“Holy shit,” a voice said from the door of the den.
We all looked up as Jonathan Ferris entered.
“What is it?” Rinaldo asked.
“You guys are talking about Kyle Davies—the big bald dude?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“Because he’s the one who helped me get your shit out of lockup,” Jonathan said. “Your rifle and phone—he’s the one who had someone on the inside sign it all out for us.”
My skin went cold and broke out in goose bumps. I didn’t think about my actions; I just reached down to the duffel bag at my feet and brought my Barrett out in pieces. I examined each piece in detail, paying special attention to those parts that didn’t require cleaning on a regular basis.
Inside the scope, I found it—a tiny piece of plastic with a bit of metal at the end was stuck on the inside of the sight, away from where it would be seen looking through the scope.
“GPS,” Jonathan confirmed when I handed it to him. “Damn small little bugger, too. What-cha-ma-nuts has his resources, no doubt about it.”
“What-cha…who?” Victor shook his head and glared at Jonathan.
“Whatever his name really is.” Jonathan placed the device on the tile floor by the fireplace and smashed it under his heel.
“That’s how he kept finding me,” I realized. I looked to Lia. “That’s how he knew where we were when we changed apartments and how he knew I was coming for him at the warehouse. The Barrett was always with me.”
“How would Kyle know what weapon you always have on you?” Nick wondered aloud.
“How, indeed?” Rinaldo echoed.
Jonathan had his laptop out a second later, and his fingers flew over the keyboard. Everyone else sat in silent contemplation while he worked. After only a few minutes, he looked over to me.
“Hey, Evan—does the name Keith Davies mean anything to you?”
“Yeah,” I responded. In my head, everything began to focus, and all the parts of the last few weeks began to merge together. I thought the names had to be a coincidence, but they weren’t—they were the key to everything. “Marine. Infantry.”
“Captured about the same time you were.”
“Right before,” I said. “Trent…Kyle—whatever the fuck his name is—he’s his brother, isn’t he?”
“You got it.”
“He blames me,” I said.
“For what?” Lia asked.
“Keith Davies was the guy who was nearly court-martialed for giving away our position when I was captured,” I told her. “It was my testimony they were going to use against him. He took the option of being dishonorably discharged instead. There wasn’t a lot of evidence against him but definitely some suspicions. No one was ever really sure if he was working for the insurgents or not, but my statements at the debriefing had them checking into him.”
“He killed himself eight months ago,” Jonathan said. “It says here his brother was once an FBI agent, but he left the agency a couple years ago.”
Keith Davies’ suicide would have been just a couple of months before I had my little episode and would have given his brother plenty of time to find me and work on a plan of revenge.
“What did he say to you?” I asked Lia. “Tell me what happened when he came to the apartment.”
Lia shifted in her seat and took a deep breath before she spoke.
“I was in the bedroom,” she said, “reading a book, and Odin started growling.”
She looked up at me, and I could see the tension around her eyes as she spoke.
“I’d rarely heard him growl before, and I started getting worried. He got up and went to the door of the bedroom. That’s when the front door burst open, and he was there.”
“Davies?” Rinaldo asked for clarification.
Lia nodded.
“I knew right away,” she continued, “I knew there was something wrong. His eyes—the way he looked at me and kept smiling, even when…when…”
She took in a sharp breath, and I rubbed the back of her hand.
“Go on, babe,” I said softly, though the inside of me was ready to start screaming and breaking a few things.
“I picked up that gun you gave me,” Lia said to me, “and I…I tried to do what you said, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t pull the trigger—I got the safety off, but I just couldn’t do it.”
“Great match for you there, Evan,” Victor snorted.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled back at him. I looked back to Lia. “What did Davies say?”
“He pointed a gun at me and told me to drop mine. Odin was still growling, and my hands were shaking. He yelled at me to drop it again, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I dropped it. He came into the bedroom, and Odin went after him.”
She paused and her eyes brimmed over with tears.
“He was trying to protect me,” she sobbed. “He jumped at him, and I heard his gun go off twice. Odin dropped down in the doorway, and he just kicked him and walked in. He tied me up, went through everything, and the next thing I knew, he was dragging me out.”
“Motherfucker,” Jonathan grumbled. “I liked Odin.”
Lia started crying harder, and Luisa took hold of her other hand. I was just barely holding it together, trying not to imagine the scene in my head. If I did, I was going to lose it, but some of it sank in anyway.
He was a damn fine guard dog after all.
My throat tightened up on me, and I turned my attention to Rinaldo, who looked over to Matthew.
“Go tell Howard to retrieve the body of Mister Arden’s dog,” he said. “Have him take a crew to clean up the apartment as well. Leave no trace.”
“Yes, sir.”
Matthew left the room. By the time he returned, Lia had composed herself again.
“Go on,” Rinaldo encouraged her.
“He had these little plastic strips which he put around my wrists. He had the gun in my back as he pushed me into a car outside the apartment building. I was trying to watch where we were going, but I couldn’t figure it out—I don’t know the city very well.”
“Did he take you straight to the warehouse, where I found you?”
Lia nodded.
“The whole way, he kept saying how much he was going to enjoy making you suffer, Evan. He said he’d been planning it a long time and he couldn’t wait to see your face when you found me.”
I swallowed and looked out toward the window for a moment. The flickering image of the bomb kid was there in the glass, but I didn’t acknowledge him.
“He took me inside,” Lia continued. “He kept laughing and telling me he wasn’t sorry it was going to hurt because he wanted you to suffer everything I suffered. He said he was going to kill you eventually but not until you’d paid for what you’d done. I kept asking him why, but he never told me.”
She took another breath.
“He pushed me down on the floor inside that room. That’s where you found me.”
“I found you in a chair,” I reminded her.
Lia just shrugged as she looked away from me. My eyes met Rinaldo’s, and I could see my expression reflected in his face.
She was hiding something.
“What happened?” I pressed.
“He put me in the chair when he figured out you were coming,” she said.
“What about before that?”
Lia was jumpy and kept looking away from me. I reached over and took her chin in my hand to force her to look at me.
“What did he do?” I asked.
“I told you. He pushed me down on the floor.”
“What else?”
“He just…well, he hit me.
“What else?”
“He…touched me,” she whispered, still refusing to look into my eyes.