CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
4 Weeks later
Sloane scanned the café as she waited for Amy Schumer. The place was only open part of the day, and stayed busy from opening to closing. The large windows let in the midsummer sun while a wall of greenery brought the outdoors into the space. Though they had outdoor seating, she’d opted for a corner table for two so she and Amy would have some privacy.
When she saw her enter the café, she stood so Amy wouldn’t have to look for her. As Amy walked toward her, Sloane was struck by her tall, elegant figure. Reed wasn’t really consistent with any type. The secretary was short and plump, the intern thin and delicate. Amy was as a big a departure from Sloane’s own coloring and curves as the others.
“Thanks for joining me,” she said as Amy reached her.
Amy swept a gorgeous fall of blond hair back over her shoulder. “I don’t really want to trade war stories about Reed.”
“That’s not why I called you.”
“Then what is it?”
“He’s returned to Hadley, Childers, and Johnson.”
“I’m sorry. I know how uncomfortable that must be for you.”
“Not nearly as uncomfortable as I want to make it for him. I want to take him down. No one at your father’s firm can talk to me, so I’m hoping you’re still mad enough to dish some dirt on him to help me do that.”
Amy’s smile was gleeful. “I’d love to do that. And I might just know a few people at the office who might talk to you off the record as well.”
It seemed Reed had a habit of making enemies wherever he went, along with his inability to remain faithful. “Please have a seat.”
Forty-five minutes later, when she left the café, she felt more hopeful than she had since returning from vacation. Amy was more forthcoming than she’d expected, and even promised to have a couple of friends call Sloane later.
When her phone rang, she thought it might be her office calling, but the number was odd. It had a country code at the beginning. “Hello?”
“Sloane?”
She had never believed that a heart could leap, but hers did. “Connor. Are you okay?” She moved farther away from the restaurant, toward her car, so she could hear better.
“I’m good. How are you doing now you’re back to work?”
“It’s been busy and awkward. Reed is back. He moved back into his office before I got back from vacation.”
“How’s that going?”
“I haven’t spoken to him. I’m keeping my distance and so is he.”
“Hang tough, you’ve got this.”
Her eyes stung at his support. “Are you eating okay and staying safe?”
“Yeah. It’s hot, muggy and buggy. You’d be bathing in bug repellent. I am most of the time.”
He was somewhere south. Was it buggy in the desert? “Do you know how long you’ll be? Forget I asked that. I know you can’t tell me.”
“No, I can’t, honey. I know I don’t have any right to ask you to wait for me. We only had five days together.”
“Almost six. You owe me a dive and a jazz concert, so I’m going to hold you to those as soon as you get back.”
He fell silent for a moment. “You’ve got it, I promise. How’s Bernie?”
“She’s good. All the bruising is gone, and she got two weeks of being waited on hand and foot out of it.”
He chuckled.
“Have you talked to your father?”
“No, this is the first time I’ve gotten access to the phone, and I’m hoping you’ll be willing to call him for me.”
“Of course. He called me after you left just to reassure me you’d be okay.”
“I’m glad. He mailed the last of the paperwork for me, Sloane. This will be my last deployment.”
“It will go by fast.” Oh God, don’t let anything happen to him, this close to getting out. “We’ll go out and celebrate as soon as you get back.”
“It’s a date. You haven’t interviewed for another job yet, have you?” he asked.
“No. Not yet. I decided to look into some things first.”
“Meaning?”
“Background dirt on Reed. He’s too good, too polished at what he does. I think he’s pulled this crap before, so I’m looking into some recent developments.”
“Be careful, Sloane. When you stand between an asshole and what he thinks he deserves, there could be some kickback.” Static nearly drowned out his last word, then cleared.
“I’ll be careful.” Her throat ached with tears she tried to suppress. “I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time before we made love. I wanted to that first night.”
“I did too. I guess it was pretty obvious.”
