Hotel Hideaway: (Soldiering On #4)

by Aislinn Kearns

  She glanced at Cameron, but he didn’t seem to notice anything suspicious. “Did you have any luck?” she asked Paul quickly, moving the conversation along. “Asking around about the private contractors?”

  “I’m still looking. I’ll let you know when I’ve got more,” he told her. “It’ll be easier once everyone’s back in the office.”

  Sam hummed in agreement. “Well, while you’re waiting can you look into finding a hacker for us? One that’s not at all affiliated with Beaton. Preferably even hates them.”

  “Okay,” said Paul without argument. “I have a few names in mind. I’ll get back to you once I figure out their affiliations.”

  “Cool.”

  “Is that it?” Paul asked, sounding distracted.

  “How’s Christine?” Sam asked.

  Paul audibly swallowed. “She’s good. We’re good.” He paused a second, and Sam heard some feminine giggling before Paul came back on the phone. “Gotta go,” he said, then hung up.

  Sam rolled her eyes, then glanced up to see an amused expression on Cameron’s face.

  “What?” she asked, an answering smile curving her lips.

  “I think maybe they’ve had the conversation now,” he told her, still grinning.

  “Look at you, invested in my friend’s life,” she teased.

  “He seems like a good guy. And you care about him, which speaks well of him.”

  Sam melted a little at that. Everything she learned about Cameron made her trust him a little more, and hope he was all he seemed to be. But that moment, that cruel little twist he’d pulled on Frank, nagged at her.

  “So, what do we do while we wait for Paul to get back to us? I can’t just sit around. I want to be doing something. I need to.”

  Sam tapped her fingers against the table as she considered their options. She picked up a remaining fry and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Do prisons have visiting hours on Sundays?” she mused.

  “Hmmm?” Cameron asked.

  “Well, if Frank won’t go on record, maybe we can find someone who will.”

  “Who are you thinking of?” Cameron asked with a furrowed brow.

  “Well, the two guys who tried to kill you the other day might spill who hired them if we offer them the right incentive.”

  Cameron’s face cleared. “Clever. They might be willing to confirm Erica hired them if she’s leaving them to rot in prison.” He sounded impressed, and Sam shifted in her seat at the restless energy that instilled in her.

  “We can try,” she murmured.

  With renewed purpose flowing through them, they stood. Cameron threw some money on the table—more than enough to cover the meal and a generous tip—and they walked towards the car.

  “Speaking of assassins,” Cameron began, then hesitated. “Do you think that other one—the woman—will be back?” His voice had lost some of its power.

  Sam swallowed thickly at the show of vulnerability. “I think so,” she said, opting for the hard truth over the comforting lie. “But if she does, we’ll be ready.”

  She could only hope that was true.

  ◆◆◆

  The prison was grey. Grey walls, grey floors, grey atmosphere. Sam shivered as they traversed the corridor to the visiting room, a bone-deep cold sinking through her. She hated prisons. Hated being trapped amongst all the misery and aggression that festered there.

  The guard that showed them to the room where they’d meet the Moretti brothers—as Sam learned the assassins were called—didn’t look at them as he turned another corner. He walked with the kind of swagger that made Sam nervous. He liked the power he held in this place.

  Cameron leaned down, breath brushing over her ear. “I’ve never been in a prison before,” he muttered.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to come back,” she replied.

  They reached the visiting room and the guard indicated where they should sit.

  “Remember,” he warned them. “No touching. Of the prisoners,” he added with a wink towards Sam. Her mouth curled in an uncontrollable sneer of disgust. The guard didn’t seem fazed as he strolled out the room.

  They sat on a bench, as far from the young woman with unkempt hair and smeared mascara in the corner as they could. She bounced her leg impatiently, staring at the door in hope. Sam wondered who she was meeting, what her story was.

  “Are you okay?” Cameron asked.

  Sam sighed. “Yeah. I don’t like prisons. I don’t like being trapped, lacking options. Makes me sad and restless.”

