There’d been no choice. On countless missions, Jay had been the type to engage as soon as possible. He’d charge right into anything. The man had made so many ill-advised decisions, it’d been enough to hold him back from advancement.
Jay’s hands balled into fists. “I had just a couple more months. This time I told you I needed you to do something for me, and you didn’t want to hear it. You got yourself that honorable discharge and left me there. It was all about you.”
“I’d have had to re-up for another two years to be around for your six months. Even if that’d been the right choice for me, it wouldn’t have been allowed. The way I was offered an honorable discharge, there was no choice.” Adam kept his muscles relaxed, his joints loose. He wasn’t going to show any body language that might set Jay off and take this from a verbal vent to a physical outburst.
He didn’t want to have to take out his former friend.
“Yeah, it would’ve sucked.” This time, Jay literally spit on the floor between them. “But when you boil your reasoning down to what’s best for your future career? What the fuck? What does that say about our friendship? Suddenly all that time living through hell is just business.”
“I needed to support my parents. Pay off my dad’s hospital bills.” Adam tried to keep his tone even. He was not going to escalate this insanity, especially not while Jay had at least one gun on his shoulder harness. “Military pay is enough for a single person, but it wasn’t going to be enough to keep them in a home.”
“I’m a single-income household too.” Jay’s volume went up a notch. “Paying for a wife who didn’t love me and two kids. I had to make sure they had food, clothes. I wanted out as much as you did.”
“We’re both out now.” Years could be a lifetime. Adam wasn’t going to deny it. But here, now, they were both standing hale and whole. He couldn’t figure out why Jay was so damned mad.
“Yeah. You went home and cleared up the issues. Then you went off to fucking New Zealand for god knows why. I came home to divorce papers and all of my fucking belongings piled on the curb.” Jay leaned forward slightly as he started shouting. The tendons stood out on either side of his neck as he lifted his fists. “While I was sorting out the mess in my household, eating hot dogs and ten-cent noodles, you were off rubbing noses with exotic hotties on the other side of the world.”
Adam set his jaw. He’d explained the hongi to Jay, just as he had to Victoria. The difference was, Victoria had absorbed the small tidbit about a foreign custom with delight. Jay hadn’t understood squat.
“And your dad had cancer.” Jay settled back on his heels, sadness in the droop of his shoulders. “I feel for you on that. I do.”
It wasn’t a good sign.
Jay growled. “You got shafted but I had problems too. And it pisses me off that you couldn’t be bothered to hang around to help me. I have a right to my pain too. I thought maybe someday, after I did my best to have your back, you’d have mine. But you didn’t. You left. You didn’t do shit for me.”
Adam dodged to the left as Jay brought his gun up to point directly where Adam had been. Before Jay could adjust his aim, Adam crossed the distance, stepping inside his guard. Grabbing Jay’s wrist with one hand, he lifted his other arm and slammed his elbow into the side of Jay’s neck. Adam’s forward momentum continued as he kept control of Jay’s gun hand, forcing Jay to stumble backward.
As Jay went down, the man tried to tangle his legs in Adam’s. Adam lifted his feet and stepped around Jay, going down with him and trapping his gun arm in an arm bar. Legs on either side of Jay’s shoulder and arm trapped, Adam lifted his hip until Jay’s shoulder and elbow strained.
Jay released the gun.
“You fucker!” Jay was screaming. “You always made it about you, never me.”
Slender legs came into view, out of range of Jay’s flailing legs. Victoria stood there, her own gun aimed at Jay.
Her hands were steady and her gaze was cold. “You are immature, self-absorbed, delusional, and quite frankly, a brat in big-boy boots.”
The red haze began to clear, and Adam tore himself away from the edge of doing something he’d never forgive himself for doing, like permanently dislocating Jay’s arm. “I should kill you, Jay.”
Jay laughed. “Sure. Of course. After all I’ve done for you. It’d be all about what you want to do, right?”
“Adam.” Victoria’s tone was as pleasant as if she was asking for another lump of sugar in her tea. “This is actually a decent time to let him know what you really think. Get it all out. I doubt he’ll have visitation rights where he’s going.”
“What?” Jay struggled, but Adam switched his hold and flipped Jay on his stomach. In a few seconds, Adam was securing Jay with hand ties and duct tape. Even a former Marine wasn’t getting out of it.
For a second, Adam considered turning away. Just call the police and let it be over. But then he’d be replaying his thoughts inside his head for the rest of whenever and never get the closure of having given Jay the chance to hear it.
Jay wouldn’t want to.
But there was Victoria, she’d opened up as they’d worked together. She’d made herself vulnerable, and it had made her stronger. She was the partner he wanted and lancing this festering bullshit was as much for her understanding as it was for his peace of mind.
“Never about you?” His own words resonated in his ears in a growl. “Let’s talk about our first leave off base. I let you share my hotel room because your reservation got fucked up. And yeah, I met a girl and brought her back to the room while you were at the bar because you were entertaining a flock of chickies on your own. When you tell the story, you never mention how you brought three of those back to the room in the hopes of getting laid.”
