How could this have happened? Where the hell is Rourke?
The real scene materialized. Melissa wasn’t working on Tucker. He sat sprawled nearby, comforting a distraught Judith in his arms as he stared bleak, sad eyes at Cassidy. How could he be in two places at once? Who the hell was bleeding?
She didn’t get it until she finally stood over Melissa. She wasn’t working on Tucker. God no. It was Rourke.
Alex fell to his knees beside her. “What happened?”
“One of Cain’s men came out of nowhere. Shot at us. He returned fire,” Tucker offered weakly. “We cleared the wall fine. All of us. Almost made it back to your camp before he went down.”
“He’s dying,” Judith whimpered.
“I doused him with all the blood stopper I had on me, but I had no idea he’d been hit until it was too late. Dumb shit should’ve told me. I couldn’t,,, I couldn’t help him.”
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Alex cursed, jerking his blowout kit off his belt. All tough guys carried a compact trauma kit for desperate times like this. Blood stopper. Compression bandages. Elastic wrap dressing. Stuff to save a guy’s life. He went to work on his fallen agent.
Cassidy couldn’t speak. Rourke lay with his head to one side. So damned pale. His eyes too dark, but not seeing her. A trickle of blood eked out of his mouth, dripping to the dirt. She dropped to her place at Rourke’s side. “Hey, buddy,” she whispered into his ear, her hand to his cheek. “I’m here.”
His eyelids flickered. He blinked, struggling to focus. “Butch?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she cried. “I’m right here, Rourke. I’ve got your six.”
“They... safe?”
Tears flooded her vision. “We’re all safe. Now buck up. Let’s get out of here and go home.”
“G-g-good.” He licked his lips, but forgot to close his mouth.
Cassidy glanced angrily at the medic who seemed to be helping Alex. “Do something!”
The young man shook his head without saying a word.
“Cassidy, leave him alone,” Melissa ordered sternly. “Help me.”
Cassidy did. She combined her hands with Melissa’s, already covered in slippery, warm blood, but there was no chest wound. She cringed at the awful truth. The blood flow came from inside Rourke’s thigh, from his femoral artery. He was bleeding out. His system didn’t have enough blood supply left for his heart to pump. It couldn’t work. That’s why Melissa worked so feverishly on his heart. He was dying…
No!
Cassidy threw her whole self into chest compressions. Together, she and Melissa kept Rourke’s heart beating while the medic hooked IV lines for an emergency transfusion. The metallic scent of blood mingled with sweat rose into Cassidy’s nose. Until now, she had never known a tattoo of the American flag flew over Rourke’s heart. There was so much to learn from him. This couldn’t happen. Not to Rourke.
“One. Two,” Melissa counted as they established a regular rhythm, “three. Four.”
“Come on, O’Neill,” Cassidy whimpered, her tears falling in perfect round splats onto his bare chest. Like raindrops. They looked like damned raindrops! On this, what had become the worst day of her life. “You’ve survived worse hits, damn you. You can do it. Like me. You can fly.”
“One. Two. Three. Four.”
“We need to roll,” the medic said somberly. “Hospital’s on standby.”
Cassidy searched his eyes for the truth she didn’t want to see, but the medic avoided her gaze. Even Alex looked away. She threw everything into stronger and better compressions, not allowing Melissa to stop, not for one damned second. “This is not going to happen. I won’t let it.”
Melissa endured with her. “One. Two. Three. Four.”
“Try, Rourke,” Cassidy commanded. “For God’s sake, just try.”
Alex tapped her gently on her wrist.
“Leave me alone,” she snarled as tears dripped down her cheeks and neck. “He can do this.”
Instead of arguing, Alex stepped back and let her work.
Melissa never faltered. “One. Two. Three. Four.”
Rourke’s eyelids blinked fast, his fingers rising to grasp nothing but air. Cassidy grabbed onto his hand, ready to hold his soul to earth if that was what it took.
“Butch,” he groaned. “Always meant to tell… I… love you. Give ’em hell… for me.” His hand went slack with the rest of his body.
