Extreme Honor Page 11

  Once the wax was completely removed and he was sure the contacts on the micro SD were perfectly cleaned, he loaded it into his memory card reader. A few minutes to scan for viruses and he had two files, both video. The first was tagged as highlights and the second was significantly bigger, compressed, and encrypted.

  Calhoun had intended for David to find these first. David was going to make a guess that he was supposed to view the highlights to get a clearer idea of the issue at hand, then take the time to absorb the other video over more time. First things first. He made copies and backed them to his secure storage, then made secondary backups to his cloud storage. Encrypted.

  Then he took his computer offline and double-clicked the video file to watch it.

  “What’s Calhoun’s status?” a voice offscreen asked.

  “Stable, sir. He’ll live. Unconscious for now.” Only the legs and torso of this speaker were visible.

  The camera was low—around waist height or lower. Meaning it was likely a camera attached to a canine tactical assault suit. Probably Atlas’s specifically. Normally those cameras were used to give human handlers and the rest of the team knowledge of what lay ahead as the canine took point. In this case, it looked like Calhoun had been injured and Atlas was still in use. Not recommended, but there was usually a backup on the team able to take over the working dog if something should happen to the handler.

  “Just as well,” the offscreen speaker said. “Not sure our teammate has the stomach for what we need to do here.”

  Not likely. Calhoun had had the balls for anything that needed doing.

  The unseen man continued, “We’ll use the dog to terrorize the prisoner. Damage to extremities is acceptable but try to keep it limited. We want to be able to patch him up if we need him alive past this evening.”

  David set his jaw. It went against his morals to use a dog this way. But war wasn’t noble. He’d done things he’d have nightmares about for the rest of his life. He was only sorry Atlas had been commanded to do similar.

  The video skipped. Highlights reel, after all.

  A man was secured to a chair. He’d been worked over already and there were several more men in the room. Once in a while, a face came into frame and David paused to capture the image of the face. Only a couple; the camera hadn’t captured all of them. But he was going to need those for later, especially since the SEALs had covered the name tags on their uniforms for the interrogation.

  “Wait! Wait! You want this man? I can give you his location. We can do business.”

  English. Fairly well-spoken and with the kind of accent that indicated a higher level of education. David listened more carefully.

  “You want him. I want him dead. Kill him for me and I will make sure you and your future company have exclusive business once you are established.”

  David stopped the video and replayed. If he’d heard correctly, this wasn’t an interrogation anymore. It was evolving into something uglier: a conspiracy.

  “It’s what you do, isn’t it? Once your career is complete with the US military, you go private. Establish a private military company. Mercenaries.” The man was sweating, could barely see out one swollen eye, but no one was stopping him or redirecting his discussion to more pertinent information. They were all listening. “Mercenaries need work. The best work is here. Will be here, for decades to come.”

  True. Even once the war was officially over and troops were brought home, the area would be ruled by unrest. Mercenaries had job security in those sorts of hot spots all over the Middle East and surrounding regions.

  “I will be the head of my organization. Not some middleman. Don’t just capture and interrogate the man you are looking for. Kill your target for me. We will do business for a long time to come.”

  An unseen man—probably the commanding officer based on the authority in his tone and the way the men in camera view deferred to him—spoke. “You make a very interesting proposition. We can make a deal.”

  Son of a bitch.

  * * *

  A sunny morning with blue skies and a light breeze went a long way toward banishing her worries. Lyn didn’t want to live a paranoid life. Walking with Atlas had been a lot easier than she expected, relaxing even. She babbled about random things like the trees around them and the squirrels she spotted. He listened. He was good like that, being a dog and all.

  People made things way the hell too complicated.

  This trip, she’d spent far more time than usual pondering her childhood. Contrasting and comparing her experience to what she was learning about David specifically, and Brandon and Alex by virtue of their work at the kennels. They were so very different from the wealthy clients she normally worked with in terms of their knowledge of dogs and the way military life had influenced their life after. They were complex men with simple desires: build a good life, train good dogs.

  And they were all single. It hadn’t required a morning shopping with Sophie to figure out why, though the woman had provided some interesting insight. Every one of the men, including David, had serious issues to work through.

  Lyn’s parents had lived walking on eggshells. Too many secrets between them, unresolved misunderstandings, and unaired grievances. They’d remained married but they’d fallen out of love. Lyn had trouble believing maintaining the appearance of propriety had been worth the misery in a loveless marriage. But then, her mother had been married once before and probably preferred the security marriage afforded her.

  Lyn’s stepfather could’ve been worse. He could’ve been abusive, for example, but he hadn’t been. He’d just never had a use for Lyn’s mother or for Lyn. There’d been so much more important away than there was to pay attention to at home.

  She should steer clear of David for those telltales. He preferred to work on a need-to-know basis, and he was the person to decide what she needed to know. It was something she could work through on a professional level but in a personal relationship they were going to slowly deteriorate. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself from resenting it over time.

