Overwatch

by Riley Flynn

  “You can’t!” Hayley whispered. “It’ll kill you!”

  “It’ll probably kill you, too,” he said. “You should probably be ready for that.”

  Suddenly any resemblance to Jax was gone. Now his voice was cold and automatic.

  “We’re gonna die,” Brandon moaned. “I don’t wanna die.”

  The stray wolf had already covered half of the fifty-yard distance between them, and another had joined him from the rear. Hayley felt her heartbeat in her ears as they closed in on where the children were. Then she felt Lucas rummaging in the snow.

  “What are you doing?”

  He was silent but a second later, his hand emerged with a short branch. It was thin, little more than a twig.

  “Get behind me,” he said. “Now.”

  Hayley did as she was told, while Brooke dragged her brother into position next to her. Lucas was standing, waving the branch like a weapon.

  “When I say run, run.” He turned to face the approaching beasts. “Hey! Hey!”

  The lead wolf lowered its head and picked up its pace as the one in the rear sprinted to bridge the gap. They were making a beeline straight for the hill. In a handful of seconds, the lead once had started to crouch, ready to leap the final handful of yards between it and Lucas.

  “Run!” he shouted. “Now!”

  Before they could move, a gunshot cracked like thunder in the night air.

  30

  “What the hell?” Todd yelled as they reached the patio that overlooked the golf course. Quaid, Young and Lee were there, rifles at the ready.

  Jax’s heart was racing—the cool battle calm he’d always relied on in combat had left him the moment he learned Hayley was missing, and the sound of the gunshot only made his anxiety keener.

  “That’s five hundred meters out,” he said. “Due west.”

  Lee pointed to dark furrows in the snow. “The tracks lead in that direction. Whoever is out there, he’s armed.”

  “Fuckers!”

  Even muffled by the snow and distance, Jax could make out Farries’ voice. The group shared a glance that said everything that needed saying, and they took off as one in the direction of the tracks.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jax saw another silhouette jogging to catch up with them from the northeast.

  “Who goes there?” he called.

  “It’s Smith. I heard the gunshot.”

  Jax clamped down on an instinct to simply shoot the silhouette and be done with it. Instead he said: “Follow at a distance. Do not engage. That’s an order.”

  The cadre advanced west as quickly as it could given the knee-deep snow, which wasn’t nearly quickly enough for Jax. His imagination came up with a dozen nightmare scenarios involving Hayley and Farries, each one flashing through his mind’s eye in the time it took to blink.

  “Farries would never hurt her,” Maggie puffed beside him. “You know that, Jax.”

  “I never thought he’d hurt Archer either,” he said.

  “Captain,” Quaid called from his position at point. “Sir, I need to know: do we take the shot?”

  Jax hesitated. His friend or his daughter? Duty or loyalty? Did he believe that Farries could hurt Hayley? And what about a stray shot? Even with night vision, his men couldn’t be counted on to make a precise shot.

  “Captain?”

  “Negative,” he said, his guts roiling. “Hand-to-hand only, unless he’s aiming right for you or one of the kids. Then you shoot to wound unless you have no other option. Understood?”

  “Copy that, sir,” said Quaid.

  “And you stand down, Smith,” Jax called, but there was no answer. Smith had already cut from them and was running at an angle that led him away from the trail. Jax thanked heaven for small favors and focused on the task at hand: getting to the end of these tracks as fast as they could.

  31

  “Take that, fuckers!”

  The wolf twisted in mid-leap and landed awkwardly, tumbling into the snow. The one behind it had already turned tail and was sprinting back toward its companions, who had abandoned the carcass in favor of the safety of the distant treeline.

  Lucas ignored the gunshot and the voice yelling behind them and swung his branch directly at the lead wolf. It connected with the animal’s muzzle and knocked it to the left. The beast backed away, clearly dazed, but didn’t retreat.

