down.”

  Jessie twisted her lips into a small, sad smile. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Let’s.”

  “Good. How about starting off with a low-intensity workout?” He scooped her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom.

  …

  Jessie stared at the light blue ceiling, her pulse hammering in her ears. She sighed, her body still trembling with the aftershocks of Dylan’s lovemaking.

  It’d been an intense two hours, filled with pleasure and discovery. And not once had her thoughts turned to Wheeler, her father, or the danger they were about to charge into.

  “What are you thinking?” He drew circles around her nipple with one finger, smiling as she twitched under his touch.

  “I’m thinking you’re a hell of a distraction.” She rolled onto her belly, forcing him to shift over on the mattress. “But one I definitely enjoy.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He stretched out beside her. The sweat was still cooling off his body, his well-defined abs daring her to run her tongue over and down, thrilling to the speed bumps.

  She sighed and pushed her libido down, promising to let it run free later when the time was right. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “And we’ll get to it.” He stroked her back, his hand coming to rest on her ass. “Tomorrow we’ll make the run on the casino. But tonight we’re going to eat and relax.” One eyebrow rose. “I think we’ve already made a good start on the relaxing.”

  “But the faster we get in…”

  “The faster we screw up.” He smiled. “Best time to do this is in the morning, when the majority of civilians are still in bed or trying to figure out where they lost all their money last night. Going in right now would be crazy—it’d be too busy, and we haven’t had the final briefing yet. So stay calm. We got this.” He drew a lazy circle on her shoulder blade. “Trust me. We know what we’re doing.”

  “Okay.” She paused, trying to find the right way to phrase her request. “Tell me why you’re doing this. Why you created the Brotherhood.”

  …

  He paused, a steel band growing tight across his chest. “Why?”

  “Because I want to know more about you. What pushes a man to walk away from a military career and set up a nightclub, pull in his friends to run in the shadows and do what needs to be done? I need to know this part of you before we go back into the fire.” She touched his arm. “You’ve let me into your life, and I appreciate that. But I need more. You’ve shown me the how and the where, the when and the what of the Brotherhood. Now I need to know the why.”

  He could have made something up, told her it was a dream he’d always aspired to since he was a young boy—the desire to help others lasting far beyond his time in the service.

  But he couldn’t lie to her.

  He wouldn’t.

  Even if the truth ripped open old wounds.

  “This is because of one bad day. One bad mission.” Dylan sorted through the memories. “We were overseas, in a country I can’t name. My team was sent out to extract a high-level insurgent leader. We got word through an informant he’d be in a certain place at a certain time, with minimal protection.”

  He could smell the gunpowder in the air, taste the sand in his mouth.

  “We go in expecting five or so enemy fighters, and all of a sudden we’re facing an entire damned army. No chance to grab the insurgent leader, we had to cut and run to save our own asses.”

  The images flashed behind his eyes.

  “Two of our own were shot, but they could move. We headed to a nearby clearing where an evac chopper was going to land. There was no way we could get all the way back to our original landing spot and we knew we’d be cutting it close. Simonson was at the back, covering our asses.”

  Dylan drew a shallow breath. He’d never told anyone the full story, not even his brothers-in-arms.

  He paused, sorting through his thoughts and emotions at that revelation.

  “He was your friend,” Jessie offered.

  “He was a good man,” Dylan replied. “He drank, smoked, and swore like the rest of us. He was a bastard when he needed to be, but he got the job done, and that’s all we ever asked of him.” He glanced at her. “So, yes, he was my friend.”

  She nodded, letting him tell the tale at his own pace.

  It took a few seconds for him to find the words to continue, fighting through the urge to just curse and yell without explanation.

  “The insurgents got their act together and pressed forward. We got split up. Simonson got stuck behind a burned-out car and laid down enough fire for us to get through. Everyone got to the chopper except for him.”

  “Then what?”

  The words didn’t come easily, but he forced them out because she wanted to know. She needed to know how he’d become the man he was today.

  “We were still under fire. The pilot said he had to leave or we’d all go down. I wanted to wait, go back for Simonson. We couldn’t. There was no way we could stay there, risking the hurt members of the team.

  “He looked up at us and gave a thumbs-up. He knew the score, knew he’d have to stay behind. We took off. I saw Simonson hunker down behind a wall. The bastards were closing in on him and he looked up, saw us in the air. He threw his rifle down and grabbed a grenade. Pulled the pin and waited.”

  He drew his bottom lip into his mouth, chewed the sensitive skin for a second.

  “Bastards shot him in the knees first at distance, took him down. He knelt there as they advanced, rifles trained on him. They didn’t shoot again.”

  “They wanted to take him alive,” Jessie murmured.

  Dylan nodded. “We knew what they’d use him for. They wouldn’t ransom him back or trade him for some of their fighters in jail. They’d torture him to death and film it for their propaganda videos. Simonson waited until they came closer. Then he let go of the handle, holding the grenade out in one hand so they saw it, saw their death coming.”

  Jessie s
wallowed hard. He didn’t have to tell her all the gory details.

  She knew.

  “We don’t know how many of them he took out. When it was all over we put him in for a Silver Star.”

  Her fingers dug into his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. But that wasn’t the worst of it.” He snorted. “I’ve lost men before. It’s part of what we do, part of the acceptable risk. We know when we go out there’s a chance someone won’t come back. So while losing Simonson was bad, it wasn’t what set me off.”

  Dylan hesitated, his mind stalling over the details.

  “You don’t have to tell me any more,” Jessie said. “I understand you have oaths, promises…”

  “No.” He put his hand over hers. “It wasn’t that he died, although that was bad enough. It was why. Turns out, while we were in the air, the word came in to G-2 there was a huge enemy force moving into the area, making the acquisition impossible. But the information wasn’t passed on to us because it would have compromised their informant. If we had turned around halfway there and come back it would have looked suspicious. It could possibly be traced back to the inside man, putting him in danger. There was a real chance that Military Intelligence would have lost their contact.” He shook his head. “So they said nothing to us and let it happen, let us fly right into a clusterfuck without any warning. Even when we came back they didn’t apologize, just swore us to secrecy and gave us a script for what we were supposed to say, what we were supposed to believe.”

  Jessie let her breath out slowly.

  “We couldn’t tell anyone the real story. So I went to the funeral and listened to the rifles fire and handed over the American flag to his wife and kids, letting them believe the lie, the cover story my superiors made up.” He swiped at his eyes, surprised to find them damp. “It wasn’t a bad story, you understand. Made him all brave and badass, charging in to save our asses. But it wasn’t the truth and it somehow made his death worse.” He looked at her. “He could have died there anyway. But he died to keep a lie alive, and then we helped cover it up. And every day his widow and his children look at that Silver Star and think about a lie, think about a story made up by some guy behind a desk who didn’t want to break the rules and let us know what we were going into. They weren’t honest with us and Simonson died never knowing what or why he was there, why it’d all gone sideways.”