  “I can understand that,” he replied, with a glance around the room. “Does it remind you of being in the Navy at all?”

  “Long days with no escape and nowhere to hide? Yeah, I suppose it does. Those warships can be pretty claustrophobic. I didn’t mind so much when I was in, but now that I’m out I don’t think I could go back. Even if they allowed me.”

  “Why can’t you?” he asked, curiosity shining through.

  Sam hesitated. “I got injured. Shot. A couple of times, actually, but only two bullets caused any real damage. One in my calf, the other in my lung.”

  His eyes were pained, as if he couldn’t bear the thought of her being injured. “What happened?” he asked.

  She shrugged, not wanting to tell this story. She hated how it made her look. “I was an Individual Augmentee—on a temporary duty assignment with an Army battalion. We got into a firefight, as sometimes happens.” She gave him a self-deprecating smile. “Anyway, three of the squad got injured and couldn’t move. I knew if I left them there, they’d bleed out. But if I got them back to safety, they had a chance of surviving. So I went to get them. Bullets flew all around, but the squad lay down cover fire as best they could. Obviously, I’m small, so I could only get one guy at a time. I brought the first two to safety okay, but on the way back with number three I got hit. Twice. And that was that.”

  Cameron’s eyes widened. “Wow. That’s so brave. You deserve a medal for that.” He gave her a smile that might have been charming, but the memories made her stomach churn.

  “I got one,” she said lightly, shifting so she wasn’t facing him.

  “What?” he asked, and she could hear the confusion in his voice.

  “Erica mentioned it, remember? They gave me a medal. It’s no big deal. I didn’t want it. I just did what anyone else would’ve done.”

  “I thought it was part of your fake identity,” he murmured.

  She shrugged. Cameron stared at her, his mind ticking as he tried to make sense of her words. Sam looked away from his penetrating stare.

  Before he could question her further, the door at the end of the room opened and the Moretti brothers strolled in.

  “Well, well, well,” said the older, heavier, one. His right arm was in a sling, protecting the shoulder Sam had shot. “Didn’t think I’d see you two again.”

  Sam gave a tight smile as the two men slid in across from her. “Likewise,” she muttered.

  “What can we do you for?” the younger one asked. Lyle, Sam remembered, mentally sifting through the files Paul had sent her on these two. He was in better shape than his brother, solid muscle instead of fat.

  The older one, Jerome, gave Sam a once-over. “You here to tell us you’ll testify for us at our trial. Tell those jurors we didn’t mean no harm?” His eyes were shrewd, and Sam immediately pegged him as the brains of the operation.

  She shook her head, glanced at Cameron, then back at the brothers.

  “No. We need information.”

  “And what makes you think we’ll give it to you?” Jerome asked, dropping the fake good-ol’-boy persona, his heavy brows pulling down in a frown. Lyle followed suit, scowling at them.

  Cameron leaned forward, an intense look on his face as he stared at the two men. “Because whoever hired you to kill me will leave you to rot in here. You did a deal with the devil. But if you help us, we could…finesse our testimonies, put in a good word for you, that kind of thing. Reduce your sentences.”
>
  “And if we don’t help you?” Jerome asked.

  “Then I’ll bring the full power of the law down on you to make sure you never get free. I’m sure there’s all kinds of dirt in your past you wouldn’t want to be mysteriously found before your trial.”

  Sam squirmed in her seat. Cameron’s eyes deadened like an arctic tundra as he stared Jerome down. The cold, ruthless Cameron had returned, the one that had so frightened her at Frank’s place. The manipulative man Sam feared was the real Cameron. He brought it out with such ease, as if a switch could be flicked and everything warm and human in him disappeared.

  “How can we trust you?” Jerome asked, teeth gritted.

  “You can’t,” Cameron replied. “But what’ve you got to lose? If I do nothing, chances are you’ll be here for at least twenty years. Attempted murder is no small crime. If attempted is your only crime,” he added.

  “You don’t want us out of here,” Jerome spat. “You know we’ll just come for you again.”