  “You wanna take me on?” the voice behind them bellowed. “Come on, you sonofawhore! I’ll fuckin bust you in half!”

  A large silhouette trudged toward the low hill in the snow as Hayley put a face to the voice. Even raspy as it was, and bewildered as she was, she recognized it.

  “Sgt. Farries?” she called, her heart pounding. “Is that you?”

  The silhouette stopped in its tracks about twenty feet to her right. It turned to face her, and sure enough, she saw the sergeant’s bearded face in the moonlight. He looked awful—his hair stuck out under the rim of his filthy knitted cap and his beard had gone all scraggly—but it was definitely him.

  He peered at her. “Hayley? Izzat you? Wha the helleryoo doin out here?”

  She’d seen too many people drunk in the past few months not to see the signs. The sergeant was polluted, as Carly would say.

  “What are you doing here?” she called back. “Are you okay?”

  “Saw tracks,” he slurred. “Lil ones. Why’re you out ‘n the snow? Dontchoo know s’dangerous out here?”

  “We were on a sleepover!” Brandon blurted. “They made me!”

  Farries trudged over to where they were standing, staggering with every step. “Wasn’t easy gettin’ here,” he panted. “Made me work for it, I’m tellin ya. But yer okay, right?”

  “We’re fine,” Hayley said, laying a hand on his arm. “Thanks to you.”

  “Still good fer somethin.’” Hayley could see the moonlight reflecting off the wetness in his eyes. “Not a to’le loss.”

  “Who said that?” Hayley asked. “You’re a hero. You saved us!”

  “Watch it!” Lucas cried from his vantage point on the hill, but it was too late. The wolf that he’d struck with the branch had regained its equilibrium, and it was angry. It bolted toward Farries, sinking its huge jaws into the man’s forearm and dragging him forward and down to the ground with it.

  The two grappled in the snow as Farries pounded the handle of his pistol on the wolf’s head. It shook and snarled, drawing a strangled shriek of pain from him.

  “Fucker!” Farries hollered again.

  The children stood frozen, watching the struggle in the moonlight.

  “Farries!”

  Hayley spun around: that was Jax’s voice! A glowing collection of lights was advancing quickly on them from the direction of the resort. They were saved!

  “Jax!” she cried. “Jax, help!”

  Then the gun crashed again. Hayley turned back to see the wolf slump onto its side in the snow, a river of black blood running from under it. Farries pushed himself to an unstable standing position.

  “That’s right, motherfucker,” he muttered. “Don’ mess with th’ bess…”

  Hayley ran to him and he steadied himself against her shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Never better. Cole as a baster, tho. We shoo go back.”

  “Come on.” She motioned for the others to join her. “Those lights out there. That’s Jax. They’re looking for us.”

  She took Farries by the hand; he wasn’t wearing gloves.

  “Here,” she said, guiding his left hand under the collar of her heavy coat. “Warm up your hand. Then we’ll warm up the other one.”

  “Yer a swee’heart,” he said. “You know that? Sush a nice kid.”

  Hayley recoiled at the frozen skin against her neck, Suck it up, princess, she scolded herself. He just saved your lives.

  32

  “Jax! Jax, help!”

  A dagger of ice sliced his stomach as he recognized Hayley’s panicked voice. All he could
make out was a struggle of silhouettes moving in the moonlight as they closed the final twenty yards between them and their target. All he knew was that Hayley was in danger.

  Then another gunshot. A strangled yelp, then a thud. Jax felt his stomach drop into his boots.

  Then suddenly the world lit up. He yanked off his night vision gear as the beam of Quaid’s flashlight illuminated the scene in front of them: three children standing side-by-side, a disheveled but recognizable Brad Farries standing next to Hayley, her eyes wide. Farries’ left hand was around her neck. In his right hand was an automatic pistol.

  “Take the shot, Booth!” yelled a voice from his right. It was Smith—he must have looped around and come in on the flank while they weren’t paying attention. “Take the shot or I will!”