“No!” she shrieked, clutching his bloody fingers to her cheek. This was not their last operation together.
Only when Alex and the medic lifted the gurney beneath Rourke did she realize they meant to take him. She rose alongside the senior agent she’d grown to—love. Yes, love. Rourke, her nemesis, her mentor, her worst nightmare, and sometimes her best friend.
The chopper’s rotors picked up speed. Dirt and dust whirled, catching her in a stinging frenzy she barely felt. It was nothing compared to the pain ripping her heart apart. She had no choice. She let him go.
She let the wind hurl itself at her. Not Rourke.
She hurled her angst back at the goddamned wind. Not Rourke!
Alex stepped away from the chopper doors, his face set in stone. Judith whimpered in the background somewhere while the world Cassidy knew and loved fell apart. She stood too long, watching a dark sky that seemed to have swallowed the chopper alive. One minute, flashing orange and green lights glittered in the night; the next, gone.
Still, she watched. Voices buzzed behind and around her. Tucker explained to Alex how it had all gone down, how some kid had popped up from nowhere and fired. Rourke returned fire, but no one realized he’d been hit. It wasn’t until they were back to camp that he dropped to one knee. As soon as he knew Rourke had been hit, Tucker had requested a medic from his FBI cohorts. The medic came right away. Within seconds, but the wound was—fatal.
Melissa comforted a sobbing Judith while Alex offered stiff-lipped answers that offered no solace. He’d already contacted the hospital. A trauma team waited on standby.
Cassidy stared into the dark where her buddy had gone. She heard it all, but the numbness of the sad night engulfed her. Crickets and frogs chirped from the creek that fed the willows on the other side of the wall—the wall that Rourke had so easily scaled earlier. The busybody who’d told her to take it slow with Jude; that he didn’t want to see her get hurt. The man who’d drilled her over and over again at the shooting range until she was as good as him. The guy whose eyes twinkled when she’d least expected. Those willows. That wall. That Rourke.
She had nothing left to give. Her normally overflowing cup now stood not only drained dry as a bone, but run over and crushed to dust. Soldiers don’t cry. She knew that. It was her motto, her mantra during tough ops, and her prayer in the worst of times. She’d seen carnage. Hell. She’d been on that awful Mexican op. She’d seen damned good men get shot and die. But—not Rourke.
The clouds let go of a flash of lightning and then a drop of rain. Thunder rumbled. Still, she stood and stared, her heart locked up tight and hard. At last a gentle hand jolted her from the edge of hopelessness. How long he’d stood beside her before he’d touched her, she didn’t know. “The hospital will call,” Alex said quietly.
She nodded. And then what? Shouldn’t we be there right now? Shouldn’t we at least be on our way to be with Rourke? Aren’t we even going to try? Is it already too late?
The questions came without answers. She wouldn’t have accepted them anyway. Not yet.
Alex pulled her into his side, his arm holding her together when she crumbled to her knees, taking him to the ground with her. The storm unleashed. Want to or not, she did what grieving women all over the world did when their hearts were broken. With her palms to the earth, she wailed, her keening a shrill angry hurt tossed into the universe.
There were no words strong enough, tough enough, or powerful enough to quench the pain inside. Cassidy Dancer forced her face into the dirt after a godawful day and hurled the only thing she had left back at God—a
ll the hurt in her heart.
Not. Rourke.
Jude stood at the open door of the FBI RV with Agent Stuckey. Once he stepped onboard their waiting helicopter, his life would never be the same, and he knew it. Agent Stuckey said he’d have a team watching over Judith while Jude was gone. She’d be fine. Jude argued to at least speak with her before he left, but Stuckey flat-out refused. Said the mission would be compromised. It was too risky.
The knowledge that Judith and Cassidy were safe should’ve been all Jude needed to feel good, but still he stalled. So much of what lay ahead frightened the hell out of him.
He wasn’t Tucker, and for sure, he wasn’t Cassidy. They were precision-made patriots born in the refining fires of warfare, battle, and hardcore discipline. He was an accountant who calculated out of balances in his head and could tell anyone the amount in his checking account, right down to the penny.
