Chapter 11
“Hew! Go take a walk!” Boss thundered.
“I’m not your damned dog!” Hew’s voice cracked. His hands fisted. His body shook. “I’m not—”
“You’re not a dog,” Boss cut in, his tone softer but still with that same iron center. “But you’re about to go nuclear. And this isn’t a launch pad. Go cool off so the rest of us can think.”
Hew’s pulse was a ferocious thing. It rushed through him in a torrent that made his head pound. Made his vision tunnel. Made him want to give someone a fatal dose of projectile lead poisoning.
“Crunch on this. It’ll make you feel better.” Becky pulled a cherry-flavored Dum-Dum lollipop from the front pocket of her pink bib overalls.
He took the proffered sucker. Because, damnit! What else could he do? It was either that or give in to the urge to break the conference table in half.
Julia, ever the diplomat, said reassuringly, “It’s good they contacted us. Now we’ve been warned and can adjust accordingly.”
“Warned,” he growled, ripping the paper wrapper off the sucker.
“But that’s it. If they know enough to tell us this is a trap”—he thrust a finger at the monitors and the screensavers bouncing around their edges now that Kerberos had disappeared—“why the hell can’t they tell us how they know?
Why the hell can’t they tell us who or what we’re up against? ”
“Knowledge is power,” Ozzie muttered, scratching fingers through his wild hair.
“And power is identity. If they reveal too much, someone might figure out who they are. That’s death for them.
And the good they do would die with them.
It’s enough that they gave us what they did.
It’s more than we had five minutes ago.”
Fuck if it’s enough! Hew silently raged. Aloud, all he did was grunt.
Kerberos had revealed only: This is not about money. This is about BKI. Beware.
And that was it.
Just those three short sentences before…poof! The hacker group had vanished. Digital dust. Back into the bowels of the dark web from which they’d sprung.
Sabrina was out there all alone with these…motherfuckers! And it had been bad enough when he’d thought she’d been taken for ransom money. To know she’d been snatched because of the Black Knights, because they’d made enemies that didn’t have a damn thing to do with her, was more than he could stand.
“I swear to god,” he growled. “If they harm one hair on her head, I’ll beat the flesh off their skulls.”
“Hew.” Boss clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You’re no help to us like this, brother. We need the cool-headed Nightstalker back. Go do whatever you gotta do to make that happen, yeah?”
A roar of frustration threatened. Hew strangled it until it died a hard death at the back of his throat.
He didn’t remember taking the stairs down to the first floor. He didn’t remember walking through the kitchen and out through the back door. He didn’t even remember stepping onto the patio.
He didn’t come back into himself until he felt the pain in the top of his foot from where the laces of his steel-toed boot connected with the arm of an Adirondack chair. The blow sent the chair flying into the air before it crashed onto its side.
“Damn, man. You’re slow to anger. But when it comes on ya, it’s fierce, ain’t it?”
Hew turned to see Graham leaning against the back door’s jamb. The evening sun beat down on his head until it felt like his brain was stuck inside a pottery kiln. But the heat in his face had nothing to do with the Fahrenheit.
He was acting like a fool. Unraveled. Volatile.
Having seen what lack of self-control and self-discipline did to people, having suffered at the hands of those who’d never learned the fine art of restraint, he’d promised himself he’d never be that guy.
And yet…here he was.
Fuck!
Closing his eyes, he focused on box-breathing. Then, he carefully righted the Adirondack chair, dragged it out of the sun, and placed it in the shade cast by the patio’s short roof.
He should sit. He didn’t want to sit. He wanted to pace and punch and kick and curse. Which was why he should sit.
With as much dignity as he could muster, he shoved the cherry lollipop into his cheek and lowered himself into the chair.
Graham pushed away from the doorjamb and disappeared back inside.
Gone to join the others now that he’s made sure I’m not about to go on a murderous rampage, Hew thought as he sullenly sucked on the sugary treat and stared broodingly at the brick wall surrounding the property's edge.
It was ten feet tall and topped by razor wire.
A veritable fortress in the middle of the city.
Beyond the wall, he could hear the roar of a water taxi as it transported people upriver. Somewhere across the way, a hotel bellhop whistled for a cab. And farther down the river, a jackhammer worked tirelessly, tearing up concrete.
How weird was it that the world outside continued to turn when his world had stopped on a dime the moment that ransom call came in?
“Hydrate, brother.” Hew looked up to see Graham holding out a cold bottle of water. Condensation had already beaded on the plastic. “Throwin’ a hissy fit with a tail on it is thirsty work.”
