Ryland’s Reach (Bullard's Battle Book 1)

by Dale Mayer

  “That’s Cain’s room,” she protested.

  “No,” Cain said. “It’s just a room.”

  “Good point,” she said, as she hesitated and then nodded. “Maybe I’ll have coffee when I get back up again.”

  “We’ll order a fresh pot when you get up,” Cain said.

  She smiled, grabbed her bag, and headed into the other room. She went to the bathroom, washed her face, and, taking the bed that Cain hadn’t been laying on, pulled back the top blanket and curled up underneath. When she couldn’t sleep immediately, she got up, found her bag, and pulled out the little Boy Scout badge. She kept it curled up in her palm, as she laid back down, and this time she nodded off.

  *

  “She’s got a bite to her,” Cain said with a smile. “I like that.”

  “Only toward you apparently,” Ryland said.

  “I keep pissing her off,” Cain said.

  “I can’t. I don’t want to go there,” he said. “She’s done too much for me.”

  “And she’s right,” he said. “There’s a good chance that, if I’d been on that plane, I’d have been another casualty to deal with. You did good with Garret,” he added abruptly. “I had no idea you had to hold on to him all that time.”

  “The jury’s out on how good it was,” he answered, thinking about Garret, still unconscious. He glanced at his longtime friend and said, “How much of the planning is in place?”

  “A lot of it,” he admitted. “We’re looking for a location.”

  “I was thinking of the museum,” Ryland noted. “It’s closed on Sundays, except for private viewings.”

  “And why would we get a private viewing?” Cain asked.

  “Actually a private viewing is already established for a movie star in town,” Ryland continued. “I know the security guard who’s looking after her. I phoned him, and he said that they’d be quite happy to avoid this private showing. He said he’ll show up, make sure that they have access for themselves as scheduled, but, instead of her, we’ll suggest that Tabi goes.”

  “Interesting,” Cain said, getting a slightly unfocused look as he contemplated the parameters. “That just might work.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t be great if we shot the place up,” Ryland said. “Some glass art display is going on there right now. But the museum has a lot of entrances and exits, and we’d need a lot of people, providing a lot of coverage. With only the two of us here, we’d be short,” he said. “But we can easily pull in nine more, if we need to.”

  “We have sixteen coming already, about two hours out,” Cain said.

  “Good. Tomorrow’s Sunday, so that timing works too.”

  “Except that somehow we have to let Green know.”

  “Yeah,” Ryland said. “I might have done something about that.”

  Cain gave him a hard look. “What did you do?”

  “I went back to her apartment and left a message on the mirror underneath the first one.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “What did you say?”

  “Catch us if you can,” he said.

  “You gave the tiger’s tail a shake, huh? I like it,” Cain nodded. “And what makes you think he’s watching?”

  “Because I made sure the cameras all around had a good view of who I was,” he said. “You know that shiver down your spine you get when you’re being watched?”

  Cain nodded.

  “It was there,” he said. “It’s not him watching, but it’s somebody. And somebody will have already gone into that place and checked to see what I was doing there.”

  “Let’s find out,” he said, and Cain brought up her apartment building cameras, logged into the system illegally, and checked it out. “Look at that,” he said.

  They watched as the neighbor from across the way opened her door a bit as Ryland walked past. She then shut her door as he went into Tabi’s apartment. When he left, she poked her head out and then quickly slipped down to Tabi’s apartment.

  “She had a key.” At least the landlord did fix the lock. “So she’s in on it,” Ryland said. “We’ll have to make sure we pick her up.”

  “Yeah, I’m sending Eton that message.”

  Just then the camera showed the woman leaving Tabi’s apartment, her phone in her hand, and raced back to her apartment.

  “I wonder if Tabi knows who she is.”

  “She probably does,” Ryland said. “She’s been there for five years. Doesn’t mean that she knows anything about it all though.”

  “No. We never really know about our neighbors anyway,” Cain murmured.

  “I’ll reach out to Ice and see if she can track down who this woman is,” Ryland said, as he quickly sent the information. “Do we know what apartment number it is?”

  Cain zoomed in on the cameras and said, “It’s 341.”

  “Oh, can you email Ice that snippet of video?” Ryland asked, texting Ice as he spoke.

  “Done,” Cain said. “Will you tell them?”

  “I will,” he said, “but after our museum ploy is over. Because you know that Levi and Ice would already be on their way over here.”

  “Only if there’s anything they can do here that they can’t do from the compound.”

  “I don’t really want Levi or Ice in the middle of anything anymore,” he admitted.

  “Because of the baby?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She shouldn’t be leaving the compound at this time.”

  “No, not when she has a lot of very good men we could use,” he said. “What are they up to now, twenty-five or so?”

  “She was talking about two more, so I don’t know the accurate tally,” he said. “But this is Bullard we are talking about here.” He stared at Cain.

  Cain nodded, fully understanding.

  Ryland broke the stare and, by the time he finished texting, Ice was already calling.

  She said, “Stone’s on the apartment lady.”