She laughed. “Yes. We’ll make up for lost time when you’re home.”
“Now I won’t be able to think of anything else.”
There was noise on the other end of the phone. Sharp, loud noises that had her heart lunging into her throat.
“I have to go.”
Tears streamed down her face. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just the guys coming in from the field. No worries.”
“Okay.” Legs weak with relief, she leaned back against her car. “Call me whenever you can,” she managed.
“I will, Sloane.”
The phone went dead.
Connor’s thoughts drifted to Sloane for the hundredth time in the two hours since he took over surveillance from blue team. He’d been replaying their conversation She’d sounded good. Strong. The best thing was she still wanted to see him when he got back. Surprising after four weeks of no contact.
He was still shocked that he’d opened up to her. He was torn between embarrassment and relief when he thought about it. The way she wrapped herself around him. God, he needed to get her out of his head and concentrate on the front door through the scope.
He sick of waiting for Diaz. He wanted the drug kingpin responsible for the murder of numerous people in the region to show himself. Cowering in the stronghold the man called a house, he rarely left it without an army for protection.
The only place he went was his mistress’s house. The mistress lived next door to a family who had been unlucky enough to get in the way of Diaz and his men during a visit. A stray bullet fired by the fucker at her father injured and killed the little girl, and she bled to death before they could do anything for her.
That was months ago, and the fucker was still breathing. Still wreaking havoc on the innocent people around him—him, his drug distribution network, and his thugs, who’d as soon kill a child as look at her. Just like their boss.
Connor had dealt with injured and dying kids before, but something about the little girl, the look in her eyes as she bled to death, stuck with him. She had dark eyes like his Livy. Was the same age. It didn’t take a headshrinker to figure out why it bothered him so much. Hell, It had gotten to all the men up in arms.
But now he had the El Salvadorian and American governments’ permission to take the fucking monster down. He just had to catch him waving a gun around, threatening someone, and he could do it.
But that was the trick. He had to prove an imminent threat to someone before he could pull the trigger. They’d been watching all afternoon, hoping to catch some kind of action going down, while another sniper team was set up across town, waiting at another location, hoping for the same thing when Diaz returned from his visit to his mistress.
El Salvador, Ecuador, and Honduras were the three countries in an area known as the western triangle, the most violent areas in South America. All three territories were run by drug kingpins, their distributors and gangs.
Every nineteen hours a woman was killed in El Salvador by gang members. It was a common gang initiation ritual to rape and murder women of all ages. Gangs were the reason behind the hundreds of women fleeing the country to seek asylum in America. Gangs born in the United States had migrated south, where they could prey on a less-protected population.
The rise of Carlos Diaz had finally sent alarm bells off with the El Salvadorean government. And they had reached out for help. If Connor’s team could take out Diaz and some of his henchmen, the Salvadorian government and its army might gain better control of the region, and help prevent the drugs from reaching the U.S.
Seaman D. B. Sutton, the FNG—Fucking New Guy—on the team, was acting as his spotter. He had completed his training as a sniper, but needed more experience in the field, so they were paired. The FNG was doing okay aside from eating more than any three guys and not gaining a pound. Even as he thought it, D. B. said, “Hungry, yet, Hammer?”
Connor never wavered his attention from the scope he watched through. At least he was more comfortable here than he’d been in many other environments. He had a sleeping bag to cushion his position atop the table, a bathroom, and with so many other windows in the area, no one would pinpoint where the shot had come through fast enough to shoot back.
“No, not hungry yet, but you can go ahead and feed your tapeworm.” He couldn’t see D. B.’s smile, but he sensed it.
“He can wait awhile yet.”
The door to the house they were survielling opened. “We have movement.”
D.B. jerked his binoculars up and focused in on the house.
Diaz emerged, his hand locked around the wrist of a woman—his mistress, Yessenia. She’d been roughed up, her face bloody. Though she fought against him, he dragged her out of the house, across the stoop, and down the stairs.