  Cameron leaned back with a satisfied smirk on his face. “You won’t. You’ve already been replaced. I have another assassin on my tail now that’s far scarier than you. You come after me, you won’t get paid for it. Besides, by the time you’re out, I’ll have brought down your employer. No one will be left to reward you.”

  Jerome swallowed, vulnerability creeping into his eyes. Sam could imagine what he thought. If Cameron destroyed the person that hired him, he and his brother would have no protection. Whatever deal they’d struck with Erica and Beaton Security—get them out of prison, protect them, reduce their sentence—would be moot if Erica and Beaton no longer existed. And if the company fell, all the evidence on the Moretti brothers and the work they’d done would be exposed. They’d be in prison a hell of a lot longer than the twenty years for attempted murder.

  But if they could get out of this charge, and disappear before their protection crumbled, they could evade authorities and start over somewhere else.

  “They’ll protect us,” he said, but his voice was small and unsure.

  “They won’t have the power to protect you,” Cameron told them fiercely.

  A long pause.

  “If you can promise me you’ll get my brother out of here, I’ll do it,” Jerome said. “I’ll confess to whatever crime, say I did it alone. Just save him.”

  Some emotion flashed across Cameron’s face. Maybe the brotherly loyalty stirred him despite the icy chill he wore like armour.

  Lyle leaned forward. “You can’t! He’s lying. Everything we did, we did together.”

  Jerome turned to his brother, emotions flickering in his eyes. But he turned back to Cameron without saying anything.

  “Protect him, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “Jerome, no—” Lyle pleaded.

  Cameron didn’t look at Lyle. “I can’t guarantee that. But I can try.”

  “You promise?” Jerome asked.

  “I had a brother,” Cameron said. “I understand.”

  Cameron and Jerome stared at each other, and some kind of understanding passed between them.

  “What do you want to know?” Jerome asked eventually on a defeated sigh. Lyle crossed his arms and deepened his scowl.

  Cameron smirked and an unpleasant shiver rolled down Sam’s spine. The moment of understanding with Jerome disappeared as if it had never been.

  “I want the name of the person who hired you, how they paid you, how they found out about you, and who else you know that works for them,” he told them.

  “Both Erica and Danny have hired us. They paid us in cash,” Jerome muttered. “Originally we did private contracting work in Iraq.”

  “Wait, you were a mercenary in Iraq?” Cameron asked, his focus on Jerome laser sharp.

  “Yeah. Until an…incident happened over there, and the branch closed down, so they offered some of us freelancer gigs back on home soil.”

  Cameron tensed at the mention of an incident.

  “An incident?” Sam asked, since Cameron seemed frozen in place.

  “Yeah. Some dude got killed. I don’t know what happened, but they investigated. Things got hot, so they brought us back here.”

  Cameron cleared his throat. “You were there? Who killed him?” His voice was tight with restrained emotion. He hadn’t moved, had barely breathed. Sam reached beneath the table to take one of his hands in hers and squeezed it tight in comfort.

  “I don’t know, it all happened in a different unit.”

  “But you must know something,” Cameron pleaded. He gripped his hand tight around Sam’s, almost painfully. Large cracks opened in his armour, and Sam could see through to the vulnerable man underneath.

  New understanding dawned in Jerome’s eyes. “You said you had a brother?”

  Cameron nodded. Jerome assessed him with a long look, then turned to his own brother. A shadow passed over his eyes, as if he imagined his own brother’s death.

  “You want to look for a guy named Jason,” he murmured. “He was the one the investigation focused on, though they found no proof. Let me just say I wasn’t surprised when I heard it was him.”

  Cameron let out a long exhale. His gaze went blank, as if focused on internal thoughts.

  Sam turned to Jerome. “Do you have a last name?”

  “Yeah. Jason…” he paused, brows tugging down.

  “Jason Turner,” Lyle supplied, his face dark with anger, broadcasting a history between them. “And I hope you bring that motherfucker down with the rest of them. He deserves to rot.”