Columnar spreadsheets littered his life, not brass shells, and certainly not the electronic listening device taped to the middle of his back right now, between his shoulder blades like an itch he couldn’t reach. Somehow the FBI could turn it on and off so he could avoid detection should anyone scan him with a bug detector. An earpiece so small fit snuggly inside his ear canal. It was designed to escape notice, but it would also relay every single word he uttered for the next twenty-four hours. Longer, if needed.
In the blink of an eye, he’d become someone else. So he hesitated, like most sane men would on the edge of insanity, and he asked himself, why am I doing this?
Floyd stood with him. Waiting. This federal agent wasn’t what Jude expected. Instead of badgering, he’d appealed to Jude’s truest weakness—his instincts as a father. Belligerence and threats would’ve never won him over, only honesty. Jude respected Floyd. If nothing else, he was a pretty perceptive man, too. He seemed to return the respect. Darn it, anyway. Saying no to a jerk like Tucker Chase would have been easier.
The yard of the now-defunct cult compound looked more like a parking place for black SUVs, RVs and buses, all marked with the unmistakable seal of the federal government. Jude took it in with a quick glance. The flight back to D.C. would take several hours. From there, he’d catch a connecting flight and travel onto New York City to intercept Cain’s three assassins, code-named the Brothers Grimm, also known as Alan Campbell, Mickey Perez and Clyde Fonda.
Jude barely knew them. The FBI knew exactly where they were, but locating them was never the reason they’d needed Jude in the first place. His assignment was to locate the primary supply of aerosolized ricin. The storehouse of death.
The FBI suspected the Brothers Grimm would utilize an HVAC to distribute the aerosolized poison more effectively at the targeted metro stations across the country. No one would know for sure until Jude intercepted and convinced the Brothers that Cain had sent him to assist. If asked why, he was supposed to give them further instructions to proceed to the next phase, whatever that was, insisting that Cain wanted all phases completed within weeks.
The only solid part of the plan was that Cain decried modern technology. The FBI was fairly certain none of the Brother’s Grimm carried a cell phone. It made sense. There were no cell towers in that remote part of California near Boggs Mountain. Jude had already found out the hard way, the day he’d gotten branded.
His showing up out of the blue in New York, had to sound authentic, and that was where Jude knew he might fail. He could detect a lie easily since he’d endured years of Rachel’s close-up-and-personal, hands-on training, but he couldn’t for the life of him tell one. Neither could he tell a decent joke. She’d always complained he was too serious, that he didn’t have a funny bone in his body. She might have been right. This next day or two might not prove too funny. He’d have to find a way to become a good enough liar to fool three truly evil men.
Floyd shuffled his feet, still waiting for Jude to commit once and for all. Other men might be excited at the adventure. Jude was not. Terrified butterflies churned like rabid bats in the pit of his stomach.
“You do remember I’m going with you?” Floyd offered.
Jude nodded without taking that final step.
“And we’ll have plenty of back-up.”
Jude blew out a big sigh, dropped to the ground, and wondered what on earth he was thinking. “Then let’s do this.”
Floyd nodded approvingly. Together they ran to the waiting helicopter. After it deposited them at the San Francisco airport, they’d catch a private jet to the East Coast. After a quick de-briefing in Washington D.C., Jude would be on the first flight out of New York City in twenty-four hours. In the meantime, FBI, local authorities, and Homeland Security had every metro station in the nation under high alert and swarming with undercover agents.
Knowing he was doing something for his country didn’t ease Jude’s misgivings. Just thinking about facing these specific cult members made his heart pound. His last encounter with evil rankled at the back of his mind, only this time he wouldn’t be armed like he had been with Brother Victor. Not to mention that everything was unscripted. He’d have to play this entire charade by ear instead of a carefully thought out and prearranged plan. He wasn’t a spontaneous man—another of his faults according to Rachel.
Wait. Why am I doing this?
