Chapter 3
Action Item One. “Check out Tammy’s past twenty years,” I order Senator, my man, best data geek in the country, and definitely someone who hates when I hover over him while he works. And I’m hovering over his shoulder, practically sitting on his lap.
He turns his face toward me, lips on my cheek. “You wanna make out?”
I can’t look at him or I’ll kiss him, so I give him the side-eye until he moves the chair to the right, a bored look on his face.
“Fine.” I sit back on my bed, then shift positions because I can’t see the screen past his broad shoulders or the spiky hair he gels like some rock-star renegade.
He’s wearing rings too, got tattoos of some chick on a bike holding a smoking skull.
Don’t ask. My men are turning into bikers and rock stars.
Apparently, I’m turning into a stalker, so I sit and don’t comment on their transformations.
“Anything?” I ask.
“It’s twenty years, Cap. Gonna take time.”
“Just find the birth certificate.”
He turns. “That’s more like thirty-five years.”
“Not for her. The kid.”
“She has a kid?” Dawson and Senator ask in unison.
“Yeah.”
Senator purses his lips, then sighs, resolved to just do what I asked him because he knows better than to try to talk me out of the mission. Once I lock on a target, I’m not letting go. Perseverance is my middle name. Stalker too, but hey, perseverance sounds better.
I tap my knee while Senator searches the database. We have unauthorized access to shit. What can I say? Paranoid is also somewhere among my middle names, and frankly, boredom takes a toll.
There’s only so much a war veteran can do out here in the Wild West of normal life before he needs a mission or goes crazy.
We’ve done mercenary work but didn’t like it much since it involved lots of lawbreaking for the wrong reasons, so now we’re sort of retired.
Shit. “It has just occurred to me we’re retired. ”
“Please don’t use that word,” Dawson says, then slurps his vanilla milk shake.
“Got something, Cap,” Senator says.
I jump off the bed and hover again. On the screen is Tammy’s social media page showing two identical girls. I smile. “Girls.” I’ve always wanted girls. A pang of regret that I never had a normal adult life hits my chest, and I rub it, then sit back down. “What are their names?”
“Melany and Reagan.”
I like those names. The regret in my chest grows into a hollow place.
Oh man, the things I gave up for my country.
I sigh, thinking something had to give, and I made choices when I was young, choices I can’t say I entirely regret, just a little when presented with possibilities and only a bit.
But it’s never too late, you know. Even for an asshole like me.
“How old are they?” I ask.
“Seven. And I’m going back as far as four years when she opened the account.”
“Yeah?” I know what he’s looking for. The same thing I’m looking for. A daddy to target and shoot. Okay, so I do have a slight problem with the way I think of competition for Tammy and the twin girls, and I’ll address that later. Or never. We’ll see.
“No pictures with guys. Lots of pictures with Ginger at the diner. Also, an older woman. Her mother lives here.”
“Any dicks in suits?”
“Nah.”
Dawson claps my shoulder. “I won’t have to spend my retirement money on your jail upkeep.”
“She said she doesn’t have a babysitter and that the baby daddy is out of town temporarily. See if you can find the father.”
“I can’t hack into Social Security right after I hacked them last week. They need to cool off and drop the search for my code.”
“But you will.”
Senator closes the computer. “There’s no baby daddy, Cap. I know a single mother when I see one, so she’s lying.” He props his foot on the desk. “Can we get on the housing thing we came here for? We need to find the handler and get the keys.”
I tap the gun tucked neatly in a holster on my belt, grab an extra magazine and drop it into my jacket, then sling the jacket back on. “Check out the houses without me. Dawson, take over.”
“Are you kidding me?” Senator protests. “You know the layout of the land. You said so yourself. No decision-making without you.”
“I still know the layout and will make decisions, but I’m gonna do it after you do the groundwork.”
“It’s all in the specs.” He yanks out a folder from his briefcase. What kind of rock star carries a briefcase? Senator is having an identity crisis.
I shake my head and open the door. “Layout matters, and for that, we need recon.” I close the door.
“Where the fuck are you going?” rings out behind me, but I get on my bike, rev it up, then shut off the engine.
I get off the bike and open the seat, grab my Yankee ball cap, and put it on.
Gonna go stealth mode for a bit, do my own recon.
Stealth mode is also sounding better than stalker so I’m feeling good as I walk back to the diner and take position across the street inside the local market.
After spending a few hours staring out the window, watching her talk to the Suit, who’s still there as if he lives there, I’m annoyed as fuck and wanna get Dawson’s sniper rifle and off the dude. But I can’t do that because…no good reason comes to me. I mean, I could off him. Hm.
An elderly man approaches. Vaguely, I remember him from when I was a kid and used to come into this store. Stole an ice cream one time, and he called my dad, who picked me up and grounded me for a month after.
“Reed MacLoyd?”
Surprised, I turn my face toward him. “That’s right, sir.”
“Is the reason you came back to town working in our diner?”
It is now. “No, sir.”
“Then stay away. She don’t need a man on a bike leaving her pregnant. You understand?”
“I do.” I process his words and presume the baby daddy was a man on a bike, and that’s fine as long as he’s not coming in and out of her life, and even if he was, I brought my Sig and my men. “Can I grab a chair?”
“For eleven ninety-nine. Aisle three in the back. Can’t miss it, but if you think our Tammy is gonna jump on the back of your bike, you got it wrong, boy. She won’t do it.”
“Good thing I walked, then.” Fuck off, I wanna say, but I don’t because I can’t risk an argument with an elderly man. When I’m on a recon mission, anything that’s not the mission itself gets my temper revved to that of an annoyed tiger and drops my patience to that of a roadrunner.
Do not fuck with me while I’m on a mission, though I’m inside his store and he’s letting me stand here, which makes me wonder what he’s really up to. “What do you want?” I ask.
“I want that Suit out of town.”
Is he hiring me? I blink. “Why?”
“Because he’s trying to turn this place into a metropolis.”
“How so?”
“Put up a monstrosity of a housing development not two miles from here.”
“No shit.”
“I shit you not, boy. Our town is big enough already. You want the chair?”
“Depends. When’s Tammy’s shift over?”
“One thirty.”
“Then no. Where does she go next?”
“Today is Friday, so she’ll get the girls from Hazel’s place, then stop by the big grocery store before she heads home.”
So I’m gonna need a car or else she’ll spot me on the bike. “Can I borrow your car?”
“For a day?”
I purse my lips. “A week?”
“Eight hundred.”
“What the fuck?”
“New truck. I don’t drive. Got it to write it off taxes for the business.” He pulls out a key and dangles it in my face.
I snatch the key.
“Hey,” he protests. “Eight hundred.”
“I’ll get rid of the Suit. How’s that?”
“That’s good.”