  “Did you work with him once you returned to the US?” Sam asked.

  Lyle shook his head. “That guy’s a loose cannon. We’re professionals. He’s too unpredictable. I know you don’t think much of us, but we’ve got our standards. He did work with Beaton, I know that much. Erica hires him for the really gruesome stuff.”

  A cold chill ran down Sam’s spine. “He sounds dangerous.”

  “He is.”

  Sam ran her fingers over the laminated table top, feeling the grooves worn into the material. What else could she ask these men while they were so forthcoming?

  “How about a woman? Did you ever work with or hear about a woman in your line of work here in the States?”

  Jerome’s jaw grew tight. “Is that who replaced us? I’m not surprised. I don’t know who she is, but I’ve heard of her. She’s the one that tends to clean up messes. She’s got a reputation for doing things quickly and quietly. She’ll make you look like you died in your sleep, that kind of thing.”

  That made sense with what she had already surmised based on her brief meeting with the assassin.

  Cameron leaned forward, his clenched fist hitting the table. “Where’s this Jason guy? Do you know where I can find him?”

  Jerome shook his head. “No. I wish I did.” He turned to his brother, and Lyle shrugged.

  “You hang around Erica long enough and he’ll pop up. I heard he sometimes does personal bodyguarding work for her. And I do mean personal.”

  The look of disgust on Lyle’s face said it all. It seemed Erica used Jason when she needed a bodyguard, but the two of them were also lovers.

  “Would you two be willing to go on record with all of this?” Sam asked, knowing the answer, but wanting to be sure.

  Both Jerome and Lyle shook their heads emphatically.

  “She’ll kill us,” Lyle said.

  “We wouldn’t last a day,” Jerome confirmed.

  “If it comes to that or life in prison, which would you prefer?” Cameron asked coldly.

  Sam squeezed her eyes shut.

  “You promised!” Jerome gasped. She opened her eyes to see his betrayed expression. It quickly shifted to one of cynicism. “Fucking typical.”

  “I promised I’d try. But I need to take Erica down, and I want your help to do it.”

  Jerome shook his head. “Get my brother out of here, then we’ll talk about testimonies and such. I want him protected first.”

&nb
sp; Cameron narrowed his eyes. A sick feeling churned in Sam’s gut.

  “Maybe,” Cameron said, then stood. Sam followed suit.

  “We’ll try,” Sam assured Jerome, her hand wrapping around Cameron’s arm to stop him from contradicting her.

  They said goodbyes, and Sam steered them out of the visitor’s room. They collected their phones—and in Sam’s case, gun—in silence. They were outside in the fresh air before they spoke.

  “We need to find this Jason Turner guy, so I can tear him apart,” Cameron growled.

  Sam swallowed. “And we will,” she reassured him. But the vicious fury in his voice made her wary.

  They walked back to the car in silence, and the back of Sam’s neck tingled the whole way. The assassin was still out there.

  Chapter 16

  Jason Turner.

  The name rolled relentlessly through Cameron’s mind on the drive back to the hotel. Such an innocuous name for someone who’d caused so much destruction and heartache.

  His stomach churned and a restlessness zipped through his veins until he couldn’t sit still. He’d done it. He’d completed his mission and found the man who’d killed his brother.

  Now he needed to decide what to do about him.

  Once back in the hotel room, Cameron paced the room, unable to sit, his mind still whirring with possibilities. Sam slipped into her bedroom, and Cameron barely noticed as he went through his options. He should call the police—but to tell them what? His brother’s death wasn’t under their jurisdiction. And it had already been investigated and ruled an accident. Jerome and Lyle wouldn’t go on record to tell them otherwise. Unless he could find evidence Jason committed a different crime—one on American soil—the police wouldn’t be of any use.

  If he was honest with himself, the idea of handing this man off to someone else to deal with made his blood run cold. He wanted to get up close and personal, needed to make sure Jason knew exactly who took him down and why. He wanted justice.