It was petty. It was inconsequential. It felt hella good to get out of his system. Victoria raised an eyebrow.
“Do tell us more.” Victoria chuckled.
Jay’s face was almost purple with rage.
“Let’s talk about the pictures you showed all our bros from our hike out to Red Rock Canyon. You loved to show them to the ladies. Big, bad rifleman out in the rugged wild. You’re wearing boots I fucking gave you. You’re holding my boot knife in those pictures like you’re some kind of badass while I was on the other side of the rock holding the ropes to keep your ass on the side of that rock face.” Adam wanted to spit now too, but he didn’t.
These were stupid events, tiny moments of time in his memory. They should’ve been fun and happy, and they’d been twisted into toxic thorns in his side because Jay had gone on bitching about them over and over again. Adam had never defended himself before this. He’d never spoken up for himself. He’d just let Jay paint a crappy picture of him with Jay’s version of reality. No more.
“I...” Jay craned his neck from where he was on the floor.
“And phone calls? Let’s talk about the times I stepped out of briefings to help you think through issues with our CO. Or maybe we can recall the times I took a call from you on patrol because it’d be too long to wait until I got off duty.” Bitterness welled up as Adam brought each of those points up. Things Jay always seemed to find a way to needle him with in some passive-aggressive way. Adam was a direct kind of guy, and he was going to get it all out and be done with it. “Emails? Let’s talk about how many emails I read for you. I burned brain cells making suggestions for a more professional approach, and what do you do? Ignore everything because someone else told you those emails were just fine.”
Jay croaked with his face still half crushed into the floor. “My emails are professional.”
The absurdity of the conversation snapped Adam the rest of the way. He didn’t care if all this was petty or insignificant. It felt good. Finally.
“Including things like ‘shit hit the fan’ and ‘bust ass’ and ‘clusterfuck’ are not professional
correspondence.” Adam literally laughed at Jay. “You don’t tell a commanding officer you only get to fuck me up the ass without my permission once.”
Victoria joined him in laughing, even as her gaze held steady on Jay. “You can’t be serious.”
“As a heart attack.” Adam took a deep breath and let it all go. “Let’s talk about how many times I gave you an assist with a technical issue. How many times I hopped on the phone so you could rage about the chain of command and how they treated you after one of your ill-advised emails.”
“Tch. Sounds to me like a drowning man trying to drag the person next to him under too.” Victoria’s assessment was delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, all the more devastating because it was completely without heat.
Jay screamed in inarticulate rage. Then, panting, he started laughing. “You two keep talking. Talking and talking.”
“Oh, we will. This is good for the both of us.” Victoria was unconcerned. “You see, I manually sent out the call to the authorities and requested backup from Safeguard. They are en route, and we’re just passing the time waiting for them.”
She switched to a one-handed grip on her weapon for a brief moment, dropping her near hand to her side, out of Jay’s line of site. Her hand started in a fist, then three fingers pressed along her thigh. The next moment, she had her gun steady in both hands again.
Three. Three hours. It was a long time to stall, even if it was therapeutic. And Jay was stalling too. Timing was everything from here on out.
“I left the military because it was time for me.” Adam let some of the sadness he’d been keeping locked up filter into his words. “What’s the word going around the internet, Victoria? Gaslighting? You were gaslighting me, Jay. Every effort I ever made for you, everything I ever did for you... It was like it never happened in your brain.”
“You were sabotaging my career!” Jay’s voice cracked with outrage.
Never. “No one has time for that. I left the military and didn’t look back, man. I didn’t talk to anyone. There was no way I could undermine you.”
“Liar. You’re nothing but toxic.” Jay was testing his bindings, flexing his arms and wrists, looking to loosen the ties. He wasn’t making any progress.
“If there was any toxicity, it was all in your head, born of your perception.” Victoria calmly kneeled, resting the weight of her knee into his spine as she aimed her gun at the back of his head. She’d apparently decided the therapy session was over. Adam was inclined to agree. “Anything you thought happened to you came out of your insecurity and your decision to lash out at Adam to protect yourself. That sort of thing backfires on a person. Call it karma, if you like.”
Before they wrapped this up, they needed to know the timing Jay was working toward. It was imperative to find out when he was expecting his reinforcements. It’d be close, and they had to time it to take their next actions just a fraction late. Too late and they all were truly dead.
“Think hard, Jay,” Adam advised. “You did all that talking behind my back hoping I’d never know it was you. You ruined your own career with your bullshit. There’s no one accountable but you. It’s not me against you. It’s not the universe. It’s just you. Grow the fuck up.”
“You’re wrong.” Spittle came from Jay’s mouth and his eyes were glazing. His face was turning red.
Victoria eased off his spine slightly, ready to react if he turned on her.
“How long can you stall?” Adam asked the man. “Maybe if you breathe deep and slow, you’ll have enough time. Or you could tell us how much time you need, and we might give it to you. How long until Edict is on top of us?”
Jay’s face twisted into an ugly scowl. “When you told me you were leaving, it was the biggest bitch move I’ve ever seen in my life. Now? You come here, needing my help to secure this place? You’re worse than a stranger as far as I’m concerned because you napalmed the fuck out of that bridge.”