“Christ.” Hew shoved a hand through his hair. “What an asshole I turned out to be.”
“Nah.” Graham pulled a chair up beside him and lowered his bulk into it. “You’re just an operator on the edge. That’s normal. Guys in our line of work usually end up bein’ homicidal or suicidal at some point. I’m just happy you’re the former and not the latter.”
It was said lightly. But something told Hew it was anything but.
He studied his friend and teammate carefully. Graham Coleburn had always been a closed book, the guy in the corner who preferred to squint and scowl and crack an off-color joke rather than bare his soul.
Now, Hew wondered if all those flippant remarks and taciturn looks hid a deeper melancholia.
“Which are you?” he asked as he pulled out the sucker and swished a glug of water through his teeth and over his tongue. He spat it on the flagstone next to his chair and then poured half of what was left in the bottle over his face.
Good thing I don’t have a mirror, he thought, shoving the sucker back into his mouth. I don’t think I’d like to see the thing starin’ back at me.
The facade on the unflappable, ever-composed helicopter pilot had cracked wide open to reveal who he was at his core. A man capable of savagery. Ruthlessness. Barbarism.
“I’ve been homicidal since I was eighteen,” Graham admitted with a laconic shrug. “Why d’ya think I became a SEAL?”
“The dress whites.” Hew forced a little levity into the conversation, as much for his own sake as for Graham’s. “Figured ya liked the look of ice cream man chic.”
“That’s just a bonus.” Graham grinned and then joined Hew in staring out at the brick wall.
“I’ve seen ya worried before,” Graham observed after a little while. “Seen ya troubled and tormented. But I’ve never seen you like this.” He slid a glance Hew’s way. “Beat the flesh off their skulls?”
Hew closed his eyes. He had said that, hadn’t he? And more, he’d meant it.
“Not that you’ve ever shied away from doin’ what needs doin’ to keep yourself and those of us who go into battle with ya safe from all comers,” Graham clarified. “But violence is usually your last instinct, not your first.”
Hew nodded. “I’ve tried to keep that side of myself in check.
” He used his tongue to shove the sucker to his opposite cheek.
“But I have it in me, just like any other man. Right now, it’s slipped its leash and is roarin’ so loud I can barely hear my own thoughts.
Those fuckers who took Sabrina? I want their heads on a platter, Graham.
And I know that has nothin’ to do with justice and everything to do with vengeance, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. ”
Graham had nothing to add to that, so they once more lapsed into silence.
When the slightest breeze wafted by, it cooled Hew’s head enough for him to add, “I’m grateful to Kerberos. But I also want to reach down their throats and pull out their lungs because they didn’t give us more.”
“They did drop a whole lot of nothin’ in our laps, didn’t they?” Graham’s expression was less than pleased.
“A big ol’ steamin’ pile of it,” Hew declared. Then, he added, “She’s out there because of us.” The words stuck in his throat like they came with barbs. “Because someone wants to…what? Kill us? Expose us?”
Graham didn’t sugarcoat his answer. “Maybe both.”
“Well, fuck ’em for draggin’ her into it.” Hew had to swallow the vitriol that burned the back of his throat like battery acid. “She’s innocent.”
“That she is.” Graham agreed.
And since there was nothing left to say on the subject, Hew drank the last of his water, crunched the last of the sucker, and shoved the stick into the empty bottle before twisting the cap shut.
“You love her, don’t ya?”
The question, spoken so casually, punched Hew in the gut. He recovered quickly. Or, at least, he thought he did. But his voice still sounded a little hoarse when he answered. “Ayuh. Like I love all you dumb pissahs. You’re family. And that’s no small thing for a guy like me.”
Graham lifted an eyebrow. “Sure that’s all there is to it?”
No. Hew wasn’t sure. But…
“Doesn’t matter.” He waved a dismissive hand. “She’s with someone else.”
And that pang in his chest when he thought of her with Martin? He ignored it.
“I want her to be happy,” he added simply. Because it was the truth. “And if the Munchkin makes her happy, then he’s my favorite person in the world.”
He expected Graham to call bullshit on that last statement. So he was a little relieved when the former SEAL said only, “We’ll get her back. And then we’ll find out who’s out to get us.”
Hew nodded, although his optimism was hovering somewhere between rock bottom and the pits of hell. “Because the good guys always win in the end.”
Graham’s bearded chin jerked back. “Do they?”
“That’s how it works in all the books.”
Graham rolled his eyes. “Too much reading has rotted your brain.”