  Jax raised the barrel of his SIG Sauer and leveled the muzzle at Farries’ chest. Lee, Quaid and Young did the same. Maggie and Todd simply stood there, hands on their holsters.

  “Drop the gun, soldier!” Jax barked. “That’s an order!”

  “Fuck you!” Farries called back. “I don’ haffta listen t’you!”

  “He’s got your daughter, Booth!” said Smith. “Don’t be an idiot! Drop him before he kills her!”

  Jax heard the blood roaring through his ears, felt the spit in his mouth dry up as the coppery tang of adrenaline filled it. His brain worked furiously in search of the right answer.

  Then Farries made the decision for him. He lifted his right hand, the one holding the pistol, and Jax’s finger squeezed reflexively on his own trigger.

  Time seemed to slow down as he watched Farries spin to his right, pushed backwards by the force of the slug tearing through the meat of his right bicep. At that instant he saw the pistol drop easily from the man’s hand; he hadn’t been holding the grip. He wasn’t going to fire.

  Jax heard Hayley’s shriek, as if from a long way off. Her face was twisted in shock and horror as she clutched Farries and tried to keep him from falling to the ground. All this happened in less than half of a second.

  An instant later, a gunshot crashed from somewhere behind Jax’s right ear and Farries’ throat exploded in a blast of black.

  Time sped up again and Jax sprinted in the snow toward Hayley. It took three seconds for him to reach her and tackle her, screaming, to the ground. He landed with his body on all fours on top of hers. Beside them, Farries hit the snowy ground on his left side. The hole in his throat had almost separated his head from the rest of him, and his eyes stared blankly into the distance, reflecting the artificial glow of the search party’s flashlights.

  “No!” Hayley shrieked in his ear, causing his eardrum to contract. “Why? Why did you shoot him?”

  “Drop it!” he heard Maggie bark. “Drop it or I drop you!”

  Jax looked up to see Smith raise his hands above his head, his SIG Sauer already on its way into the snow in front of him.

  “Someone had to do it,” Smith said evenly. “If I hadn’t, the girl would be dead.”

  Hayley wrestled herself from under Jax and pushed herself to her feet, her face shimmering with tears.

  “He wasn’t going to hurt us!” she wailed. “He saved us! From the wolves!”

  The other children were crying now, too, except for Lucas, the boy from the mountains. He simply stared silently at Farries’ body.

  Quaid, Young and Lee turned their Fultons on Smith, illuminating his bland, wide face. He stared at them impassively, keeping his hands held high.

  “Maggie!” Her radio suddenly squawked to life. It was Ruben’s voice. “Maggie, come in! It’s an emergency!”

  She lowered her pistol and reached for the walkie-talkie at her belt. Jax watched it all with numb detachment, still trying to process what had just happened. In the distance, the lonely wail of a wolf pierced the night.

  “Stubbs here,” she said. “What’s the emergency?”

  “Thank Christ!” said Ruben. “Are you with Jax, over?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she said. “But now’s not the—”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for ten minutes!”

  Jax realized dimly that Ruben, out at the Broadmoor, likely didn’t know about Archer yet, or the search party. None of what had happened in the last half-hour.

  “We were on a different channel,” she said absently. “Again, it’s not—”

  “Look, Jax will want to know this ASAP!”

  “Know what?”

  “Farries didn’t kill Lisa Blume!”

  Jax felt his breath freeze in his chest. Maggie’s eyes were saucers as she squeezed the button on her radio.

  “Say—say again,” she breathed.

  “Hutch followed a hunch and started questioning Evan Travis about the night of the murder,” Ruben said urgently. “Travis finally broke down and confessed that he’d snapped when she told him that she’d never leave Farries for him. It’s a long story, but he went into a rage and attacked her. He’s lying on the floor of his suite right now in the fetal position.”

  None of them said a word. The only sound was the children snuffling back tears and snot in the stillness of the night.