  “News on Bullard?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Damn.”

  “I know. Sorry.”

  “He’s a tough old bird. Don’t give up. Look at what his half brother, Blachard, went through. And he’s fine.”

  “Well, maybe he’s fine. Five years as a prisoner was a hell of an ordeal. Not hard to understand he’s out of the business now. He wants nothing to do with it. He worked for Bullard at one time, but now he wants to sit and smell the roses. I can hardly blame him for that.” At that, their phones fell silent. “I asked Terkel too.”

  Ryland stilled. “And?”

  “He said, Bullard’s still alive. And to keep looking.”

  “Shit. Well, that’s good news and bad. Too bad Terkel can’t give us more than that.”

  “I know. He’s also saying what I want to hear, so I don’t know if it’s safe to trust him.” With that, she hung up.

  He put his phone down, picked up his coffee, and took a long sip as he stared out the window.

  Cain asked, “So this thing with Tabi, it’s for real, huh?”

  “Is anything ever real?” Ryland answered.

  Cain asked again, “It’s just so damn fast.”

  “It’s hard not to have special feelings for a woman who saved your life.”

  “Is that all it is?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “The more I know, the more I love.”

  Cain nodded. “Thought so.”

  “Also the fact that it’s mutual is pretty amazing. I didn’t really believe in love at first sight.”

  “How about love at first saved?” Cain said humorously.

  “Maybe,” he said. He got up, walked to his bag, pulled out his meds, and took them with a swig of coffee.

  “How bad is it, man?”

  “It’s not great,” he said. “These will knock it down though. Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”

  “You know I had to say that earlier.”

  “I know,” Ryland said with a nod. “You did. I get it, and I’d have done the same thing if it were you.” />
  “Well, let’s hope you don’t have to,” he said. “I don’t have a guardian angel to sit at my bedside and to make sure I come back out of it.”

  He looked at the door between the two of them and said, “I don’t want to think of her not making it through this.”

  “I told you. That won’t happen.”

  “You’ll do your best,” Ryland said. “So will I. But there’s no guarantee. You know it.”

  “No,” he said. “But, like she said, there’s no guarantee for any given day. You guys could go off to your little idyllic town, buy a sailboat, and then get hit by a bus before you ever get on it.”

  “I know. I think that’s one of the reasons we hit it off as well as we did. Just that understanding that we have only today. Tomorrow? That we have no guarantees for.”

  “So let’s deal with what we’ve got to deal with,” Cain said. “I brought up the blueprints.”

  “Now if we only had a printed copy.”

  “Should be appearing at the door any minute.”

  At that, there was a noise, just a slight shuffle. Ryland looked to see a large blue piece of paper sliding underneath. “Love this place,” he said, as he walked over and picked it up, while Cain cleared off the table. “Except when the guy with the food cart tries to shoot me.” They both had a good laugh at that.

  Cain laid down the blueprints and smiled. “Look at this,” he said. “There are six exits.”

  “Including the roof, yes.” And they started to mark them off.

  “Sharpshooters in each one?” Cain asked.

  “I’m not sure we want to even leave it to that. You’re still out in public,” Ryland said. “In which case, a sharpshooter will have to deal with crowds.”

  “This is a shipping dock,” Cain said. “So that’s definitely one we have to watch out for.” Just then Cain heard his phone buzz. “Eton’s hacked into the gallery’s security system to check it out.”

  “Good, we’ll be out of time, and we have to make sure the word gets out there.”

  “It’s already out there, but now that Green knows, we have to set it up better than he does. Do we know anybody else who works there?” Cain asked Ryland.

  “Maybe,” Ryland said.

  Knowing that this was Ryland’s area of specialty, Cain said, “Reach out to the museum board to see if you know anybody.”

  Ryland studied the board members, clicking through relationships, then suddenly smiled. “We have a governor,” he announced.

  Cain looked up and said, “Good people in high places help.”

  With that, Ryland placed a call to the governor, and, when George’s voice—that highbrow British accent twisted with Australian—came on the line, he said, “It’s Ryland.”

  Immediately the other end became businesslike. “What’s up?”

  “I’ll give you the short version,” he said. “Bullard has been potentially taken out of the scene.”

  “What?” There was a horrified whisper on the other end. Because the governor hadn’t been above utilizing Bullard’s services in the past. “Are you serious?”

  Ryland quickly gave him a synopsis of what was going on. “So now we’re expecting tomorrow to be the time frame.”

  “And why did you have to pick the museum?” he wailed.

  “Because the chances of it getting blown up are pretty small. It’s pretty well fireproof. It’s central and private, yet not private.”

  “And it also houses incredible works of art.”

  “Of which a lot are being cleaned and have left the building right now,” he said.

  The governor stopped and said, “Oh, you’re right. That and the computer system is undergoing an upgrade.”

  “Well, we’re already into the security system, so it looks like you need it.”

  “What, already?”

  “Of course,” Ryland said, with a laugh.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Access,” he said, “and now.”

  “For what?”