“Three kids are in the doorway, but they’re staying put,” D.B. said.
Diaz beckoned to one of his men, and the guy rushed up. He removed a gun from beneath his jacket and handed it butt-first to his boss. Diaz pulled the trigger and shot the man in the chest three times.
“I’m taking the shot,” Connor focused in on Diaz’s body mass, released his breath and pulled the trigger.
Blood blossomed on Diaz’s white shirt, and he dropped. The woman leapt to her feet, ran back into the house, and slammed the door.
For a minute chaos reigned. The protection detail in Diaz’s party stayed hunkered down behind vehicles, waiting for more gunfire.
“We need to bug out. Once they calm down they’ll start looking through every building, and they’ll have an army to do it.” The neighbors hadn’t seen them come in, but chances were they heard the shot and would recognize where it came from.
While Connor unhooked the tripod from the sniper rifle and stuffed it in his pack, D.B. reported back to their base.
“Extraction team will meet us three blocks west and pick us up.” D.B. reached for his pack and his MP-5 machine gun.
After tossing the sleeping bag into the closet, Connor scanned the room for any further evidence of their occupancy. The table and two chairs sat in the middle of the room atop a rug, worn threadbare in spots and stained black in others.
The dirt and dust on the floor had been disturbed, but nothing else.
Connor slung the rifle on his left arm, drew his sidearm, and cracked the door. Finding the hall empty, he slipped out. D.B. followed.
Their boots on the stairs sounded too loud as they double-timed it down and out the back door. The sun was setting when they cut down the narrow alley that ran behind the buildings, leapfrogging from one obstacle and shadow to the next.
A long row of apartments and stores was attached, and Connor felt a nervous rush of claustrophobia. They were trapped between the buildings like fish in a barrel. At the first narrow alley leading out of the corridor, he darted through it to the main street, where he holstered his weapon, then pulled the dark blue baseball cap from his jacket pocket and put it on.
They reached the pickup point too early. Their jeans and jackets blended in with the other people on the street, but their weapons didn’t. They hung back, leaning against the side of a dilapidated apartment building with stucco peeling from it like blistered skin.
“One of us is going to have to slide out onto the street so they can see us,” Connor said. “One of these people is going to call someone, and they’ll be all over us.”
D. B. handed off his MP-5. “I’ll do it. With my coloring, I can pass for a native.”
He did have the dark hair and eyes and the olive complexion of the general population. He was fluent in the language as well.
Connor hung the MP-5 over his right shoulder. D.B. walked out on the street and leaned back against the face of the apartment building. A white van slowed in front of him and the side door slid open. D. B. turned to beckon to him and drew his sidearm, his attention focused on something behind Connor.
Connor wheeled around, bringing up the MP-5. As the first bullet hit him high in the chest, he was pulling the trigger, spraying the two men with answering fire. The two went down, but so did he, the wind knocked out of him, his pack saving him from hitting his head. Encumbered by too many weapons, he rolled to his right side in an attempt to scramble up and run for the van. He got one leg under him, but the other didn’t seem to want to cooperate.
More men raced toward him from the corner of the alley, and he squeezed off another round of fire, sending them dodging back behind the building.
D.B. and one of the Salvadorian soldiers working with them grabbed Connor under the arms and dragged him toward the van and inside. The door slid shut, and the van screeched off as it raced down the narrow street. They all hunkered down as bullets peppered the back of the vehicle.
D. B. jerked Connor’s shirt open and pulled his vest aside. “It didn’t go through.”
But the bullet that hit him in the thigh had. He focused on trying to start breathing again while the Salvadorian soldier cut open his pants leg and put pressure on the wound.
Screaming pain shot up his thigh to his hip, and he glanced down to see how bad it was. He was bleeding like a stuck pig. The sight made him nauseous, so he closed his eyes.
D.B.’s voice held a note of urgency as he radioed command.