Dead Heat

by Allison Brennan

  Michael told them about the camp where the boys lived and trained. It was an old prison, he said; he knew the general area. “I can get there on foot, but I don’t know about this map.”

  “I know where it is,” Kane replied and rolled out his own personal map. He used his finger to approximate where they where and where they were heading. “We’ll be landing here, out of sight. It’ll be bumpy, it’s an abandoned airstrip. We need to be cautious—there could be patrols. It’s two kilometers to the prison. My men will meet us at the strip. We’ll have two trucks. How many boys might be there, Michael?”

  “When I left, there were sixteen.”

  “Guards?”

  “Four at all times. Usually more.”

  Kane handed him a pencil. “Draw it. Buildings, relative distances, and natural boundaries like boulders or trees.”

  From the cockpit, Sean said, “ETA, fourteen minutes.”

  Sean had hardly spoken since Kane arrived. Lucy didn’t know how to read him. It was like he’d closed down. No, not closed down so much as changed focus. No jokes. No smiles. Lucy didn’t realize how much she’d grown to count on his positive attitude. Was it the situation or Kane’s presence? Was Sean as worried about what they were doing as she was? They were not only violating international law, but putting themselves, and a young boy, in danger.

  But there was nothing the FBI or DEA could do quickly to rescue Brad. They would attempt to go through diplomatic channels while trying to get information about Trejo and his location. A military operation would require confirmed intel about where he was being held, how many threats, and they only had the word of a child.

  A child who might be lying to them.

  Lucy didn’t want to believe Michael would risk all their lives, but it was also clear to her he was experiencing a severe case of survivor’s guilt. He wanted to save his friends, but more than that, he wanted revenge. It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he looked when he talked about the men who had killed his friends. His brothers.

  Maybe, because Lucy knew that feeling. She lived with it.

  Eight years ago Lucy had killed her rapist in cold blood. Truth be told, the man who called himself Trask hadn’t actually raped her. He’d facilitated her rape, he recorded it, he showed it to thousands of people live, on the Internet. He’d planned on raping her, told her how he would kill her while he did it. Lucy called him a rapist because he’d taken everything from her, and more. Those two days in Hell had nearly killed her, literally and figuratively.

  She didn’t think, she acted. Some might say she acted on pure emotion, but there was nothing emotional about her taking her father’s gun and shooting Trask six times in the chest, dead center.

  He hadn’t been armed. He hadn’t posed an immediate threat, but she still shot him. She watched him bleed, she watched him die. She felt no remorse. In fact, she felt relief and anger and fear. Even dead, she’d felt the fear.

  She had wanted revenge; right or wrong, she’d taken it. Premeditated, cold, calculating.

  Her brother Dillon, the forensic psychiatrist, had told her that she was acting on instinct, that she wasn’t accountable for her actions because of the trauma she’d suffered. Post-traumatic stress. The FBI had concurred, and sealed her file. And she’d let them. She didn’t tell anyone that she’d known exactly what she was doing. She didn’t tell Dillon everything, and being a shrink didn’t make anyone psychic.

  It was Jack who’d known. She had never told him, but he knew.

  He’d come out to visit her one day at Georgetown, a year after her attack. He came east often—ostensibly to reconnect with his twin brother Dillon, but mostly to talk to her. To train her. She’d learned more about firearms and self-defense from Jack than from her FBI training.

  It was a Sunday afternoon, and they’d sparred. He’d pinned her and she had a panic attack. That was when her panic attacks were far too common. Before she learned to control them, to shut them down.

  She’d hated herself for being weak, and she’d hated Jack for putting her in a position that made her feel like a victim again.

  “Stop,” Jack told her.

  “Stop what? Feeling helpless?”

  “Stop feeling guilty that you have no regrets.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she’d said through clenched teeth.

  He just stared at her. He didn’t have to say anything; Jack never said more than was necessary.

  “I’m numb,” she whispered.

  “You’re healing.”

  “I’d do it again.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t feel anything.” But that was a lie, and he knew it.

  “Let it go. Let the guilt over how you felt then, how you feel now, go. Or you’ll always be a victim.”

  “How dare you—”

  “Is that what you want? To feel victimized? To feel ashamed? You have nothing to be ashamed about. You killed him. He deserved it. If you hadn’t, he would have raped, tortured, and killed other women. Why on earth would you feel guilty for ridding the planet of a man who showed less remorse for his crimes than you have for protecting yourself?”

  “That’s not fair, Jack—” she had wanted to scream, to cry, but she couldn’t. Her emotions were gone. And that’s what she’d truly feared. That she had no feelings anymore. Nothing. That she would never feel anything again.

  “Put it in a box, Lucy. Lock it up. Don’t let your fear control you. If you do, you’ll always be a victim, and that bastard will win.”

  At the time, she didn’t believe him. She thought he was being a soldier, teaching her to be a soldier. How could she not feel anything when she took a human life?

  How could she feel justified?

  It was a long time before she understood.

  She wasn’t like most people. And maybe that was okay. It was her defense mechanism to survive what had happened to her. It had made her who she was today. Someone who could violate laws and rules and jeopardize her job to save innocents. That if she had to kill again, she could do it without hesitation. Her training gave her more skill, more experience, the ability to decipher a situation and know what to do and when to do it.