Judith’s pretty face came to mind as the helicopter lifted off. He stared out at the rapidly diminishing compound below. The last time he’d seen her was the morning Cain had demanded a sacrifice. If ever there was a hero in his family, it was her. Not him. Anything he did now was just icing on the family cake.
Then there was Cassidy. He had a long way to go to ever top that woman’s bravery and audacity. They lived in different worlds, but somehow they had intersected, even if for just a little while. She was part of him, and that part came with him now into this crazy unknown adventure. He hoped to find a way to maintain that connection.
A trail of moisture condensing on the outside window caught his attention. It was raining. How fitting. Even the sky cried. Two different streams of rainwater trickled down the concave glass dome, suddenly driven together by the oncoming wind. They joined. That’s Cassidy and me, he thought. No matter what happens now, she’ll always be with me.
Looking up, he caught Floyd’s thumbs-up signal from the next seat over. The agent looked optimistic. Jude returned the gesture without thought.
Yeah. Whatever.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alex stayed on at the Seattle office after the cult operation. Cassidy didn’t know why. She’d had the heart stomped out of her at Rourke’s funeral, and lost track of time. Before she new it, a week had passed by.
Overall, the mission had been hailed a huge success. The missing children of the cult members were located in Cain’s basement. Brother Roscoe had a hard time spitting it out when the FBI came calling, but apparently, Lucien had other plans for anyone under the age of twelve. Not anymore…
The FBI did a bang-up job reuniting long-lost children with parents, grandparents, and other family members. They processed all cult members in a timely manner, holding some for further investigation, but for the most part, releasing them to their semi-normal lives.
Most cult members recovered from their poisoning all except Sister Elaine. Cassidy found it interesting that Cain had meant to kill her, not once but twice despite her adamant support of him. But that was what happened. She’d dropped dead the same night from a double dose and an already compromised heart, and Cassidy honestly didn’t care.
For now, the FBI maintained a strong-arm on the media. A court-ordered blackout precluded release of the cult’s demise until the ricin threat was dogged and hopefully put to rest. But nothing could stop the constant reminder of Rourke’s death. Cassidy completed her written reports by herself. She’d suffered through the FBI debriefing like she’d been the only one on the operation. With Jude under the watchful eye of the FBI somewhere in New York, she just wanted to be left alone to lick her wounds, to try to remember why she did this godawful job.
Melissa McCormack was safely on the East Coast. Jed McCormack was happy. Tucker had already been released from the hospital, though Cassidy didn’t know where he’d gone after he’d been discharged. The only one left with nowhere to go was Judith.
Some FBI agent called Alex. Said he’d made arrangements for her care, but Alex contacted Cassidy to accompany Judith to her father’s place outside of Saint Augustine, Florida. The girl needed stability. Cassidy needed a new life. It seemed a good match.
Alex reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out two airline tickets. “I want you to take some time off. They’re open-ended. Don’t come back until you’re ready.”
She nodded, afraid to meet his eyes, her tears too close to the surface these days. He’d been there. He’d seen her meltdown. He didn’t need to see more. “I’ll be back in a week.”
“No, you won’t,” he said softly. “This is a TEAM assignment. Stay with Judith until her father comes home. Longer if necessary. You decide.”
She gulped and nodded again. She nodded a lot these days because words failed. She couldn’t let them come out of her mouth. They wouldn’t be intelligent anyway, and worse, sometimes they dissolved into tears.
In truth, she’d already taken Judith into her apartment. Alex knew that. After turning into a crazy woman back at camp, she’d run face first into Tucker, who’d still needed emergency treatment; Melissa, who was plenty distraught herself; but it was poor Judith who seemed to need Cassidy the most. The fourteen-year-old child had been turned into an orphan all over again, and her pain seemed to match Cassidy’s.
So Cassidy bucked up. Manned up. Gave in. What else could she do? Judith was part of Jude. She had no mother, no other family, and, at least momentarily, no father. The stark fear in her gray eyes motivated Cassidy to keep on functioning. She did what she’d always done. She stepped in to help an innocent caught up in a blistering nightmare. And she wasn’t able to stop.
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