  “Did you copy that?” Ruben asked.

  Maggie pressed the button. “Uh, yeah. Yeah we copy. Stand…stand by.”

  Jax felt a cold emptiness in the pit of his soul. He could see the others staring at him, waiting to follow his lead. After an eternity of seconds, he finally turned to face Smith. The man’s hands were still in the air, but his eyes now looked like those of a rabbit that had been caught in snare.

  33

  Smith looked into Booth’s icy gaze and knew that he was done.

  It had been a good run, all in all. He’d made it far longer after the collapse than he’d expected, given the circumstances, and he’d accomplished a lot. Not as much as he would have liked, of course, and no history books would ever mention his name. Not that any historians would ever know who John Smith had been, anyway—it was simply one of a dozen or more names that Adam Holt had used during his seventeen years in the intelligence game.

  For men like him, the job was all that mattered. Doing the best you could, because ultimately, it was the right thing to do. It certainly wasn’t for the money—he could have made ten times as much as a private contractor—or the recognition. The best he could ever hope for from Marcus Chase had been not getting ripped apart for screwing up. Again, it was all part of the work. Men like him, who could see the big picture and weren’t afraid to act, were rare indeed. And history didn’t remember any of them, because it never knew them in the first place.

  “I had to take the shot,” he said as Booth advanced on him. “You know I’m right.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Booth said in a low, almost conversational, tone.

  Smith turned to the others, but none of them returned his gaze. Not that he expected them to, but he needed to play this out.

  “Maggie,” he said. “You know what he’s going to do. You need to stop him.”

  She finally made eye contact, and he immediately wished she hadn’t.

  “You miserable bastard,” she growled. “I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”

  “There was no way I could have known about Lisa Blume,” he said. “I was just going with the evidence. You can’t blame me for that.”

  Booth stopped an arm’s length from him. Smith knew better than to lower his hands yet.

  “You led me right down the garden path with your theories about Farries as some sort of serial killer,” said Maggie. “And all along, you were the one we needed to watch out for.”

  Booth held him fast with his gaze. “I know what happened,” he said quietly. “It took me too long to figure it out because we got called out here. You killed Archer. You stole the MO from Lisa Blume’s murder so we’d think it was Farries.”

  Maggie shook her head, eyes wide. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You played me even worse than I thought. You built me up to believe Farries was some kind of monster, all so you
could eventually pin Archer’s murder on him. You used Lisa Blume’s death for your own agenda, so you could kill your commanding officer. What kind of sick person does something like that?”

  You have no idea, Smith thought.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It was all an accident—”

  An instant later he felt hot pain as the cartilage at the base of his nose broke and his head snapped backwards. When he recovered and looked back at Booth, there was a cold grin on the captain’s face. His right knuckles were smeared with Smith’s blood.

  “No, that was an accident,” said Booth. “My fist slipped. Now, we’re going to talk to Raines. He mentioned something about a firing squad earlier.”

  Smith ran the back of his hand under his gushing nose.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  Booth ignored him. “I can’t wait to extract every one of your little secrets,” he said with a coldness that startled even Smith himself. It was enough to make him wonder just what Booth was actually capable of. “And every time you scream, I’ll think about Brad Farries and Henry Archer.”

  Smith started to back away, his feet shooshing against the snow blocking his way.

  “Maggie,” Jax said quietly. “Why don’t you take the kids away and call the removal detail out? And track down the president; tell him to expect a late night visitor.”

  She nodded and rounded up the children. “What’s happening?” Peterson’s son blurted. “We’re going to get in trouble!” The two girls, still sobbing, shushed him. Lucas, as always, was silent.

  The soldiers and Wallace Todd watched the group head toward the resort. When they were out of earshot, Booth turned back to Smith.

  “What did you think you’d accomplish by killing Archer?” he said in a low voice. “You had to have known Raines wouldn’t promote you. He hates you.”

  If you only knew, Smith thought.