  The memory of his kiss stirred up fluttering sensations in her chest and brought heat to her cheeks. He was good. Really good. And the chemistry between them was more intense than anything she’d experienced with anyone else. No way was she going to regret the kisses last night. But what she needed to decide was whether she wanted more.

  “Lyn.” David came striding across the grounds.

  David standing still was a striking figure. The man in motion was enough to make her stop in her tracks and stare. He had an economy of motion, neat and efficient, but covered distance faster than she imagined a man could just walking. She wondered what he was like running an obstacle course. Actually, she’d pay to watch him traverse one of those. Maybe there was one of those traveling challenges coming through the region in the near future. Sophie would help her enter him.

  Plans for another day.

  “Change in plans.” David came to a halt a few yards short of them. His jaw was set and he wore a decidedly grim expression.

  “For the day?” She considered him. “Or in general?”

  “This project with Atlas could be closed out a lot sooner than we planned.” He frowned. “It’s not the way I want it to work out, but it might be for the best. You don’t want to be involved in what’s probably coming next.”

  “I’m capable of deciding what I want, given the full picture.” Oh, he was not going to toss her to the curb.

  “It’d be safer for you.”

  She held up her free hand. “I was attacked in my own hotel room the night I arrived. One of those attackers showed up here the next morning. Now that man is on bail and no one ever found the other guy. Last night you told me I could feel safe here. And now you’re telling me it’s safer for me to go out there. Make up your damned mind.”

  Anger and frustration welled up inside and this time he was not going to dispel it with a kiss. He’d dismissed it, distracted her from it, and done everything to take he
r attention away from the cause but now he was trying to push her away and this was the limit.

  “Why don’t we go inside and—” Not a single sign of his truly comprehending showed in his face. He was still focused on getting her to do what he wanted.

  “No.” She widened her stance, figuring he couldn’t possibly make her move. Atlas came to heel at her side, watching the exchange between her and David intently. “We can talk about this right here. Give me good reasons, supported with real information, and I will make a decision based on those.”

  David sighed. “It’s better if you—”

  “This is not a military operation.” She cut him off. “If we are truly partners working for Atlas’s best interest then we share information. Nothing less.”

  She shut her mouth then. Interrupting him twice was already beyond rude. She wanted to resolve this, not antagonize him into throwing her off the property for real.

  David worked his jaw, obviously reining in his own temper. “Anything to do with Atlas is looking to be complicated.”

  The dog in question glanced over at the sound of his name but stayed where he was.

  “His previous handler wasn’t only lost in the line of duty.” It sounded like a struggle for David to share even that much and he looked all around them.

  They were yards from the perimeter fence and even farther from the main house. No one was near enough to overhear.

  David continued, scowling. “Atlas’s previous handler’s name was Calhoun and we served together when I was still active. We were friends. So receiving texts from him wasn’t unusual.”

  She wasn’t sure where this was going so she waited.

  “Any communication from deployed military is monitored.” David shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “His last text was out of character for him. Odd. But what I read into Calhoun’s last text to me could be discounted as paranoia.”

  He looked at her, braced. Waiting for a reaction.

  She considered it. Considered David. He wouldn’t be worried over something that wasn’t an actual threat. “Just because a person is paranoid doesn’t mean they’re delusional.”

  That won her a ghost of a smile. Nodding, he continued. “Text was weird as hell. Typically any bar on base would only issue two drinks in a night over there. But we drink so infrequently, two is more than enough. I figured he was in between missions, low on tolerance and sleep, and drunk texting me.”

  Lyn snorted. “Better than texting an ex.”

  “But a drunk text still has a purpose behind it.” David pulled his hand out of a pocket and rubbed his face. “Dramatic, I know. But he was going on about Atlas and carrying the answers on his shoulders.”

  Lyn raised her eyebrows. “So he could’ve been referencing a book I read in college or mythology.”

  David snorted. “We do a lot of reading deployed, believe it or not. But Calhoun wasn’t into that kind of fiction as much as mythology, especially as it applied to strategy and the art of war.”

  “So we’re thinking the Titan Atlas, then. I remember he was supposed to carry the celestial spheres on his shoulders but that’s all I’ve got.” She’d had a phase as a kid reading up on Roman and Greek mythology. Atlas was one of the only Titans she remembered at all. If they got into Nordic gods, she was going to have to start running Internet searches.

  David held up both hands. “The message meant exactly what it said: Atlas carries the answers on his shoulders. There was a micro SD card in his shoulder instead of a locater chip.”

  “Oh.” Well, her overactive imagination could take a break, then.

  “I’ve got some of the data running through a decryption now but I’m not sure which encryption he used. It’s going to take a couple of days.” He gestured back toward the main house and his office. “But Calhoun left me a highlights reel to give me an overview of the issue. It’s bad.”