  “Entrances and exits, places to make sure we’ve got everything covered, and extra security as far around as we can go.”

  “How many you expecting?”

  “We don’t know,” he said honestly. “It could be one man. It could be one man with some local men, or it could be a full-on pro team.”

  “All just to take out you and this woman?”

  “No, they’ll know by now that Cain’s here too,” he said, “and, in this instance, they’ll also know that we’re bringing in the bulk of a team.”

  “So they’ll try and take out as many of Bullard’s men as possible.”

  “It appears that’s his goal, and he’s already trying to make that happen, so we’re drawing him out.”

  “What an asshole,” he said.

  “We’re setting up security for Garret at the hospital too.”

  “Garret. God, I hope he pulls through,” the governor said. “My son loves that guy.”

  “I know. We all do,” he said, “but, first things first, we need access, so we can get set up.”

  “You got it. It’s shutting down at two o’clock this afternoon, so in about three hours. I’ll have them close it a little early, make sure everybody is out. Then I’ll get you the keys.”

  “Don’t worry about the keys,” Ryland said. “We’ll take over the security system and implant a few new cameras for our own use.”

  “I can’t believe you can do that,” he groaned. “Did I say we were upgrading it?”

  “Yeah, but it won’t be enough,” he said, “but at least it will make you feel better.” With that, Ryland rang off, leaving the governor still spluttering.

  Cain looked over with a raised eyebrow.

  “We’ll have access at two this afternoon. He would give us the keys, but I told him not to bother.”

  Cain gave a shout of laughter. “Everybody in their ivory towers needs to believe that they have some control.”

  “And yet, in reality, they have none at all,” Ryland replied.

  “So true,” he said. Hearing a sound, he looked over and there was Tabi, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “A governor now?”

  “Friends in high places. Remember?”

  “And this is all about Ryland’s reach?”

  “If I have to, I can go to some of the royalty around the world, but, generally speaking, the less they know, the better,” he said. “They just want to know people like us are out in the world to keep everything on the straight and narrow.”

  “What do you do when the government ones are those who go off the rails?”

  “That’s much tougher,” he said, “but it happens. Not every presidential campaign is honest and upright, and a lot of liars, cheaters, and scumbags are out there, filtering through government everywhere. It’s more than we can do. Not to mention the fact that we’re still only a handful of men.”

  “Right,” she said, with a murmur. She looked down at the pot and asked, “Is the coffee still hot?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ll need more coffee and lots of it.”

  Chapter 13

  The next four hours passed in a blur, and, while Tabi understood a lot of what they were doing, she just didn’t understand how. The fact that they had access to the museum from inside and outside just blew her away. “Will we go there today?”

  “Yes, once another hour has gone by,” Cain said. “To check out the site, set up more cameras, get a feel for the place.”

  “Am I coming?” Both men hesitated; then she looked at them and said, “Interesting.”

  “We don’t want to leave you alone here,” Cain said.

  “Ah.” She nodded. “Then take me with you, if that makes sense.”

  “Or not,” Ryland said. “It depends on the team.”

  “Meaning, you need more men here, just to look after me.”

  “In this case,” Ryland said gently, “I’d stay and look after you, but I’m not sending Cain out there
alone.”

  She gave him a brief smile. “Okay, that sounds better.” She didn’t want Ryland going out there either. But she also knew she’d insult him terribly if she said anything.

  When an odd buzz sounded on Ryland’s phone, he looked down at it and said, “Hey, they’re here.”

  Cain got up and said, “We’ll do twenty-minute check-ins.”

  She looked at Cain and asked, “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course,” he said. “In a few hours.” And, with that, he walked out.

  She walked to Ryland, and, when he opened his arms, she stepped into them. Always mindful of his injuries, she held him close and whispered, “What if they’re killed?”

  “Like you said, there’s absolutely no guarantee of tomorrow. But we’ll do our damnedest to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  She nodded and said, “All of this”—as she pointed to the blueprints covering the table—“how does he remember it all?”

  “It’s what Cain does. He’s a numbers guy and has not quite a photographic memory, but, on things like this, and navigational themes, Cain’s gifts are turned on all the time.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” she said.

  “Well, it’s definitely a cross to bear in some ways,” he said, “because we all get tired of his insufferable rightness.”

  She burst out laughing. “Okay, so what are we supposed to do while they’re gone?”

  “I’m actually running command central,” he said. “It’s not that I’m doing nothing, but I’ll just rearrange some of this.”

  “Why don’t we put it up on the wall?” she said.

  He looked at her, surprised, and said, “That’s a good idea, but I don’t think we have anything to put them up with.”

  “Are you telling me that you can’t get tape?”

  “Actually,” he said, “I probably have some tacks.”

  She watched in amazement as he pulled out a small tin and opened it. “Why would you have those?”

  “You never know what you might need.” With her help, they quickly put up the four blueprints. One for each of the four stories of the museum.

  “Good,” she said. “Now the table is empty, and you can have it for your work.”

  “And what will you do?”