“I will,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
Jack hung up and made a U-turn. It was less than thirty minutes to McAllen, so Jack had time to stop by Scout’s. Jack had been a soldier long enough that he could read a scene as well or better than any cop. Perez wasn’t sharing information with him, so Jack had to find out what happened on his own.
It was ten at night with thunderheads obscuring the moon, minimizing the chances of anyone seeing him. If a neighbor spotted him, Jack was fine. If Perez had a patrol out on Scout’s street, Jack might have some trouble.
He parked around the corner from Scout’s house and walked casually along the street. Crime scene tape had been woven around the porch railing. There was a seal on the front door. No patrol car in sight. Jack walked around back while slipping on gloves.
There was a police seal on the back door, but Jack knew that Scout didn’t lock any of the sunroom windows. The police hadn’t even checked. Jack was inside in less than ten seconds.
The smell of Scout’s violent death hung in the stifling house, retaining the heat of the day. Jack looked around the sunroom, didn’t see anything out of place, and walked the house with a flashlight.
Scout was a patriot through and through, and did whatever Uncle Sam had asked him to. It was that blind loyalty, however, that Jack was certain had led to some actions that Scout couldn’t deal with, and that had led to his drinking. Yet when Jack told him to sober up, they had a job, Scout did just that. Maybe it was Jack’s fault. He’d let Scout do what he wanted when they didn’t have an assignment-maybe he should have ordered him to stop drinking or he was off the team. Maybe he should have showed him some tough love.
Shit. Nineteen years and Scout was gone. If it had been in the field, Jack could have handled it better. Scout always expected to die doing what he loved. Maybe took too many risks because of it. But to die with a bullet in the back of the head? Naked and hamstrung? Jack wanted to snap the neck of the bastard who did it. Who took away Scout’s dignity before he killed him.
Still, something about the scene had bothered Jack from the minute he walked in earlier that day, and now he hoped to figure out what it was.
He went to the front door. The blood spatter told Jack that Scout had been hamstrung just inside his living room. Enough time to walk in, close the door … There was no sign of a struggle, save for a broken lamp near the door that could have fallen if Scout tried to grab on to something when he fell. Jack followed the trail of blood to the kitchen, where Scout had been duct-taped to a chair for an unknown length of time, before the tape had been cut. Scout had been pushed or fell to the floor. Shot in the back of the head. The sight was burned into Jack’s head.
Scout had been drunk. His reaction time may have been slow, but his instincts always stayed sharp. Like Jack, he wouldn’t walk into a dark house, even his own, without caution. Pausing. Listening for a breath, a heartbeat. Sensing movement, heat, the faint expel of air from an enemy’s lungs. Sniffing for adrenaline, cologne, the smell of something different.
Jack closed his eyes and used his other senses to try and figure out what had bothered him earlier in the day.
The stench of death that Jack had been ignoring came rushing in. Death and fear. He walked through the small house. If he were a killer, he would have secured the building, made sure no one was inside.
Ten minutes later, Jack was frustrated. He went back to the kitchen and stared at the dried pool of blood on the floor. “Dammit, Scout. Who did this?”
He pictured Scout lying on the floor. He had avoided looking at his friend’s dead body as much as possible. But now he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
And suddenly he knew.
Scout hadn’t been wearing his dog tags. He always wore them, even in the shower. Or, Jack should say, it. The second tag had been torn off on Scout’s last mission when he’d broken his back and couldn’t walk out. He was left for three hours before his team could return to him. “I only have two lives, Jack. I used up one.”
To verify that Jack wasn’t imagining it, he went to Scout’s bedroom and bathroom and shined his light around on the off chance Scout had taken the chain off and forgotten it. Nothing.
Jack left the way he’d come in, taking care not to disturb anything. He didn’t know what this meant, but he hoped that Dillon’s feds could use the information.
He heard a car drive up. Another. By the sound, police cruisers. Shit. He couldn’t slip through the backyard, too much light from the streetlamps, and if he were seen it would make him look guilty of something. He’d just talk his way out of it. As long as Art Perez wasn’t around, Jack was confident he could be leaving for McAllen to pick up the feds in the next five minutes.
He walked around the side of the house, hands in view.
Art Perez stood there, in civilian clothes, a cat-ate-the-canary grin on his face.
“I knew you’d show up sooner or later.”
Megan had grown frustrated thirty minutes ago when their ride was a no-show. It was after midnight, she was tired, hungry, and crabby, and stuck in a small, empty airport thirty miles from their destination.
“Have you tried him again?” she asked Hans. Hans had left a message, told the ride where they would be waiting.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure he’s coming?”
“Yes. Dillon talked to him only a couple hours ago.” But even saintly Hans Vigo was beginning to sound irritated.
Thunder rolled through the sky, the clouds were thick with the threat of a downpour, though there was no rain yet. The humidity was enough to make Megan miss the dry heat of Sacramento.
The sound of the Jeep came before they saw it.
The driver pulled near them, but didn’t get out. He was a Hispanic male about forty years old with shortcropped hair and wearing a priest collar. “Your friend’s brother is a priest?” she asked.
Hans shook his head. Megan didn’t like the unknown situation, and had her hand on her gun.
“Dr. Vigo?” the driver asked. “Agent Elliott?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Father Francis Cardenas. Jack Kincaid sent me for you. I’m sorry I’m late. There’s been a situation. Jack’s in jail, and we have to get him out or he’ll be dead by morning.”
He was strapped to a cot. Naked. His eyes burned and he couldn’t see. The room was too bright, too bright, too much light, God help me help me help me die.
The door opened and he began to shake. Not from cold, the room was too hot, the lights too bright, to be cold. The fear. The pain. No, no no no no no no …
No words, no explanation, and the needle went in, at the back of his neck, and every limb screamed in pain, as if he’d been zapped by a lightning bolt. There were no tears, no voice to the agony that rippled through his body, wave after wave after wave …
They’d left him. They hated him and left him. Not to die, they didn’t want to give him anything, they wanted him to suffer. Maybe he was dead. Maybe this was Hell. It couldn’t be that he was alive.
Another needle and the pain put him over the edge….
“Ethan!”
He blinked. Every finger in both hands was on fire. He stared at them in the dim light of the cheap hotel room they’d rented somewhere in New Mexico. New Mexico? He didn’t remember. Not for certain … his fingers weren’t on fire. They were there. Right there. He moved them, watched them glide right and left and right and left …
“Ethan, it’s me.”
The female voice had a panicked sound.
“Ethan, you’re okay. I’m right here. You’re okay.”