It’d been an outside chance to get Jay to tell them the timing outright. Neither of them had built their plans to be dependent on it.
“You’re out of time.” Jay’s laugh was ugly, his chest heaving as he arched up despite his restraints. “Curl up and hide, man, because this is going to go bad for you. So bad. It’s going to be all over the media, and no one is ever going to want to work with you or your precious Safeguard ever again.”
“I just rolled my eyes so hard, I might have seen the back of my own head,” Victoria informed Jay with a straight face.
“Nah, bro. Nah.” Adam shook his head, clenching his jaw against the pity rising up as a sour taste in his mouth. “That was your way. You hid inside your own head and gave yourself the comfort of lies to survive when the truth scared you, like it might kill you. You’ve always protected yourself however you could, even when it meant hurting people around you, not just pushing them away. You always had a reason, still do, for why the shit you pulled was justified. You did things to make sure you took out your competition before they could hurt you. But when those people rose up despite you, it was the universe that wasn’t fair. It couldn’t ever be your fault or your failing.”
Adam stood as Dante, Ray and Brian loomed in the doorway. They’d been listening. They showed him empty hands. None of them were a threat.
Adam focused on Jay. “You don’t want truth. You don’t want fair. You want everything, and it’s a damn shame because it means you won’t ever be happy. And even if you succeed in getting everyone out of your way, so you’re the last man left standing on the field of competition, you’re going to feel awful and exposed. Why? Because you are a piss-poor representative of the human race.”
It was Brian who came in first and jerked Jay up to standing by one arm. Ray joined his partner in securing their former coworker.
Dante held up his smartphone, showing the feed of their entire exchange to Jay. “Don’t even try to talk your way through this.”
“My becoming the scapegoat for your ill-advised jack-assery didn’t help you back then.” Weariness washed through Adam at the thought of the wasted effort. “Now? Go do your time and hate the world. The only difference is this time, I’m not going to have the future guilt of having left you out in the world to hurt more people.”
“Local authorities are on the way.” Dante stepped into the tiny building. “Victoria briefed me on next steps, and we’ll head to the gate to turn him over. We’ll all be clear when the shit hits the fan.”
“Good.” Adam rolled his shoulders to release the last of the tension. Letting loose like that had been cathartic. Embarrassing, but therapeutic. They’d needed the time. “Thanks for your help.”
Brian and Ray dragged Jay past, and Brian paused. “The fuck was that parrot about?”
Adam threw back his head and laughed. “I’ll send you the video link.”
Chapter Nineteen
Victoria reentered the main house, Adam close behind her. She headed straight for the kitchen as Adam hit the control panel to lock down the house again. The metal panels came down across all of the windows. He even moved furniture to barricade the front entry.
She ran her hand along the corner of the dining room wall, opening the tiny passage. Tegan emerged first, happy to see them and apparently well rested. The dog’s perpetual grin brightened her mood. Roland came next with Manny close behind.
“This next part is going to take a lot of trust,” Victoria told the two of them. “Follow our instructions exactly. Don’t argue. Don’t hesitate. We are cutting this close.”
Roland and Manny nodded. They’d had a chat earlier in the day. It was Roland who cleared his throat. “We’re ready to give up all this.”
Manny gave her a smile. “I disappeared once. We can do it together this time.”
“Good.” Adam threw them each bulletproof vests he’d retrieved from Dante’s supply closet.
&
nbsp; Once both men had them on, Adam fitted Manny with a pet harness. He adjusted the straps so it settled high on Manny’s chest.
“Tegan goes in this. It is imperative to keep his head level with yours.” Adam tugged the harness harshly, making sure it wouldn’t slip.
They’d have no margin of error for the dog so once he was strapped in, that was it. The rest would be luck.
Roland started to say something but an alert beeped from the study.
“Time’s up.” Adam said and bent to scoop up Tegan.
With luck, the small dog would stay calm strapped to Manny.
Victoria headed to the study to check the surveillance. As predicted, Dante’s team had reached the gates and headed out toward town, to turn Jay in to the local authorities. No sooner had they left than new company arrived, not of the friendly persuasion.
“They’re coming,” Victoria called out. She activated the small personal comm she was wearing and carefully enunciated. “Initiate evacuation protocol to bravo extraction point.”
“Copy.” Adam’s voice came back to her via the tiny earbud she wore.
Their communications were up and operational. She typed in a brief command on her laptop to send out a distress call via the property security system to alert local authorities.
In the house, Adam had rushed upstairs and raised a commotion as he tossed the beds and opened the special “emergency kits” they’d created while they waited during the day from gathered supplies.
Roland and Manny waited in the dining room, away from any windows.
Victoria strode to them and handed them each an unmarked container. “Take these carefully, splash every window frame. Don’t get any on yourselves.”
“Is this safe?” Roland asked.
She glanced back at him from over her shoulder as she began to splash the hallways. “No.”
Adam came back down the stairs. “It’s jet fuel. A present from Safeguard. Non-combustable, but when we light it, it will burn hot and bright for one hell of a show.”
Contracted Defense Page 17