  It didn’t make her happy knowing that about her; but it put her life in perspective. And made her appreciate how Sean made her feel normal. She needed that so she could live with the black hole inside her, that black box she’d locked up but still had, the blackness that enabled her to take a life to save a life.

  And yet now, Sean was closed, stalwart, quiet. He was never quiet. Did he sense she was opening that dark box so she could do what needed to be done? Or did he fear she wouldn’t be able to control herself? That she wouldn’t come back?

  Kane was studying the map of the prison that Michael had drawn.

  “There’s a small town near here,” he said.

  “Hardly anyone lives there,” Michael said. “Except the general’s people.”

  “Where’s his mansion?”

  Michael frowned. “I was blindfolded. But we went over a river, on a wooden bridge. A small river, but I heard water and it smelled fresh and clean.”

  Kane looked at his map. He asked, “How far from the prison?”

  “Maybe an hour, at the most.”

  “And how far from the river?”

  “I don’t know. Ten, fifteen minutes?”

  Kane drew an arc from a small blue line on his map. He picked up his radio and clicked it. A minute later a voice came over the speaker.

  “Ranger here.”

  “Ranger, it’s Rogan. I need the exact location of a wood bridge approximately thirty to forty minutes south-southwest of the target.”

  “Roger that.”

  Lucy looked at Kane. “What are they doing?”

  “Recon,” Kane said and didn’t elaborate.

  Michael looked worried. “The mansion is in the middle of a jungle.”

  “There’re no jungles within an hour of the prison.”

  “It felt like it
.”

  Kane thought a moment. He got back on the radio. “Ranger, check more southwest first. The mountain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know where it is?” Lucy asked.

  “I have an idea.”

  “Bella will be there,” she said.

  “The girl?”

  “Trejo is her father.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “I’m telling you now.” She didn’t back down from Kane’s hard stare.

  “Five minutes,” Sean said from the cockpit.

  “Go through it again.” Kane turned to Michael. “Anything you remember, no matter how unimportant you think it is.”

  “They have a lot of guns,” he said. “I want a gun.”

  “No,” Lucy said.

  Kane ignored her and said to Michael, “Have you used a gun before?”

  “Yes.” No hesitation. No blinking. Lucy felt ill. This little boy—this not-so-little boy—had killed before.

  “I’ll think on it,” Kane said.

  “Why?”

  Kane didn’t give him an explanation. He called out to the cockpit. “Padre.”

  Padre unbuckled himself and came back. Sean said, “Buckle up, we’re starting our descent. Such as it is,” he muttered.

  Kane said, “Padre, you’re staying with the plane. We need someone to guard it.”

  Padre nodded.

  “Michael, you will stay with Sean. You hear that, Sean?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “My brother will die to protect you. I don’t want him dead, so you will do exactly what he tells you to.”

  Michael didn’t respond.

  “I need an affirmative, Michael.”

  Padre said, “Michael, we need your help. The boys at the prison will trust you. They don’t know us.”

  “I’ll obey.”

  Kane looked at Lucy. “Kincaid, you’re with me. If there’s a threat, are you capable of taking care of it?”

  “Yes.”

  But she wasn’t happy about it.

  * * *

  It was two in the morning and Samantha Archer couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she pictured Brad being tortured.

  She hadn’t gone to the hotel—she had a team out in the field and she was in charge. Houston was sending down a team to relieve her first thing in the morning, but until then it was just her.

  She was using the SSA’s office in the small DEA field office in McAllen. There was a staff of ten down here, set up almost exactly like the FBI resident agency, except the DEA office was larger. They had a secure storage for drugs and guns they seized until they could be shipped to be destroyed. She was the assistant director in charge of this office, San Antonio, and two more small units—and she’d failed everyone.

  Especially Brad.

  The couch she lay on was hard and vinyl. She sat up, put her head in her hands, then drank a full bottle of water.

  Sam’s dad had been a cop, her mother had been a dispatcher, her sister was a federal prosecutor in DC. She’d been recruited by the DEA in college. She’d thought it was noble to fight the war on drugs. She thought she could make a difference. She was smart, she was dedicated, and now she had eighteen years’ experience and was in leadership.

  And they were losing the war. The losses that had piled up in those eighteen years haunted her.

  Now she understood Brad in ways she hadn’t when they were sleeping together. She understood his obsession in ways she couldn’t before someone she cared about was taken.

  A knock on her door made her jump, and she mentally admonished herself.

  “Come in.”

  It was Tom Saldana. “Clark made it out of surgery. He’s in the ICU. If he survives the next twenty-four hours, the doctors think he’ll make it.”

  “Good.” Thank God.

  Tom closed the door. “I need to tell you something in complete confidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “We were set up.”

  “I figured that out,” she snapped. She rubbed her eyes. She shouldn’t be taking her anger and exhaustion out on this agent who almost lost his partner.

  “But I know how.” He sat down across from her. “Clark and I have cultivated several CIs. One, Lana, is a prostitute who has never given us bad information. Never. I don’t say that lightly, because no one else is that good. She’s the one who gave us the information about the warehouse.”