  “Is this where the conspiracy theory starts?” She wanted to laugh it off but she was afraid it was real.

  Lyn studied David. He was agitated, tiny muscles in his jaw jumping beneath the skin as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. As fantastic as this story sounded, it was serious.

  David tilted his head to the side briefly. “It’s contained and involves plans of a small group of people for after they leave active duty, at least as far as I know.”

  Relief swept through her and her knees wobbled a bit. She’d worried it was one of those impossible, reaching-up-through-the-ranks kinds of things they showed in action hero movies. “But it’s not the peaceful, quiet life sort of retirement, I’m guessing.”

  “Nope. Some men come home and want to build a life.” David looked out over the kennels. “Others want to find a way to go back and keep doing what they did, for more pay and less red tape. The problem is, this is someone’s golden parachute, a way for them to make insane amounts of money after they retire from the military and go private. It means deals and contracts and connections that have nothing to do with protecting our country anymore, and everything to do with making profit off of other people’s chaos. Anyone planning to go this route has no issues taking out anyone who might get in their way.”

  She wasn’t sure if she understood the latter but she did the former. It was what Brandon, Alex, and David had done here. They were putting their lives back together. Finding their way back from whoever they’d become overseas.

  “You need to find these men, don’t you?” For his friend, Calhoun. For Atlas.

  “They’re responsible for Calhoun’s death.” The one statement held so much conviction. “I need to know why and how. And I need to see them held accountable.”

  “Do you know where to start looking for them?” She wasn’t sure how she could help, but she wanted to. Because David needed to do this for his friend, but she wanted to do this for David.

  “I saw one, yesterday. Shouldn’t be hard to find him again,” David commented. “He’s keeping a close eye on Atlas.”

  And her by association.

  “He was in New Hope yesterday. That’s why you told us to come back here.” Her anger had been settling but it sparked back up. “You could’ve told me.”

  David held up his hands again. “I knew he was following but I didn’t have the connection until we found the micro SD today. I don’t have the full picture yet, just a bunch of pieces to the puzzle, and I’m going to have to dig for the connections to assemble everything.”

  It was her turn to rub her face with her hands. “What about the men who attacked me?”

  “Not military. Hired thugs, most likely. But they’ve got to be connected.” David drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m going to find that connection, too, and see them held accountable for what they did to you.”

  “You sound like a man about to turn into a caped crusader.” She regretted the words as they came out. It was the wrong thing to say and she didn’t mean to make little of what he planned to do.

  He shook his head. “I’m not a superhero. But there’s something wrong here and it’s got a cascading effect. Hurting people like you and probably others. This is about doing the right thing, and seeing to it Calhoun didn’t die for nothing.”

  She’d always thought of honor as a word on a plaque or written under a crest. David was teaching her about the meaning of it.

  “I’d like to help, however I can.” She put every ounce of sincerity she had into it, to make up for her previous statement. “It’d bring a lot of attention on if you took me off Atlas’s case. I can work with you still, and help track down the rest of the information you need.”

  “You don’t have the training for this.” But he didn’t sound adamant.

  “Any time you leave the kennels, you’re going to be watched, aren’t you?” She tried to think as quickly as possible. “Just like me. They’re less likely to think something is off if we’re together and working with Atlas. It could just be another approach to his rehabilitation. Without me and Atlas, it’d be obvious you’re up t
o something.”

  “You have a point.” He wasn’t happy about it. His shoulders sagged.

  “I said it last night and I still mean it; there’s nowhere I feel safer than with you and Atlas.” Truth again.

  His gaze locked on hers, searching. After a long moment he sighed. “Okay. We work on this together, but anything starts to go sideways and you listen to me. No arguments in the midst of shit going down. Understand?”

  She bit her lip. Not a small thing to ask and he’d hold her to it. “Agreed, so long as I can ask my questions once we’re someplace safe again and you promise to give me the full, unedited answers.”

  “Agreed.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Is it horrible to ask for a rest stop?”

  Cruz glanced at the digital display on the dashboard. Only an hour and a half into their road trip. Granted, they’d been caught in some traffic getting past Philadelphia but they hadn’t even made it through Delaware. Traveling through it on I-95 was almost literally a blink-and-you-miss-it sort of thing.

  Atlas chose that moment to let out a brief whine from the back seat. Dog probably sensed her discomfort but damn, it seemed like Atlas was always going to take her side in awkward situations.

  He sighed. Well, he’d decided to bring the two of them along. If this was an indicator for the rest of the trip, he should be glad there were rest stops at regular intervals the whole way there and back. “There’s a big rest stop just up here.”

  “Thank you.” She fidgeted. “Have we gotten at least close to halfway there?”

  Nope. “Is this your way of asking if we’re there yet?”

  “No!” She huffed. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a road trip instead of a flight. I guess I’ve been spoiled by the availability of a restroom en route.”