Page 68 of Fighting for Valor
That last forty I owe you? Tucked away in an account only I have access to until Cara’s free. But I just found another five accounts in Antwerp. Give me one more hour and you’ll have all of your money and then some. I want her returned to the apartment you shot up this morning in sixty minutes, or no deal.
I only have to wait a minute for another message to come in.
You fuck with us, she’ll die screaming. One hour.
I shove the phone into one of my pockets, reach into the bag West packed for me, and pull out my knife. The one Ry used to kill Faruk. “We end this. Now.”
“Hooah,” Ry says as he holds out his fist.
West mirrors the motion. “Hooyah.”
I haven’t uttered the army battle cry in more than six years, but it rolls off my tongue like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe…it is. “Hooah.”
The drone takes another pass around the abandoned facility. “They’re on the move,” Wren says over comms. “Fast. Frantic.”
West chuckles. “They’re scrambling because they don’t have a fucking clue where she is. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Until he slams his hand against my chest seconds before I’m about to slip through a side door. I’m about to say something less than polite when he nods towards the floor and the small red laser light on one side of the jamb.
Ry and West snap on their NVGs and twist a little knob on the side. After I put mine on, Ry reaches over and flicks that same knob, and…holy shit. Infrared. “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” I mutter as I follow them through the door, stepping over the motion sensor and sweeping my gaze around the room.
“They’re separating,” Wren says. “Based on body mass, Jessup’s heading for the roof and Parr’s coming down. Straight for you.”
Taking up flanking positions on either side of the stairwell, we wait. As Parr flies into the room, West crouches, grabs the man’s legs, and flips him upside down and onto his back.
Parr stares up at the three of us. Ryker has his Beretta pointed at Parr’s head, and I crouch down and press my knife to his throat. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She got away. Jessup’s tracking my phone—she took it—and we know she was on the roof at one point. We lost her after that.”
“Give me a reason why I shouldn’t slit your throat right now, asswipe. You hurt her. Repeatedly. And you left me in Afghanistan for years, let that sick fuck destroy everything I was.”
The split-second realization that I care more about him hurting Cara than all the pain I endured at Faruk’s hand hits me hard, but I shake it off and press the knife harder against his windpipe.
“Jessup called in backup. They’ll be here in five minutes. Please. I don’t want to do this anymore. I never wanted to kill Caroline in the first place. I tried to help her. Or at least, make her more comfortable. Jessup…he threatened my family.”
“Your call, brother,” Ry says.
“Um, guys?” Wren’s voice isn’t steady as she breaks in over comms. “There’s an SUV approaching your location at high speed. Four heat signatures inside.”
I slam my knife back into its sheath, grab Parr by the upper arms, and haul him up. “You get to live—for now. But only because we might need you before the end. If she dies, so do you.”
Ryker pulls a pair of flex cuffs from one of his pockets and binds Parr’s wrists behind his back. “Up the stairs, asshole. I know just the place to stash you.”
West makes a sharp clicking sound, then gestures out the door, two fingers in the air. We’ve got company. Ry goes up, and I follow West until we reach the corner of the main building.
Go left, he signals, and I nod, the weight of my knife in my hand so familiar, and yet so foreign at the same time. Keeping low, I use a rotting fence as cover, moving almost soundlessly through the tall grasses. No one’s used this place in a dozen years, if I had to guess. Peeling paint, crumbling walls…
Cement explodes just above my head, and I tuck and roll, then slither on my belly until I can take cover behind a large vent shaft maybe four feet high and easily that wide.
Tapping my comms, I whisper, “Base, got a visual?”
“One hundred yards at two-fifteen,” Wren says.
I hope I remember how to shoot straight. The H&K submachine gun with its internal suppressor should be quiet enough, but I was always more of a close quarters guy. Dax, Gose, and Ry all beat my ass in sniper training.
“Eighty yards,” Wren says quietly. “Approaching at a fixed angle.”
You’re gonna regret that move, idiot.