  “We also confirmed it at Peña’s house.”

  “Yeah, but it was too neat. That had to be part of the setup.”

  “Tom, I’m too tired for vague. Tell me straight out.”

  “When all this came down on Saturday, with Sanchez, Donnelly asked us to keep our eyes and ears open. Clark and I talked to Lana, told her what she needed to know, and said there was a thou in it if she had verifiable information, five grand if it led to his capture. She wasn’t interested—she knows who Sanchez is. Doesn’t want to cross the wrong people.

  “After we had confirmation that Sanchez was in McAllen—through Donnelly’s own CI—she came to us, said she had heard about a deal at the warehouse. It was a place we were familiar with. We knew it was used by the cartels, and it fit what we knew about Sanchez.”

  He paused. “She’s dead.”

  “So Sanchez killed her because she ratted him out.” Tom shook his head, and was about to say something when Sam put her hand up. It clicked. “He wouldn’t kill her if he set the whole thing up.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But she could testify against him, right?”

  “No. She didn’t get the information from Sanchez; she said she got it from another client of hers, an associate of Sanchez. There would be no reason to kill her—if she was effective for them. She didn’t know enough to be of use to us, so they’d simply let her be, using her as they needed.”

  “So they killed her to tie up loose ends.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’m sure it’s directly related to the ambush. That maybe she knew something else, about the setup. It’s the way she was killed that has me suspicious. She was shot in a motel off the freeway. Shot three times center mass when she opened the door, this afternoon.”

  “I still don’t see what you’re saying.”

  “Three times in the chest. That’s classic federal firearms training. You, me, every DEA and FBI agent use the same firearms instructors at Quantico. Her purse was missing. The clerk said she came in and paid cash. I went back tonight and asked to see the money. He wasn’t happy, but he let me buy it off him. Two crisp twenty-dollar bills.”

  “From an ATM?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe from whoever killed her. I hadn’t paid her yet, that would have come after the takedown. So someone paid her. Look, if it’s someone inside, where are they going to get the money? Money they could put back?”

  “Shit,” Sam muttered. “Do you have the twenties? I can run them.”

  He handed her a plastic evidence bag with two twenties.

  The information sank in. Maybe if she wasn’t so tired she would have picked it up before. “It’s one of us.”

  “I want to say that I trust everyone in here. I really do. I can’t see any of them setting us up. But you and I both know it happens. The cartels have a shitload of money, and having an agent on their payroll is not unheard of. Between the two of us, we could name a half dozen corrupt agents in Texas alone who were caught in the last decade. Money or threats. It’s not me or Clark—that I can promise you. But that’s all I can promise. What we do know is that the traitor is someone who knew Lana was my CI, who gave her information to give to us. Once the person knew we’d taken the bait, he or she killed Lana so she couldn’t identify them.”

  Sam’s heart raced as she extrapolated. “And that person would have to be part of the team because we didn’t set the day and time until after we raided Peña’s house. But—there were cameras in the junkyard. They were watching.”

  “Yeah, but did you read the forensics
report yet?”

  “No.”

  “The cameras were duds. They didn’t know Tom and I were in the junkyard—unless someone on our secure frequency told them.”

  The weight nearly suffocated Sam, but she shook it off. Traitor? On her watch? Hell, no. She would find the individual and cut off their balls. Put them in prison until they rotted.

  “I have to call Houston. Don’t say anything to anyone. No one.” She stood and walked to her temporary desk. She was about to pick up the landline when she realized that she didn’t know what or who to trust. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket.

  Tom said, “I’m going to shower and go back to the hospital. I left Clark’s wife there. She’s six months’ pregnant, and she shouldn’t be alone. But if you learn anything, let me know. I want to be there when you nail the bastard.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Family was complicated, but when your brother was an ex-Marine turned mercenary who’d seen more violence, blood, and evil than 99.9 percent of the people on the planet, it became more complicated.

  Temperatures dropped drastically at night in the desert. They had jackets, but Sean was grateful it wasn’t raining. The air was colder and drier here than it had been in Texas, possibly because they were in the middle of nowhere, Mexico.

  There was a time when Sean had seen Kane as a noble hero and wanted to join his brother in the battle against corruption, cartels, and criminals south of the border. He still viewed Kane as a hero—there were few people who would consistently risk their lives to save others in a violent world few Americans knew existed.

  But Sean wasn’t Kane, and he didn’t want to be. He wanted a life. He didn’t want to risk everything he was, everything he had, each and every day. Kane was hard—and there was no coming back from that hardness. That his brother had to be one of those people—one of the unsung heroes who cared about the money only because money funded their operations of saving people—both hurt and made him proud.

  Kane would never have a woman like Lucy, and now that Sean had a Lucy, he was sad for his brother. Kane couldn’t stay in one place long. The nightmares, both real and in dreams, ate him up. But that didn’t matter: Kane had never been able to turn his back on violence and desperate poverty, nor could he walk away from punishing those who used the violence and poverty to further their own greedy agendas. But there had to be a line, a way to help the innocent and a way to live; a balance between evil and hope.